“Regardless of the term, you didn’t,” I stressed. “Nothing was gonna happen… Even if you guys didn’t arrive last night. I swear.”
“How come? She seems nice… Plus, she’s hot,” she replied with a chuckle. Then for the first time ever, she gave me a congratulatory fist bump. In all the time we’d lived together, bumping knuckles wasn’t something we’d ever done. “Kudos to you, ‘my young Padawan.'”
“Uh, yeah, thanks.” I was so ready for conflict-a fight, an argument. Taken aback by her carefree demeanor, I was uncertain on how to proceed. I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth though, so I abandoned my pre-planned talking points. “How was your trip, by the way?”
She chugged the rest of her orange juice. I stared directly at her pink lips as she wiped a paper napkin over them. “It was eventful. One night, we stayed in this supposedly haunted sixty-year-old motel and I swear a ghost hid my car keys. Like we literally spent hours looking for them. But it was still worth it ’cause for breakfast, they had these bomb crepes and…”
For more than thirty minutes, she proceeded to animatedly relay her misadventures with Blue Ranger and despite my jittery nerves, I laughed at her entertaining stories. Based on our conversation, it seemed like she couldn’t have cared less about what I did… About what I, myself, saw as a treacherous transgression. Aside from the fist bump, her behavior was normal. She was interacting with me like nothing was wrong, talking about random things and cracking frequent jokes. Due to her normality, I inwardly told myself that the stomach-churning guilt I felt was just a consequence of my deep feelings for her.
Basically, it was a subjective-thing that I needed to shake off, so we could put the whole ordeal behind us before it caused any real damage.
__________
Part Three
Everything was fine, but nothing felt okay.
At present, a week had come and gone since I’d brought a date to Apartment 202. In the interim, Gray had played her video game while I watched, joined me for breakfast daily and even invited me for a movie marathon on her bed. To anyone on the outside looking in, everything would’ve appeared par for the course… But although I would’ve loved for nothing to be wrong, I wasn’t viewing us from a distance. I was in the middle of it all. And despite her best efforts, she couldn’t pull the wool over my eyes. I knew that regardless of how adamant she was about playing everything off as no big deal, she wasn’t as unfazed or unaffected as she was pretending to be. How did I know that? Because she refused to even kiss me anymore.
Since the first time she’d gracefully and tactfully avoided my lips, each second my mind wasn’t preoccupied was a second it spent berating me for my costly mistake. At least Jack got a giant beanstalk for his lapse in judgment… While in my case, every time it hit me that what I’d done couldn’t be edited or erased, I just fell more and more apart.
If there was a bright side in this situation, then it wasn’t one I could perceive-the glass wasn’t half-full or half-empty, the glass was just shattered.
. . .
In nothing but skimpy lingerie under a faux silk red robe, I knocked on Gray’s door. It was past midnight. But I could hear soft music, so I knew she was still awake. Once she called for me to come in, I twisted the cold knob and stuck my head through the doorway. Tonight, her ceiling lights weren’t changing colors, they just steadily bathed everything in red. “Hi.”
On her bed, she was holding the tablet I’d gifted her. She flashed me her spellbinding smile and my stomach somersaulted. Regardless of all the recent turmoil, at least she still looked happy to see me. “Hey, you, what’s up?”
The last time I’d employed this strategy was forever ago. But I’d figured reverting to the ‘porn-filming gambit’ was better than doing nothing. Yes, only eleven days had passed since the last time we had sex (the night before her road trip began) and I’d remained celibate for much, much longer than that in the past… But given that I was having the best sex of my life daily, wherein I orgasmed multiple times, before getting cut off cold turkey, my body was already in a full state of rebellion.
No matter what toy I used or memory I recalled, I couldn’t get myself off. Gray needed to be the one to do it for me. My body wasn’t willing to settle for an inferior, lesser form of pleasure. “I’m gonna film in my room.”
“Oh, yeah? It’s pretty late, but I support you. Secure that bag, roomie.”
Her jovial tone boosted my confidence. “I know, but I couldn’t sleep and figured why not?” I tried my best to keep it cool. She kicked off her comforter and got up from her bed. This was turning out to be much easier than I’d anticipated… “I was thinking-”
A heavy weight settled in my chest. I bit my tongue to shut myself up. She wasn’t joining me in my room, she was just retrieving her earphones. “Thanks for letting me know.” She returned to her bed. “Break a leg!”
