Beware of Love in Technicolor

by Kirstie Collins Brote

  “Thank you,” I quipped quickly, and made my way past them to my final destination.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I knocked quietly on John’s door.

  “Enter!” he called out, completely oblivious to what was about to come.

  I stepped into his room and waited for him to look up from the sci-fi novel he was reading. I’m sure my face flushed from the cold, and my hair made me look certifiable.

  He didn’t say anything at first. He just sat there, propped up against a mountain of pillows on the bed, hole in the big toe of his black sock. He cocked his head to the side, trying to piece together what was occurring in front of him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked slowly, rising to stand.

  “Oh, don’t get up,” I said icily. “I just had a few things to say, and didn’t feel like waiting for you to come out of your hole. God knows when that will be.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “I hitched.”

  “You did what?” he demanded quickly.

  Aha. Emotion.

  “I told you, I have a few things to say,” I said, ignoring his question.

  “Well then, take off your coat and let’s have it,” he said. His face fell back into its expressionless demeanor, and he made a big show of sitting down at his desk in preparation for a big discussion.

  “Oh, this won’t take long enough for that,” I volleyed back.

  We met each other’s stare, each of us challenging the other.

  “How dare you jerk me around like this?” I started, scrambling in my mind to remember the illustrious speech I had prepared on the walking part of my journey here.

  “Like what?” he asked coldly.

  “Like we have no history. Like you don’t owe me anything better.”

  “I didn’t realize we were keeping a tab. What exactly do I owe you?”

  “Some fucking respect,” I spat out, shaken by his complete lack of emotion.

  “I think I was pretty clear and to the point earlier. I think that shows respect.”

  “That shows nothing. Two weeks ago, when it was me breaking up with you, you wouldn’t let me,” I started a new line of argument.

  “You could have thrown me out. If you had really wanted to, you could have gotten rid of me. Don’t blame me for your decisions.”

  “Well, I guess that’s the difference between us. I was willing to make an effort. You obviously weren’t.”

  “I never said I was going to. Again, don’t blame me for your decisions.”

  “You are a total asshole, you know that?” I was faltering, grabbing onto childish insults to try and pull something, anything, out of him other than the icy glare.

  “Are we done here? Have you said what you needed to say? I’m an asshole. Got it. Is it all off your chest now?”

  I realized at that moment, that very second in time and space, that we were done. It was over. We were breaking up. And looking at that shell of the once vibrant and interesting and endearing boy/man now sitting in front of me, I felt ready to say good-bye. This new person, this emotionally vacant zombie, was not somebody I had ever chosen to allow into my life. It had all just happened so gradually, I hardly noticed I was holding onto love for a ghost of a person who had exited my life many months ago.

  “Yeah,” I finally answered, biting my bottom lip and nodding my head slowly. “I guess there’s nothing more to say.”

  My resignation actually got his attention, and I saw him flinch a small bit. But I paid no heed.

  “Sorry to barge in like this,” I continued. I turned to leave. When I reached the door, I looked back at him. He was hunched over at his desk, head in his hands, eyes cast toward the floor.

  Obviously, I hadn't really thought my plan through. I was terrified of hitchhiking again, scared that my luck may not be so good the next time I stuck out my thumb. The night already sucked enough without ending up in little pieces in a garbage bag on the side of some dark and vacant road. But I was far too stubborn to ask anyone in the house for a ride back to campus. I pulled on my gloves and resigned myself to a long, cold walk home on which to reflect on my life. It would be good for me, right?

  It didn’t matter. John pulled his car up alongside me about fifteen minutes into my walk, and demanded that I at least let him drive me home. Either that or he was going to trail me the entire way. I thought about my frozen little ears, and consented. The ride back to Hadley was silent, and sad.

  ***

  The two weeks following the breakup are a bit hazy. I spent a lot of time in my room by myself, reading anything I could get my hands on just to keep my mind busy. In a strange turn of events, I actually went to all my classes instead of falling back into the pattern of skipping. I think I knew that I needed to stay connected to the world outside in some way, even if I didn’t speak to anyone. John was noticeably absent from our shared interpersonal communications class. Topher checked in on me regularly, but gave me the space I seemed to need. At the end of those two weeks was spring break. My family was staying put that year, though I would have welcomed a getaway on the beach somewhere. But a quiet week at home where I didn’t have to feel like a loser for not having anything to do on a Friday night was an escape, nonetheless. I thought it would help that Penny had the same week off as me. But it didn’t.

  She and Tim were in one of those couple places where everything is lovey-dovey and magical and all that crap. Which I found surprising, because Tim was supposed to be in Florida with his buddies that week, had it not been for Penny’s demands that he not go. Funny what regular sex does to some guys.

  We went out to dinner once, the three of us, which was awkward and seemed to drag on forever at a depressing Applebee’s in Nashua. It was all I saw of her that week.

