Ted Saves the World

by Bryan Cohen

  Chapter 7

  Natalie pouted on her bed. It had been years since she ditched her basketball sheets for a more modern design, though her current state of emotions made her feel like a little kid again.

  "I'm the one who broke up with him. I shouldn't be upset. I should feel free."

  She didn't feel free. It's not like she was the sort of person who played the relationship field. Ted was the first person who even acknowledged a crush on her. Most guys wanted to take her out on the court, not take her out to dinner. She'd had high hopes for Ted, and for a little while he'd lived up to them.

  "You aren't so tough," he'd say. "Deep down, you're Suzy Homemaker."

  Most of the time, Natalie wanted to be seen as an athlete first and a girl second. There were times, though, and they were becoming more frequent, that she wanted to be treated like she was beautiful. The high point in their relationship was the homecoming dance. She, Ted, Dhiraj and one of Dhiraj's family friends all gathered to take pictures. The moment Natalie walked down the stairs and saw Ted in his suit was etched in her mind. For once, his black hair was all going the direction it was supposed to. The tailored suit complemented his long, lanky frame. Taking him out of his baggy t-shirts and hoodies and putting him into formal wear made him look stronger, as if the two of them were a perfect fit.

  While he looked great, the reason he stuck in her mind was more about the way he was looking at her. His light blue eyes were focused on every part of her at once. Natalie's mother had helped her navigate makeup for the event and she'd picked out a dress that complemented her tall, muscular frame. Natalie almost didn't recognize herself in the mirror, and she told Ted as much.

  "Now you get to see what I always see underneath," he said.

  She didn't remember many words spoken the rest of the dance, because after he'd said that, she was either kissing him or dancing with him the next three hours. At the end of the night, she told Ted she loved him.

  That's when things started to go downhill.

  "Really?" he said.

  "It's the truth."

  "I'm... thank you."

  And that was where the conversation ended. The next day in school, Ted was more distant and she couldn't tell why. She assumed it was those three little words, until Dhiraj cleared things up.

  "At the dance, that's when word started to spread that Erica had run away," he said.

  "He hated Erica. They weren't even friends," she said.

  "Not now, but she was the only person in the world for him before us."

  "He needs to get over that."

  "Give him some time," Dhiraj said.

  Natalie gave him time. After two and a half weeks of a mopey, tentative Ted, she confronted him about it. They went on a long walk around his neighborhood. She looked in his direction the entire time, but he only glanced over once or twice over the course of half an hour.

  "It's scary," he said. "She's probably dead out there somewhere. If I'd been a better friend, she'd still be here."

  Natalie wanted to yell at him, but his tone was too sincere to do so.

  "She ended your friendship, not you. She chose a bad crowd, and whatever happened to her, it wasn't your fault."

  Ted nodded.

  "I know that. My guilt doesn't seem to know that."

  "Your guilt is an idiot."

  "I loved... being with her," Ted said. "I just hope she's OK."

  She felt her stomach twitch. Natalie realized that when she told Ted she loved him, the reason he didn't reciprocate was because he still loved Erica. Even though she was terrible to him, he refused to let those feelings go. At that moment, Natalie had begun to plan the breakup in her mind.

  Sighing away the memory, she took the homecoming dress out of her closet and brought it over to the bed. She touched the fabric and looked at the picture she had by her bedside. Of all the pictures they'd taken before homecoming, Natalie chose to print out the goofy shot, her with her tongue sticking out and Ted flexing.

  "I ended things. But he never started them. He still loved her."

  She noticed a tear drip onto the comforter, and the droplet spread into a quarter-sized stain. Natalie thought about the diner. She considered it their last hope, because maybe if Ted put up a fight and refused to be broken up with, they'd be able to keep things going. But he didn't fight for them. Another few tears fell and the comforter absorbed them as well. She rolled over to her end table and grabbed her phone. After a deep breath, she texted Dhiraj.

  "Are you awake?" she asked.

  Talking with Dhiraj calmed her down a bit. She'd felt out of place for most of middle school until Dhiraj treated her like everybody else. It was after a field hockey match in which Natalie scored three goals. Her teammates and her parents gave her props, and she didn't expect anything else. Dhiraj, the new, scrawny team manager, came right up to her and began yammering. He annoyed her at first. He would ambush her at her locker with questions about her training methods, ask her opinions about marketing strategies for the team at lunch and even track her down after practice to learn what skills she'd worked on. Eventually Natalie realized that she preferred talking to him to being alone. It wasn't too long after that Dhiraj introduced her to Ted.

  Ted was difficult to classify in the school clique system. He watched dorky television shows and movies, but he didn't hang out with the nerds. He had good looks, but his lack of confidence kept him off the popularity charts. If he had better hand-eye coordination, he might have even passed for a jock. It took more than a year for Natalie to determine what it was that distinguished Ted from every other average guy at school. During an eighth grade birthday party that was mostly attended by athletes, aside from Ted and Dhiraj, her future boyfriend handed her a poorly wrapped poster as a gift. When she saw what it was, she forgot to breathe. It was a picture of her favorite female Olympian that would fit perfectly on her wall.

  "How did you find this?" she asked. "I didn't even know they made posters of her."

  Ted turned pink and looked away.

  "I made it."

  Natalie wasn't sure what came over her but she grabbed and hugged him. She could feel his back muscles tense up against her arms.

  "How'd you even know about her?"

  "You mentioned it in passing last year," he said.

  Natalie kept her arms around Ted as she pulled back to look him in the eyes. She'd never had the urge to kiss anyone before, but that marked the first moment she understood why someone would want to do so.

  "Thank you," she said. "It means a lot to me."

  When Dhiraj told her about several people not being able to get into Page's, she assumed the worst. She thought about Ted tripping and splitting his head open, shutting the place down and dying miserable and alone. That brought the tears back. When Dhiraj hung up to call the Finleys, Natalie called the restaurant. She got a busy signal.

  "Someone's probably ordering takeout right now and Ted's perfectly fine," she said.

  She lay back down, pulled the comforter over her head and went to sleep.

  When she woke up, the dress was wrapped around her midsection and the sheets were thrown every which way. She'd always been a bit of a thrasher in her sleep. The clock by her bed struck 3 p.m. She'd napped for close to two hours. After untangling herself and hanging the dress back up, she pulled up her Twitter feed on her phone. Natalie's eyes grew wide at the first post.

  "Armed gunmen at Page's? Nobody wants eggs that bad."

  She looked at the dress in her closet and began to breathe heavily. She scrolled through the article searching for Ted's name, but her eyes grew too watery for her to read the words on her screen. Natalie picked up her phone and called Dhiraj back. Three rings went by with no answer.

  "Pick up, Dhiraj," she said. "Pick up! Please be alright, Ted. Please."