by Rose Fall
Rachel looked to me for support, trying to ignore Ash’s protests.
Ashton turned to me, realizing none of her protests made a difference to Rachel, “Eli, I know you’re angry, and I get that, I really do! But that guy didn't do anything to you!”
I focused on my internal debate, trying to avoid their pressure-filled gazes. I knew it was up to me because this whole trip had turned into a let’s-mend-Eli’s-broken-heart project. I could almost feel Ash judging me; I knew she would be disappointed. I didn’t want to disappoint her. But, she would forgive me eventually. And I really wanted to hurt someone as much as the-X had hurt me, as much as everyone had ever hurt me. And sure, out loud that sounded terrible, but who could deny they had thoughts like these every once in a while? I was thinking of how great it would be, to just live for a little while with no rules, to put my conscious aside and act the way I wanted to, like he had. To treat this stranger the way all the men in my life had treated me…
I stared back and forth between the two of them. They were like projections of the miniature angel and devil I imagined on my shoulders. I knew the decision I wanted to make, I knew how wrong that decision was. I could feel myself going to the dark side. I was slowly inching towards Rachel; noticing Ashton already looking defeated.
"I'm sorry Ash," I said, sounding more certain than I actually was.
She shook her head, sending me a worried look.
Rachel beamed. I’d heard her say it before, “The best way to get over someone is to get revenge.” Clearly, she wasn’t sympathetic to collateral damage.
I used to think that mantra of hers was irrational, aside from the unhealthy sentiment; it also suggested that there was always some injustice involved in a breakup. But there’s a first time for everything, and I was realizing that Rachel was finally right about something.
May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor
"How did you come up with this whole thing?" I asked because she’d had it all figured out like this plan was her life’s work and I was simply an excuse to execute it now. This certainly wasn’t the first time Rachel had come up with some wacky scheme that we all knew would end in disaster. But she had certainly outdone herself.
She glanced over her shoulder to send us a wink, tossing her full, dark hair as she turned back to where the key to our plan had been standing.
"I can't believe I have to be a part of this too," Ash sighed.
I almost felt sorry for her. She agreed to these crazy shenanigans for me, but I didn't think she ever anticipated that she would be playing such an active role.
"Oh, lighten up, Little Miss Perfect. You act like we’re plotting to kill someone," Rachel turned back to us, rolling her thickly lined hazel eyes in Ash’s direction.
“It doesn’t even make sense. How are you getting back at Ryan by hurting some stranger?” Ash added.
“The-X is ancient history. This is about Eli. This is about her getting on with her life and all of us having fun.”
"You have a really screwed up idea of fun," Ash grumbled quietly.
“Don’t you ever get tired of being annoying? Has anyone rewarded you for walking around with that moral compass so far up your-”
"Rachel!" I shook my head at her, sounding too much like a distraught mother trying to make her kids get along. She stopped, but not before glaring at me.
Rachel and Ash had an interesting relationship. They fought constantly. Or rather, Rachel yelled until Ash was on the brink of tears. Deep down inside, I was convinced they loved each other. I was just waiting for the day it would show.
"Focus," I said to Rachel. "Let's go over this again."
She immediately perked up, "It's simple; we each try to make him fall in love with us. Then, we dump him!"
Damn, even I had to admit this was screwed up. Rachel’s insensitivity somehow made me more aware of it. She seemed to sense my hesitation.
“Can you think of one guy in your life you don’t think would deserve something like this? A good guy is just a myth. You know that better than anyone. Guys do this kind of stuff all the time, and they always get away with it, like something about their anatomy entitles them to being assholes. I just want the same opportunity. And we’re never gonna get it, so we have to take it. ”
‘Well… she does have a point,’ I thought to myself.
“Okay,” I nodded. "We need rules."
Rachel nodded in agreement, "He’s the only one falling in love."
I couldn’t resist the urge to roll my eyes. He certainly wasn’t my type, on top of the fact that this whole thing was a symbol of my severing ties with the male population. If there was a pill I could take to become a lesbian, I would have overdosed on it already.
"And you cannot, under any circumstances tell him the plan," she added.