“Yeah, um, thanks, Gray.”
As I closed her door, I felt like the biggest moron in history.
. . .
Two days after my charade had failed, I tried the direct and straightforward route. Halfway into some action flick that seemingly had an explosion every three seconds, on Gray’s bed, I turned my body toward her. I cuddled to her side. She became rigid, but I soldiered on. With my heart racing in my chest, I angled my face to kiss her. She dodged my lips. Again. Though I’d gone through this scenario once already, the second time still hurt like a bitch. So much so that I confronted her head-on.
“Why are you mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you.” With a sigh, she scooted away. “I just- I don’t wanna do stuff like that anymore…” Finally, after skirting around the issue for so long, she expressed how she felt in black-and-white words. “But that’s okay, right?”
“Oh,” I mumbled out. “Of course it is!” My pitch was higher than usual, but I was forcing myself to talk. No, it wasn’t ‘okay with me,’ but it had to be. What else could I have said in response? Although I was desperate to feel her lips against mine again, I’d never resort to forcing her to kiss me. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize. Like I said, I’m not mad at you,” she repeated, but I didn’t believe her. “Let’s just keep watching the movie, Cass.”
Nodding, I redirected my eyes to the projection on her wall. My mind wasn’t on the film though… I couldn’t have cared less about the hard-to-follow plot full of holes. Since at present, I truly believed my life was more confusing and even harder to disentangle.
. . .
In my eyes, it was so macabre to celebrate the end of something. But on this Saturday night, Apartment 202 was the venue of a small party Gray was throwing. Well, it wasn’t a party-party, she’d just invited her five best friends and their respective significant others (if any). Green Ranger was even ‘attending digitally’ via a purposefully positioned laptop. The intimate get-together was meant to serve as their group’s last hurrah in the apartment my roommate had lived in for the past three years… Before I’d moved in, it was already a place they frequently hung out at, so I understood the sentimentality.
Anyway, borrowing Gray’s preferred terminology… When I was deciding whether or not to join them had been a ‘Scylla and Charybdis moment’ for me. I knew attending a party that marked the end of such a significant chapter of my life would be masochistic. Like pouring salt on my still-raw wounds. But I also knew that it’d likely be my last chance to hang out with the Power Rangers. My only connection to them was Gray, so it wasn’t a stretch for me to presume that once we weren’t roommates anymore, I’d no longer see them (bar random run-ins).
Soon after their intimate party started though, I began regretting my choice to stay home. Tonight, a sense of nostalgia pervaded all of their conversations. They were making constant references to the past. And despite how much I begged my brain to quit it, a brutal intrusive thought kept popping up. I couldn’t stop thinking that before long, I’d just be another passing topic during one of these group conversations of theirs.
Or maybe I was giving myself too much importance… For all intents and purposes, I wasn’t even an ‘ex.’ Aside from Blue Ranger, I was pretty sure none of them knew Gray and I used to sleep together. My roommate might’ve been a beacon of light during some of my darkest days, but I was just a blip in hers… No doubt, I’d benefited more from meeting her than she did from meeting me. I tried to stop staring at her, but each and every time she laughed, my gaze found its way back to her face. Her smile was so bright, her laughter was so contagious. I couldn’t help but longingly gaze at her like a foolish person staring at the sun.
Although I knew full-well that it was hurting me, I just couldn’t keep my eyes off her.
. . .
As soon as I opened my bedroom door, I saw Gray cleaning up our living room. She was erasing the evidence of her core friend group’s heavy drinking. I smiled when I noticed the color-clashing socks that covered her feet. The fact that last night was most likely the final time I’d hang out with her friends hadn’t fully sunk in yet. But I’d get there eventually… In all situations, every road ultimately led to acceptance anyway.
“Morning…” I covered my mouth and let out an exhausted yawn. I noted the view of an overcast sky through our windows.
Gray placed down the garbage bag she was holding. The noises of clinking empty glass bottles filled the air. She combed her dark auburn hair from her face, revealing her piercing blue eyes. “Hey, you’re up early.”
“Not as early as you though… Last night was fun. Thanks for letting me join you guys. I’m glad I got to hang out with everyone again.”