“Shut up,” I said jokingly. “How old are you, mister?”
He leaned forward again, his one arm bent at the elbow against the table, his large hand spread out in a relaxed position. He grabbed his beer with the other hand and took a sip. “Twenty.”
“Twenty? How’d you get us beers?”
He shrugged. “I know a guy,” he said, and I smiled warmly.
The talk was easy and natural with Jake. He was funny, smart, and not cocky at all, which was surprising for how attractive he was. He liked jazz music, thought the saxophone had a sexy sound, though he loved Miles Davis on the trumpet. He longed for the nostalgia of the nineties, and he loved hiking or snowboarding in his free time, depending on the season. He was kind and attentive, and nothing like the guys I knew in high school…
But he wasn’t E.
I did well to hide the sadness that came over me when that realization hit. I forced my mind to think about where I was at the moment and who I was with, because I really was enjoying myself. At that point, it’d been the first time I could say that in nearly a year.
“So, tell me about your friends,” he asked.
I tried to find a way out of the question. The truth was, I didn’t have any friends. Not anymore, anyway, but I didn’t want to ruin a good time with a bad topic, so instead I said, “What do you want to know?”
He put his beer down and folded his arms on the table before him as he leaned in. “Who are they, where do theygo to school, you know?” He shrugged, and the corner of his lips curved into a cute smile. “The basics.”
“The basics,” I stalled, trying to figure out how honest I should be. I settled for fifty-fifty.
“Well, my two friends are over at U of I, so I haven’t seen them. And my best friend, E, is at college down in South Jersey. I forget where though.”
See? Fifty-fifty.
It was clearly half true. Lara and Kasey were in fact at U of I, and I didn’t see them—for good reason, but those were unnecessary details. I intentionally left Enzo out because he was never a friend to begin with. I didn’t know why I mentioned E at all, but it somehow felt… wrong not to. Like, not mentioning him would be equivalent to erasing the biggest part of me. And though I thought I had let him go, I hadn’t. Not even a little bit.
“E, huh? And that’s a girl?”
“Guy,” I said, trying to sound casual. I took a sip from my beer, and he did the same.
“That sounds like trouble,” he said after his swig.
“Why?” I asked, suddenly defensive of myself, of E, of the relationship we no longer had and probably never would again.
If Jake noticed it, there was no sign. He just shrugged and said, “My mother told me never to date a girl with a guy best friend. There’s always unspoken love there, one side or the other.”
I took another sip of my beer, trying to hide the pain, the truth his words had just brought me. “It’s not like that,” I lied.
I know why I lied. I knew it then.
I lied because, even that early on, I had a feeling Jake would be sticking around for a while, and if he did, and there was a chance I got E back in my life, I didn’t want Jake to be blindsided. I wanted him to know there was someone who knew me first, who knew me then, so get used to it.
Sometimes we don’t know the reasons behind our decisions. Sometimes we just make poor choices and have to deal with the aftermath, no matter which way it throws us. But sometimes we do. Sometimes we know the impact of our choices, and we choose to do it anyway, even if it’s a bad one.
Jake’s next words filled me with a hope I never should have felt, but I did anyway. And I held onto it, because I wanted to.
“Maybe it wasn’t like that for you,” he said, “but I get the feeling you’re a hard girl to forget.”
He said it with a grin, and I smiled back with a shake of my head, seemingly pleased while also dismissive of his compliment. But in the back of my mind, in the deepest parts of my brain, I prayed that what he said was true.
I prayed that E hadn’t forgotten me, like I hadn’t forgotten him.
Track 11
“Got to Get You into My Life”
-Earth, Wind & Fire, 1978
