Beware of Love in Technicolor

by Kirstie Collins Brote

“You two airheads are loaded,” John said in our direction. “I hope you know how you’re getting home tonight.”

  Gwen and I both flashed our middle fingers at him, which made the room laugh, and everyone went back to their private conversations. The next few moments get a bit fuzzy. I know that Gwen and I were huddled on John’s bed, giggling privately about which boys at the party were cutest, and how we had waited too long to party together. Innocent stuff. But then I had to pee again, and so I clambered off the bed and made a very daffy beeline for the door. As I turned to close it behind me, I was taken aback by John standing right there, following me out to the landing at the bottom of the stairs. He closed the door, shutting out our audience in his bedroom.

  “Just what the hell do you think you are doing?” he demanded.

  “What?” I asked, still giggling a bit.

  “In there. You and Gwen.”

  “You’ve lost me, honestly John,” I said, turning to walk away. But he would not let me go. He grabbed my arm, and swung me back around to face him. It was the first time he had ever laid a hand on me in force, and I didn’t like it.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” I questioned, removing his hand from my arm and pushing it away. I spoke through clenched teeth. “What the hell is your problem?”

  “You. You giggling like a little bitch in there, doing everything you can do to make Abby uncomfortable.”

  “What?” I spat at him.

  “What was it?” he continued. “You don’t like her shoes, or her jeans are out of style?”

  “First of all John,” I started, slowing my voice down so I could get the words out. “You need to lay off the pipe. You invited me here, remember? You told me I should come tonight. It sounds like you have some issues with Abby that have nothing to do with me.” He tried to speak, but I wouldn’t let him cut me off. I was on a roll.

  “Gwen and I are too drunk to even know she is in the room. Is she even in there? She doesn’t exactly make her presence known. And if you must know, we were giggling about boys. Cute ones. And how happy we are to be hanging out together. And how drunk we are. That’s it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly, softening, a wave of guilt washing over his face. “I just assumed...,”

  “You assumed the worst about me,” I continued. I couldn’t stop. “And so thanks a lot. Thanks for showing me just how well you really know me. And you know, if you really feel up for chastising somebody about bad manners, you may just want to start with that little prize you have in there. I’ve tried being nice, even friendly, and she was the one who was terribly rude and bitchy. Start with her.”

  I did not wait for a response before I turned on my heel and started up the stairs. I looked up to see Ben at the top, witness to the entire transaction between John and me. Of course, about forty or so people had observed the fight, but they did not concern me. Ben held out his hand, which I gladly accepted.

  “Well done,” he said with an approving smile. “Feel better?”

  “I guess,” I said. “He comes out of left field sometimes.”

  “Well, you handled him with class. I don’t think many people could have resisted hitting him.”

  “Believe me,” I joked. “The thought did occur to me. But I’d hate to hurt my hand like that. He’s not worth it.”

  “Do you remember Halloween?” he asked suddenly. He was leaning against the wall at the top of the stairs. I was standing very close to him, pressed up to him by the people going up and down and trying to find their friends. The night was getting late, and now it was a question of whether or not the cops would show before the beer ran out.

  “Of course,” I said to him, thinking about our night spent under the blanket six months earlier. I had resisted him that night, and for what? I should have just gone for it, consequences be damned. Except that now, I still had that delicious first kiss tantalizingly in front of me. Not yet a memory.

  “You know,” he said, leaning down and whispering in my ear. “There was something I wanted to do that night, and now I think I may finally have my chance.”

  “What is that?” I asked, whispering right back in his ear. He slipped his left arm around the small of my back, and reached up to touch my face with his right hand. I placed my left hand on his hip, right above the waistband of his jeans, under that perfectly faded yellow t shirt. And right at that moment when his lips brushed mine, and I felt myself give in to the kiss I had been waiting for all night, we heard the smashing of glass and people screaming.

  “What the hell was that?” Ben cried out, pulling away from me to see what was happening in his house.

  Behind me, in the kitchen, people were smashing the window just to get out of the crowded house. Others were running along the top of the counter, leaping over people to get through the mass of drunken idiots. The sliding doors from the living room to the deck outside were flung wide open, and off their tracks.

  “Go to my room,” Ben directed me, before heading into the crowd to try and restore some order to the mass exodus. I turned around in time to be face to face with Gwen and Topher, flowing up the stairs as if riding the crest of a wave.

  “They ran out of beer,” Gwen said, pouting and showing me her empty cup, before she dropped it in the confusion.

  “Come with me,” I said, grabbing her hand and leading them to Ben’s room. Inside, we closed the door behind us, and walked to the window.

  Outside, we saw a number of police cruisers, all with their lights flashing, lining the street. Students were rushing about in the darkness, not sure exactly where to go. The ones who did not panic were ushered to two buses sent to drive the intoxicated and stranded partygoers back to campus. About ten minutes later, Ben entered the room looking relaxed, as if nothing at all was happening outside his door.

  “Everything ok out there?” Topher asked him. Ben smiled.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he answered, walking to my side. “The cops are here. They’re getting everyone out. Did you see the buses they sent? This was definitely a big party!”

