Back To Us

by Roman, Teresa

  I couldn’t think of anything to say in response. It wasn’t really his business whether or not I had a boyfriend, and if he didn’t work at the community center I probably would have told him that; but with me as desperate for a job as I was, I couldn’t afford to piss him off and take the chance he’d say something to Mrs. Connor that would cost me my job.

  “No, just my brother,” I answered too quickly. It would have been better if I’d told him that, yes, it was my boyfriend, my very jealous boyfriend, texting me. At least that way he’d know I was off limits.

  I rushed past Donald before he could ask any more prying questions. On my way to the classroom I bumped into Mrs. Conner. “I was just looking for you,” she said.

  “What’s up?”

  “The boys’ basketball team practices this morning, and when they’re done a few of the players will be going to the computer lab. I want you to head over there, get things set up, and when the boys show up, help anyone who needs it.”

  “Sure, of course, no problem.”

  It was another half hour before anyone showed up. I felt kind of bad sitting around knowing I was getting paid to pretty much do nothing. To pass the time I took out my phone and started reading one of my e-books. If I’d known I would have so much downtime I would’ve brought an actual book to read with me, I hated reading on the small phone screen, but it beat just sitting there doing nothing.

  When I heard voices and laughter coming from outside the door I tucked my phone away and went to open the door.

  Five boys, still sweating from basketball practice, walked in followed by Justin. “Make your way over to those computers over there,” he said, pointing to the back of the room.

  As the boys sat down in front of the computers, Justin turned to me. “Jessica, right?”

  I nodded. “You can call me Jesse, though, that’s what most people do.”

  “How’s everything going so far?”

  “Good,” I replied, trying to think of something clever to add, but I was never good at making conversation.

  Justin stood and looked around the room awkwardly for a few moments. For someone who coached basketball he wasn’t that tall, only a few inches taller than me and I was right at average height. But he had strong broad shoulders. I noticed that even with the loose-fitting shirt he wore. “Okay, well. I. . .better get back to my office now,” he finally said.

  “We’ll see you Thursday, right coach?” One of the boys called out as Justin turned to leave.

  “No practice Thursday, remember?”

  “Awww, man,” a few of the boys replied in unison.

  It turned out the boys didn’t really need my help. They spent most of the time joking around with each other and talking about girls and acted like I wasn’t even there.

  “Mrs. Connor told me you guys were supposed to be looking for information on colleges,” I said after a while.

  “Don’t need to,” one of them said. “I’m going to whatever school I get a basketball scholarship at.”

  “Lucky you.” I wished I’d done that. Maybe not basketball, but some other sport that gave out scholarships. Even with financial aid I was going to be over fifteen thousand dollars in debt by the time I graduated. But at least I’d have a degree, and that was a huge step up from the future my father had predicted for me.

  “You’re going to grow up and be a prostitute and die from AIDS,” he used to tell me, even before I really knew what it meant. By the time I was old enough to truly understand, I wasn’t living at home anymore. I’d been handed over to the state of New York because I was too wild and unruly, at least in my father’s eyes. I wondered what he would have thought of the eight other girls who lived in the group home I was eventually placed in. At fourteen, I was still pretty innocent compared to my new housemates. That changed quickly and I wondered if I’d ever not be bitter about it. Although no matter how rough it was in the group home, it was still better than being abused by my father.

  I ran into Justin again during my lunch break while trying to figure out how to get the dinosaur of a microwave they had in the break room to work. He was eating at the big round table in the middle of the room and must have noticed me having a hard time.

  “That thing is a fossil,” he said as he walked over to help me. “I should buy another one and bring it in, but I keep forgetting.” Justin pointed to one of the buttons on the microwave. “You gotta press this one first before you do anything else.”

  “Thanks,” I said feeling embarrassed at my inability to operate a simple appliance.

  “No problem.”

  I turned to look at him. His dark hair was cut into a close-cropped fade, and I found myself wondering if he’d let it grow longer when summer was over.

  “Did the boys behave themselves this morning?”

  “Yeah. They were fine. But I kind of felt bad ’cause it didn’t seem like they needed my help that much.”

  “Well, they might have been a little shy. Sometimes we boys don’t like to admit we need help, especially to a pretty girl.”

  I didn’t need to have a mirror in front of me to know that my face turned several shades of red. If those words had come from Don I would have been annoyed, instead I found myself feeling flattered, and shy.

  “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it.” The microwave dinged letting me know my lunch was ready. Justin grabbed it out of the microwave for me and brought it over to the table. I sat beside him not knowing what to make of his chivalry.

  Before I could thank Justin, Don walked in, spotted the two of us and strolled over to give Justin a fist bump. “Hey Jesse,” he said before pulling out a chair next to me.

  “You two didn’t want to be alone, did you? Am I interrupting something?” Without pausing for a reply, Don leaned towards me and said, “You know, Justin here, he’s a real good man.”

  “Not as good as good as you, Don,” Justin joked going along with Don’s banter.