  Chapter Twenty

  I arrived back at school the following Sunday, ready for the second half of second semester of my second year of college. I had a new attitude and a new hair color. I had made the decision one lonely, late night spent in the rec room of my parent’s house. I was tired of me. I wanted to shed my old self, and spring break seemed to be the perfect time to do so. I thought maybe being a redhead instead of a brunette would help lighten me up. It was a great, copper penny color, which really brought out my green eyes. I felt like a better, fresher, version of myself. But the real test would be the next few weeks, and I knew it.

  I missed John, and still thought about him a lot. For three weeks I poured through all my memories, trying to find the point where things started to turn. I wondered what he was doing with himself and his new freedom that he had always wanted so badly. I wondered if we ever really had anything solid, or if it had all been in my head. I thought about the names we had picked out for our children, and the plans we had made for our first apartment in some fantastic city as soon as we were finished in New Hampshire.

  But as the days went by, I found myself thinking about the scowl he constantly wore. About his breath after eating a cheeseburger loaded with onions, and his annoying video game habit. My brain started to balance the good memories with the bad, and it was becoming easier and easier to interact with the outside world without falling apart like some kind of mess.

  Upon returning to Hadley, I saw the red light of my answering machine blinking wildly, which was funny, because my phone had hardly rung at home with my parents. I grabbed myself a Diet Coke, hit the play button, and took a seat on the edge of my bed.

  “Hey Greer,” the first message played. It was John. He was slurring his words. “I hope you are doing ok. I haven’t seen you in so long, and I just wanted to see how you’re doing. Where are you? Are you ok? Because I’m ok. I’m ok. But I don’t think you care. I guess I blew it, huh? I just want to know where you are...,” and the machine cut him off.

  “Damn answering machines,” the second message picked up. “I was just saying how much I am ok. Free, like I always wanted. Is it good for you, Greer? Ha. It was never good for you, was it, Greer? Nothing was ever good enough fo
r Greer Bennett. How are you? Are you ok? I just wanted to...,” and he was cut off again.

  There were a few more like that in succession. All drunk. All wavering wildly between venomous and wistful. And then one more.

  “Hey, Greer, It’s John,” said the last message. He sounded solid, and sober. “I have been told I spent some time with your answering machine last night, so I just wanted to apologize. I really was in no condition to... Anyway, I hope you are doing all right. Call me, if you want.”

  And just as my messages, all from John, were wrapping up, my phone rang. And it was him.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “I’m ok,” I answered, trying to sound upbeat. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” he said quickly. “Look, I’m just calling to say sorry. About the messages.”

  “It’s ok. They were pretty funny, mostly.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “What’s up, John?” I could feel him hemming through the lines; knew there was something he was not getting to.

  “Well, aside from my humblest apologies to you and your answering machine, I also wanted to tell you about a party here next week, on Friday night. Wayne and Ben lined up Scar Tissue to play in the basement, so it should be pretty big.”

  “Sounds great,” I said snottily. As if I wanted to hear about his raging social life.

  “What I wanted to tell you,” he huffed in mock impatience, “is that you are perfectly welcome to be here. I think we are both mature enough to handle it. They’re your friends too, so I don’t want you to think you can’t come here.”

  “Thanks,” I said quietly.

  “Well, that’s it,” he said. “Think about coming, ok?”

  “Ok.”

  “I’ll see you around.” And he hung up.

  ***

  I was doing my best to keep up and understand all the emotion and manners of a break up. The closest I had ever been to a break up was in seventh grade, when Greg Cohen’s best friend Joey approached me in the school playground to let me know that Greg no longer wanted to “go out” with me. At the time, I laughed it off, and moved on to a fantastic, three year imaginary love affair with Duran Duran’s John Taylor. So now, once again, I felt like a rookie, trying to play a game I hardly knew the rules to.

  Apparently, John and I could be on speaking terms, and it was ok. That was not exactly how I had always pictured breaking up, but it was much easier. Maybe I should have taken the opportunity to branch out and make some new friends, ones who had never met John Cunningham. But I didn’t. I held onto what I knew.

  I knew I was going to have to take some control of my social life, or I would become that pathetic, lonely mess I was so afraid of becoming. I depended on Topher that spring. We hung out a lot, going for long walks around campus and town, and eating together often. Poor Cheri. I don’t know how much of an explanation she got for his sudden drop in interest, and I don’t know how much of it was actually due to my need for attention, but I have a feeling the two were connected.

  “You and John were never really right for each other anyway,” he said to me in line for dinner one night. It was the afternoon before the party on Cloud 9. John had been right; the party was going to be big. There was a buzz about it even among people who almost never ventured out of town.

  “How can you say that?” I laughed. “We may not have always been great together, but there were times when we really worked. It’s that damned house. We’d still be together if he lived on campus.”

  “You keep telling yourself that,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway. That’s pretty much where I am now,” I stated as we made our way into the dining hall. I looked over the selections and decided it was a Cap’n Crunch kind of night. “I mean, there’s no going back now. I wouldn’t want him back.”

  “Yeah, right. If he came to your door tonight, begging, you’d go back to him.” Topher was always much more honest when he could not look me in the eyes. With his attention on the turkey sub the lady in the white apron was building for him behind the sneeze guard, he was was free to let me have it.