"Ash, do you have anything to add?" I asked as I turned to her.
She sat with her arms folded and her head down, her face hidden behind her chestnut brown hair. She shook her head. I gave Rachel a look to keep her from offending Ash further. There was a moment of silence.
"Oohh, I have one," I exclaimed. I knew Rachel wouldn't be too happy about this one, "No sex." I saw Ash reemerge from behind her hair; she sent me a look that seemed to voice her shock that this even had to be said.
"What?" Rachel exclaimed, "How am I supposed to make a guy fall in love with me if I can't have sex with him?"
She shot me a glare when Ash giggled.
"Let's take a vote," Ash said, her hand already high in the air. I raised my hand too, smiling at her.
"You've gotta be kidding!" Rachel exclaimed.
I rolled my eyes at her, “I have standards you know.”
They both stared back at me, and I was sure their minds were flashing back to my recount of the incident with he-who-shall-not-be-named.
Ash squealed as I chucked a pillow at her head.
“You’re supposed to be on my side! And as for you Rachel, there's no way I'm gonna risk getting some disease from that idiot. And maybe that’s not a concern for you since you already have every STD imaginable,” I laughed at the lack of a reaction my insult inspired from her, “But if you had sex with him, it wouldn't be fair to Ashton and me."
She glared at me. I had complete faith that she could make him fall in love anyway, not that I would tell her that now. Every guy who came into contact with her left a trail of saliva for the next one to add to. She was always so sure of herself; every room she walked into was filled with an almost tangible air of confidence and vanilla body spray. She was tall, with almond shaped eyes, full lips and perfectly arched eyebrows. She looked more like the girls on the cover of fashion magazines than a real person.
Rachel could get any guy she dreamed of by batting an eye and extending her sultry smile. Unfortunately, she found early on charm wasn’t necessary when you were offering sex. She seemed to get a thrill from the attention, and though Rachel was no victim it seemed she’d forgotten that there was a lot more she had to offer. Still, with her competitive nature, I knew she wouldn't go down without a fight, even if the whole point of this was to cheer me up.
"Remind me why I'm doing this again?" Ash whispered to me.
"Because you're trying to help Eli, and even though you're a pain in the ass you want to help Eli," Rachel replied for me.
"But-" Ashton protested.
"Look, there's no guarantee he's gonna fall in love with her. But if all three of us try knowing how completely different we all are, he's bound to fall for one of us. We are her insurance plan," Rachel finished, her hands extending out in a theatrical manner.
"Why would she need two understudies?" Ash argued.
"To ensure that the insurance is insured!"
I bit my lip, trying not to laugh at Rachel’s impatient glare and her even more absurd explanation.
“So I’m like the backup plan to the backup plan. Shouldn’t I be offended?”
"Look Ashton, stop asking questions. Elle, stop looking at me like that, I'm doing
this for you. You're both welcome!" Rachel got up, indicating the end of our meeting by running up the stairs back to her room, the coffee colored skin of legs lengthened by her comically tiny jean shorts.
Ash looked at where she had been standing, her mouth gaping open. "I'm welcome?" she repeated to me as if I could make sense of anything Rachel ever said.
"Well,” I smiled, “Let the games began."
Some People Just Don’t Mesh
I jolted awake at the sensation of being smacked. It was the sound that woke me rather than the feeling, and as I peeked out from under my covers, I recognized the outline of a pillow before I placed that it was Rachel standing above me holding it.
“There better be a fire,” I said, squeezing out as much annoyance as my tired voice could muster.
“Rise and shine,” Rachel sing-songed.
“What’s going on?” I asked in confusion.
She moved away from the bed, towards the door. I eagerly hoped she would leave and allow me to forget all this. Then I felt the burn of the bedroom light.
“Rachel, what the hell?” I asked, retreating back under my covers like an old-school vampire from garlic.
I heard the sound of my closet door open, and then she was throwing things at me. Clothes, I assumed, based on their weight.
She pulled the covers away from my face, and then threw them to the ground when I tried to get them back.
“Get dressed, Elle. The sun’s going to be up soon.”