  “And modest, too.”

  “Hey, c’mon, man. You’re embarrassing her,” Justin said. He apparently wasn’t as oblivious as Don was to my discomfort at their conversation.

  “Am I?”

  “No, not at all,” I replied, lying through my teeth. What I wanted to do was get up and finish lunch in my classroom, but walking away seemed awkward. I fell silent while Justin and Don started talking baseball. I didn’t really have anything to add to their conversation. It wasn’t that I didn’t like sports, I just never had enough free time to follow who was in the playoffs or who was being traded to what team. Most New Yorkers I knew were die-hard Yankees fans, and summers were often filled with long conversations about the team.

  When I finished eating I got up from the table. “I better get back to the classroom,” I said, noticing that Justin and Don had stopped their conversation and were both looking at me. “I think I have a tutoring session in a few minutes.”

  I walked away and when Don thought I was out of earshot I heard him whisper to Justin. “Damn. That girl is fine.”

  I didn’t get a chance to hear Justin’s response.

  Chapter 3

  As I headed towards the train station that evening it dawned on me that the last place I felt like going was home. With my brother still at his girlfriend’s there would be no one to talk to, unless you counted Buddy, but he couldn’t exactly talk back. I sent a text to my friend Susan asking her what she was up to. Her boyfriend was over, but she wanted me to stop by anyway. Normally, I hated being the third wheel, but I was getting more and more used to it.

  Susan lived in Bayridge, which meant an even longer train ride. When I finally got to her place she was outside walking a bunch of dogs. It was how she made enough money to quit her day job and go back to school; dog boarding and walking, which always struck me as funny since her boyfriend hated dogs.

  “You look cute,” she commented.

  “Just got off work.”

  “Oh, that’s right. At the community center? How do you like it so far?”
<
br />   “It’s good. I don’t feel like I’m actually doing that much, though. I tutored a few people, but I’ve been sitting around more than anything.”

  “They’re still paying you, though, right?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t bother going all the way out there for free.”

  Susan smiled. She understood me. She hadn’t had the easiest life either. Despite our almost ten year age difference, it felt like she got me.

  I followed her back inside and climbed the three flights of stairs to her place. Her boyfriend, Greg, was sitting on the couch with a Sam Adams in his hand and the baseball game on.

  “’Sup Jesse?”

  “Not much, how’s it going?”

  “Good. The Yankees are up by one.”

  Baseball again. For a second my mind flashed back to Justin and Don talking earlier. I need to not think about Justin, I tried telling myself. He seemed like a guy who had his shit together, and those kinds of guys tended to avoid me like the plague. Instead, I seemed to be some sort of magnet for every dysfunctional loser in the five boroughs.

  I flopped down on the couch next to Greg, he reached forward to grab me a beer.

  “No thanks, I’m good.” I hated the taste of beer and Susan was on her way back from the kitchen with a Smirnoff Ice, which she knew was my favorite.

  “So have you met any cute guys at your job yet?” she asked as she handed me the ice cold bottle.

  “NO! I’m not there to meet guys, I’m there to work.”

  “That’s perfect,” Greg chimed in, “’cause my friend and his girlfriend just broke up. . .”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said holding my hands up to let him know to stop talking. “First of all, I’m not looking for a boyfriend right now. I told you guys that, like a hundred times. And second of all, even if I was, I’m not going out with some guy who just got dumped.”

  Sometimes it felt like I was the only person I knew who wasn’t dating someone. It also felt like everyone I knew was always trying to remedy that situation. But I just wasn’t in the mood for dating. My last relationship had been a disaster of epic proportions. For months something in my gut told me my now ex-boyfriend had been cheating on me, but I didn’t want to believe it. I’d given up my dorm room to move in with him and refused to admit how stupid I’d been to do it, so it took way longer than it should have for me to dump him. He was so used to me being a chump that he refused to accept my decision. He’d show up outside my classes and call me literally nonstop for hours on end every day, until I finally changed my number. It took months before he gave up, and thankfully, I hadn’t seen him or heard from him in a while. I was not ready to go through anything like that again.

  Greg was about to try and change my mind; I could see the words forming. Luckily, Susan stopped him. She shot Greg a look. “Leave it alone,” she muttered before turning to ask me if I’d eaten yet.

  “Not yet.”

  “You want to order a few pies?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Even with the AC on it was hot. I held my bottle of Smirnoff Ice up to my neck and then my forehead to cool myself down and leaned back against the sofa cushions. It was another twenty minutes before the pizza arrived. By the time we were done eating, the game Greg had been watching was over.

  “You want me to grab you another drink?” Greg asked as he stood and headed to the kitchen with a pizza box full of half-eaten crusts.

  “She’s already had two, and she’s under age,” Susan joked. “I don’t want to be accused of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

  “It’s too late for that.” I actually would have drunk another bottle if I didn’t have to work the next day.

  Susan stood. “C’mon. I gotta take the dogs on one last walk for the night.”