  “No,” I said, dropping a spoon and a handful of napkins on my tray. “Not the way he is now. I miss what he was when we met. But he’s different. I wouldn’t go back to that now.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?” he asked.

  “Jesus,” I said, glancing around the hall to spot empty seats. “You’re a Nosy Nellie tonight. About a month ago, I guess. Wow. A month.”

  “See that. Right there. You’d go back to him in a minute.”

  Thankfully, our conversation was interrupted by Patrick, calling out our names among the throngs of students weaving their way through the tables. We walked to his table and sat down on the end.

  “Wow, a redhead,” Patrick said. “Looks good.”

  “Definitely,” Topher grinned at me and I knew he was dropping our conversation. I was relieved and I smiled in return.

  “Thanks, guys,” I said, enjoying the attention. Now that I was single, I was newly obsessed with how I looked. I had gotten lazy over the fall, but with some hard work and hair dye, I was getting better daily. I had been working out sporadically before John and I broke up, but now I was committed to it like never before. It was not uncommon for me to spend an hour and a half stepping away, staring out the window at the lives in the lower quad that could not touch me. My clothes were fitting me well again.

  “Are you going to the party at Cloud 9 tomorrow?” Patrick asked us. We nodded.

  “Greer!”

  I looked around the room, and finally saw Gwen sitting about three tables away. I excused myself, and went to talk with her.

  We spent about five minutes catching up. It was the first she had heard of the breakup. We giggled about new boys and our chubby RA and made plans for her to join us the following night for the party at Cloud 9.

  I was excited as I walked back to Hadley Hall that evening, my arm hooked in Topher’s, the two of us jibber jabbering about something silly enough for me not to remember now. Maybe being single wasn’t going to be such a bad thing after all.

  ***

  The next day, I skipped my communications class for the first time that semester to take the bus out to the mall and treat myself to a brand new outfit. I felt like I deserved it. It was a daring outfit, chosen carefully and deliberately. I couldn’t remember the last party I had gone to single. Even at the beginning of freshman year, even when John and I were not yet official, I had been smitten only with him. But now, admiring myself in the full-length mirror in the poorly lit fitting rooms at TJ Maxx, I was pretty sure that a black lace t shirt with nothing but a black bra underneath would be exactly the right kind of look for me and my new life. In what I was sure would be a sea of baggy Calvin & Hobbes t-shirts and baggier oxford button downs, I was confident I would stand out.

  Then I walked from the campus bus stop to a row of apartments just behind the small shopping plaza in town. I sat down with a guy we all just called “The Big Red Man,” because he was a large, red-headed beast of a guy, except for his baby face, which rendered his size completely non-threatening, and laughed with him over how lame our shared consumer behavior class was. I handed him fifty bucks for a rolled up baggie of weed, smoked a little with him while Tom & Jerry played on the old television set in the corner, and walked a slightly stoney walk home to get ready for my first I’m-a-Single-Girl party.

  We were meeting up in my room before heading out to Rutland. Patrick now had a car on campus, so while Topher, Gwen and I waited for him to show up, we smoked a round. I was so proud of the very first bag I had bought completely on my own. And I had never been high with Gwen. I didn’t even know she smoked. She was a funny stoner; it was rare when she indulged, so when she did, the effects were pronounced. At this point, I had become accustomed to the heady rush and mellow aftershock of a good high, so Topher and I just sat back and and watched and laughed as she chased a moth around the room. She always remin
ded me of a cat. When we were ready to go, I rolled up my baggie and placed it in the front pocket of my jeans, along with some cash, my ID, and a lipstick.

  The dope was sort of like my insurance policy that I would not spend the night alone. Nobody ignored a cute girl who was generous with her weed.

  ***

  True to hype, Cloud 9 was starting to rage when we got there. We even had to park up the street a bit. It felt strange to be at the house. The last time I had been there was the night I hitched. I shuddered at the thought of that night, and put it away in the back of my brain. I was at a party. No bad thoughts. No bad thoughts.

  We entered through the sliding back doors, and were greeted by a loud round of hearty hello’s and holler’s. But the first person I really noticed was Ben, perched on the counter in the kitchen, large mug of beer in one hand. He was in the middle of a conversation with about four or five women. They surrounded him, giggling and tossing their hair back with annoying frequency. But looking at Ben, how could I blame them? He had the Abercrombie look before Abercrombie. The faded, yellow t shirt tucked carelessly into his Levi’s, the waistband tattered, giving a glimpse of the boxers underneath. Impure thoughts of the boxers underneath. He smiled and slid off the counter when we made eye contact across the room.

  “I’m so glad you came, Greer,” he said to me as he leaned in and gave me a quick kiss on my cheek. I was glad for the dim light as I felt the fire rush to my face. I had not seen Ben in a long time, and I had forgotten how damned hot he was.

  “I’m glad, too,” I replied, and then introduced him to Gwen. He gave Patrick directions to the keg in the basement, and the three I had come with made their way down. I stayed behind to chat with him for a few moments. As Gwen made her way behind Topher through the crowd to the stairs, I caught her smile and mouth the words, “He’s so cute!” to me.