  “Best one of the year,” I said, enjoying his arm wrapped around my waist. I focused on his fingers effortlessly tugging on one of the belt loops of my jeans, and not on the look I was getting from Topher. I hadn’t seen much of him at the party, and had assumed, this late in the evening, he would be trying to charm Gwen, but when I looked over at her, she was starting to look green.

  “I wanna go home,” she said, and slumped down in Ben’s desk chair in the corner of the room.

  “I’ll find Patrick,” Topher said to us. “He’s our ride.”

  I attended to Gwen, got her a water out of Ben’s fridge, and made sure she was not going to be sick anywhere. When I saw Patrick waving to us to go, I readied myself to leave, but before leaving his room, Ben pulled me to one side.

  “You can stay here,” he said.

  “No, I really can’t,” I replied. I wanted to. I really wanted to. I thought about what was downstairs. Just one floor below us was John and Abby. It was too weird, just not right.

  “I know,” he conceded. Then he leaned in, and gave me the kiss I had been waiting for all night. He touched my face, which I like, and held me close. If a man’s kiss is his signature, Ben’s was written in honey and pomegranate. And it was good. Real good. Good enough to make me consider changing my mind. His lips were soft, but he was most definitely in charge, and he had a way of holding me close that made me want to forget everything around me.

  “Not fair,” I whispered, our foreheads pressed together.

  “I’m not trying to be fair.”

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “No, you can’t.”

  “I have to.”

  “Then let me take you home. You are not running away from me again.”

  ***

  We all have those moments, I suppose. The moments we can look back to, years later, and see where we jumped tracks and set off on a new course. The times when we become a slightly different vers
ion of ourselves. My impetus came with the mention from Ben that he would not be around the following year.

  “Where will you be?” I asked, still feeling my buzz, but not quite so drunk as before. My thoughts and my sentences were complete. We were in his car, winding our way over the back roads that lead to campus from the south. His eyes were on the road, which gave me the perfect opportunity to really look at him in profile in the dim light from the dashboard. There was nothing sexier, at that moment in time, than him shifting gears in the new, black SAAB he drove. There was a small hole in the right knee of his jeans.

  “Mexico,” he answered, shifting into fourth. “Jared and I are doing an exchange program for a year.”

  “Wow,” I said, noting the excitement in his voice. He was a guy who attacked life, and expected to win. It was charming and contagious. I felt better about myself, sitting there next to Ben, than I had in a long time. He made me want to take to chances.

  “You’re not going to want to come back,” I said.

  “Oh, I can think of a few reasons for coming back,” he said, turning and winking at me in the passing light of a streetlamp. He placed his right hand on my left knee and squeezed. My ego soared, and I felt my courage grow stronger as the car handled the road the way I was hoping Ben would handle me.

  “Let’s go to the beach,” I blurted from out of nowhere. I saw him smile.

  “Now?” he asked.

  “Yeah now,” I laughed. “It’s a beautiful night and I’m not tired.”

  Ben pulled the car off to the side of the ride, the gravel spraying out from the tires, pinging against the underside of the car. He put it in neutral and pulled up the brake. Then he looked at me, his hair falling in his face in the half light of a crazy night.

  “I can’t stop thinking about that kiss,” he said.

  “No?” I asked, looking up and meeting his eyes.

  “It was nice.”

  “Nice?”

  “Nice. We were sort of interrupted.”

  “I can do better,” I said, my heart thumping, my hands gripping the seat. “To be honest, I strive for better than ‘nice’ in my kissing.”

  He leaned in close, over the center console, and kissed me again. This time I relaxed, knowing it was only him and me in the car, alone on a back road in the dark woods, and this time, that was exactly how it should be. He had a way of placing his hand on the back of my head, his fingers woven gently in my hair, holding me close to him. He smiled as he kissed, which made me giggle softly. He bit my lip gently, scolding, and we laughed and kept kissing.

  He pulled away, threw the car into gear, and swung it back onto the road, now heading away from campus.

  “Let’s go to the beach,” he said.

  ***

  It was about a twenty minute drive to a sandy stretch of New Hampshire coastline, desolate this early in the spring, not to mention this late at night. It was past 3 am at this point. We were still laughing when he placed the car in park and turned to me. That is one thing I remember most about him. No pressure, never any awkward silences. And all the laughing.

  “Race you to the water,” he said, with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

  “Are you serious?” But before I could get my question out, he flung open his door, and sprang out of the car. I followed him, drunk more in wild lust for this man I could only barely get my hands on than any alcohol I may have consumed.

  Running across the hard packed sand, the wind whipped and snapped around my head, creating a wild chaos mirroring my thoughts inside. Everything was a swirl, and I was surprised and let out a whoop! when Ben caught me up from behind, his arms wrapping around me, swinging me around until he placed me back down on my feet. He turned me into him and placed his lips on mine, and I finally found myself again in the wind and the sand and his arms holding me tight. The waves pounded the shore in an unrelenting rhythm, providing a bass line to the orchestra of sounds swirling around us.

  “Take me to your car, or lose me forever,” I said, as he spun me round and back into him again in the sand. The moon above was a bright half-moon, and there were stars scattered across the sky, tiny, faraway, with wisps of inky black clouds floating by and obscuring their view at times.