  We headed down the street. Susan lived in an apartment over a sports bar that was pretty popular with a lot of the people that lived nearby. It was how she got to be friendly with so many people in her neighborhood. We stopped walking every few steps so she could chat with whoever it was that greeted her. Finally, after walking a few blocks away from her apartment the attention died down.

  “You sure you’re doing all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

  Susan shrugged. “You spend too much time alone.”

  “No I don’t. I’m at work most of the day. . .”

  “That’s different, and you know it.”

  “Is this about me not having a boyfriend again?”

  “No. I just worry about you, that’s all.”

  “Stop, you’re going to make me cry,” I said trying to sound jokey even though I was actually being half serious. I wasn’t used to having people worry about me, mostly because I never let anyone know they should. I kept everything that was going on in my life to myself figuring that no one cared. It was hard to throw off something that had become so ingrained into me. Ever since I could remember my father had told me over and over again, “The only people in the world who will ever care about you are your family because you’re too pathetic for anyone else to give a damn about you.” And that was before he decided he didn’t feel like being my father anymore.

  “That’s the Smirnoff Ice. I should’ve made you stop at one,” she teased.

  I bumped her with my shoulder pretending to stumble around like I was drunk. And we both laughed. When we got back to her place I helped her secure the dogs and said bye to Greg before heading back downstairs and towards the train station.

  The next three days at work were a lot like the first two. Except that there was no Mrs. Connor around, or Justin either. They’d gone to some leadership conference. Don’s flirting got worse each day, and a few times I swore I caught him staring at my butt. He gave me the distinct impression that it wasn’t going to be too much longer before he was going to make a move and ask me out. That was going to be awkward.

  At least I was starting to get more comfortable around the students. One of them, a boy named Chris, came by for the second time that week. It was Friday after lunch. He was one of the boys on the basketball team. Around his friends he acted like he knew everything, but when it was the two of us, one on one, he opened up about how bad his grades were and how he knew, basketball scholarship or not, that he needed some help.

  “How’d you get to be so good at math anyway” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I was always sort of good at it. I guess I just got lucky.”

  “Lucky and pretty, that’s a good combination,” he said. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What are you?”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked, furrowing my brow.

  “You kind of look Hispanic, but I’m guessing Greek or Italian.”

  I laughed. “None of the above.” People guessed all sorts of things about my ethnicity, but hardly ever got it right. It seemed like most people thought if you were from Europe you had to be blond, unless you were either Italian or Greek. My brother actually did have dark blonde hair, but mine was chestnut-colored, like my eyes. Normally, I was pretty fair-skinned, but with all the walking in the sunny weather, I was already beginning to get a light tan. That sometimes threw people off when they tried to figure out where I was from.

  “So where then?”

  “I’m Croatian.”

  Chris leaned back in his chair like he was trying to get a better look at me. “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s in Europe, near Hungary.”

  “My geography isn’t that great either,” Chris said trying to hide his embarrassment.

  “Don’t worry about it. Most people don’t know where it is.”

  “You don’t have an accent.”

  “That’s ’cause I was actually born here,” I explained. We were getting way off track, and I figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to give out too much personal information about myself to the students I was tutoring. “Why don’t we get back to math?”

  After ending the d
ay with my final tutoring session, I waited for Don to start locking up so I could duck out of the front doors without running into him. I wasn’t going to be able to avoid him forever, though. I really had to figure out a way to get him off my back without making him hate me.

  Chapter 4

  Back at work the next week things got busier. Mrs. Connor wanted me to accompany her on a tour of John Jay College that she was giving to some of the students. I stood beside her in the classroom I used as she ran through a list of do’s and don’ts with the students. Mrs. Connor’s sing-songy West Indian accent held everyone’s attention as she spoke.

  “Any questions?” Mrs. Connor asked when she was done.

  “I’ve got one.” I turned my head towards the voice coming from the doorway. It belonged to Justin.

  “And what would that be, Mr. Justin?”

  “Mind if I come along?”

  Mrs. Connor unfolded her arms that were crossed over her chest and let them fall to her side. “We’re going to be doing a lot of walking.”

  “That’s fine by me.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked slowly.

  “Yes, I’m sure. You have a large group here, I know you could use another set of eyes.”

  “Well, you’re right, I could. So, if you’re sure.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder why Mrs. Connor was making such a big deal about Justin really being sure he wanted to come along. It seemed weird.

  “C’mon.” Justin gestured with his hand. “Let’s go.”

  We shuffled outside into the hot Manhattan air and headed towards the subway. Thankfully, rush hour was over and most of our group were able to find seats on the train, with the exception of me and a few other students. Instead, I grabbed ahold of one of the poles so I wouldn’t fall when the train stopped. As the train started to take off I felt someone’s hand touching my mine.

  “Do you want my seat?” Justin offered.

  “No thanks, I’m fine,” I replied. A familiar flustered feeling came over me, sort of like the one I got when he complimented me in the break room the week before.