  “Hell, even I know Top Gun,” he said, kissing me hard. “But I will take you.” And he threw me over his shoulder, easy as a ragdoll. I turned off all better judgment and let myself get swept up in the moment, knowing it could not be anything more than casual.

  “We don’t have to do this,” he panted, deftly removing both my jacket and my shirt while kissing me once we were back in his car.

  “I want to do this,” I whispered, pulling his t shirt over his head, revealing a six pack worth remembering.

  “Thank god,” he laughed, still kissing me as he maneuvered me into a better position in the backseat. He quickly produced a condom and slipped it on quietly, and I calmed down knowing that I did not have to be the one to bring it up.

  Perhaps this time it would be easier. There was no pressure to do everything right. I knew Ben wanted me, and that was all I needed to know. In this situation, his intentions did not matter a bit. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, which meant this was all for fun.

  And you would think, hope, pray, that knowing all this would somehow make a difference. That just the plain fact that Ben could have passed for Brad Pitt’s body double, would make the difference. But it didn’t. Not in the way you are wondering.

  “You are so incredible,” he murmured, hovering over me. It had been about five minutes of him on top of me. Twenty year olds. Thankfully, some things do get better with age.

  “I have to,” he said, as I nodded and he collapsed next to me in the backseat. I had already put in my When Harry Met Sally performance, which seemed to satisfy him.

  Oh, don’t get me wrong, sweaty and naughty in the backseat of a nice car with a gorgeous man was great fun. It was the first time I understood all the fuss about size, as nature had been far more kind to Ben than to John. Also unlike John, he was chatty and alert and hungry afterward. But as we drove into the parking lot of the twenty-four hour diner he was dying to introduce me to, I thought of a few more ways Ben was completely unlike John.

  John wanted to be good in bed. It had driven him crazy that he could not make me come. He actually thought it had something to do with him, which, as it turns out, it did not. When it came down to it, he put in the time, he put in the effort. And because he was my first, I had no idea just how rare that was going to turn out to be. Maybe it was compensation for the whole size thing, maybe it was just who he was. Ben may have been gorgeous, but perhaps that was what made him a bit lazy between the sheets.

  At any rate, I was glad to have more experience behind me than just one guy. At least now I had something to compare to.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  With April of my sophomore year drawing to a close, there were some issues that I needed to attend to. First, there was Ben. As attracted as I had been to Ben, once we saw the flirting and innuendo game through to the end that night in the backseat of his car, he lost some of his appeal. The grazing and winking and smiling and groping had been hot, but the sex? Not so much. Maybe it was because of the inconvenience of the setting. But I have since had a number of successful nights in the backseat of a nice car, so I can say from a combination of hindsight and experience, that was not the issue. The end of the game, as it turned out, was anticlimactic in more than one way. We just didn’t have much past a physical attraction, and fun as that was, it only takes a girl so far. We smiled and hugged and were pleasant the few times we saw one another on campus after that night, but I was relieved to know he would soon be off to Mexico during our junior year. That was enough time and space, I figured.

  Then there was my major. It was time to pull the plug on my journalism dreams. As much as I loved the vision of wearing designer clothes and working at a glossy magazine somewhere in the sky in Manhattan, I hated journalism.

  That is a blanket
statement. What I disliked was interviewing people, and as it turns out, that is a pretty important part of being a good journalist. If I could have gotten by sitting in the shadows observing people, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more.

  So I went with straight English. But to be safe, and to balance out the Poetry Writing and Poets of the Romantic Era, I added two business classes. Micro-economics, and consumer behavior. I figured it would give some weight for future employers who might not appreciate the importance of Lord Byron, or rhyming couplets.

  “I can’t believe you are bailing on journalism,” Topher said to me one perfectly sunny May morning on the front lawn of the SUB. He was reclined on the grass, hands behind his head, looking up at the clouds. I had to laugh at his hairy bare feet and ankles sticking out from the cuffs of his baggy jeans.

  “I don’t like being a journalism major,” I whined. I was sitting upright, watching the flow of students on their way to and from their own lives. The sun felt warm and comforting on my back, but I was annoyed by the novice plucking of guitar strings just behind me. As much as I loved Topher, his newest chippie was getting on my nerves.

  P. Denise Jefferies was a year behind us, and from what I could tell, wanted desperately for Topher to acknowledge her existence as more than a friend. She had shown up shortly after my night at the beach with Ben. At first, I was cool with her. She seemed smart and a lot less silly than most girls. But with warmer weather and skimpier clothing, I found she did not shave, which I admit to being creeped out by. So as shallow as it sounds, I found I could only get so close to her. If we differed so profoundly on something as simple as unwanted body hair, I was sure we had other, deeper differences I did not even want to dredge up.

  Anyway, she was hanging out on the hill, along with a larger group of patchouli-reeking, barefoot hippies. I sat with my back to them, facing Topher exclusively. I thought about my next order of business.

  “Have you thought about where you are going to live next year?” I asked him as I plucked a few blades of fresh grass from the lawn. I sprinkled them on my jeans, then brushed them away.