“Let it get up first, I’m not in the mood to compete,” I mumbled.
“Cute,” she replied sarcastically. She stepped towards my closet again, “Do you even have sneakers?”
“Not at 5 a.m., no.”
“Come on Eli, you’re messing with my schedule.”
“Then go without me,” I murmured, though I wasn’t even sure what she was talking about.
“No,” she said plainly. She started yanking my arm. “You need to channel your energy into something productive.”
“I thought that’s what this bet was about,” I said, giving up.
I let her drag me until I was at the edge of the bed, in danger of falling off of it.
“That’s part of it. But so is exercising.”
I put on my best pouty face, though I already knew it wouldn’t work. “Can we start tomorrow?” I asked half-heartedly.
“No,” she said, crossing her arms. “Trust me, you’ll feel better by the time we’re back. I’ll meet you downstairs in five.”
I waited until I heard her footsteps retreat down the stairs. Then I fell back into bed and tried to block out the light with my arm.
“Eli!”
I jumped.
“Do not go back to sleep!”
I opened my eyes, trying to find the voice. She was still downstairs, I realized, she just knew me well enough to know I would try to go back to sleep.
I let out a long, low groan and then pulled on the sports bra and leggings Rachel had laid out for me.
--
I stared out the glass doors of our living room in disbelief. They had been doing this little dance all morning. Rachel was on the beach in a red bikini, doing cartwheels and all kinds of obnoxious stuff to get his attention. Something about the way this scene was playing out gave her an uncanny resemblance to Nikki. How did we even know he was single?
“He is. A guy like that is afraid to commit, and why would he? Just look at him, he can have any girl he wants,” she’d said.
‘Accept for this one,’ I thought. His lack of appeal only increased when I saw the way he lusted after Rachel. He had been sitting on his porch swing all morning, pretending to read. The book might as well have been upside down, he obviously wasn’t paying any attention to it. A part of me imagined him to be illiterate.
I couldn’t even understand how Rachel had enough energy for all this flirtation after our horrendous run this morning. She’d been fairly gracious about the fact that I couldn’t keep up with her, and it made me cringe to think that she normally ran for longer and still managed to be a functioning human being.
I was grateful to her for making me do something. And, after we finished running we’d sat on the beach and watched the sunset in silence. For the first time in days, I’d felt like a part of me was whole again.
Still, my gratitude didn’t make me any less annoyed with her at the moment. Every time her and the boy caught the other looking, they would look away. Inevitably, one of them would eventually come up to the other, but both refused to be first. Then Rachel did another flip thingy, and she stumbled. This was his chance; he dropped his stupid book prop and ran to her.
And there, ‘Congrats, Rachel,’ I thought to myself. Step One: complete. I rolled my eyes, of course she fell on purpose. After more than a decade of ballet, a brief stint in gymnastics, and a handful of walks on the runway, she was the most graceful person I knew. Besides, she could have come up with something more original than the damsel in distress.
I watched them banter until I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time for me to stop sulking and start scheming. Luckily, I knew the perfect way to get his attention.
---
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
“I’m, um, one of your neighbors,” I said with a tight smile.
He was taller than I’d realized and I had to take a step back to avoid the awkward angle my head had to be at to look up at him. His hair was a deep brown and he had an overconfident air that suggested he saw himself through the eyes of the sort of girls for whom high school was the best it ever got, the ones with perfect tans and teeth, with platinum cards and quarterback boyfriends. In their eyes, he was a god.
“How many of you are there?”
“Just three,” I smiled.
I knew his type. I hated his type. But I’d spent most of my high school career surrounded by them, and I knew what got their attention.
“Oh cool…”
“So I was going to watch the match today, but it turns out our cable wires are fried.”
“…Soccer?”
“Yeah, the US is playing today.”
“Oh cool…yeah, come in I’ll watch it with you. I wasn’t doing anything anyway.”
---
“So are you actually interested in this game or were you just trying to get my attention?”
“What makes you think that I’m desperate?” I said, thinking too late about how I was supposed to be friendly.
He laughed, “I can’t imagine you would be, but do you actually care about this match?”
“You’re saying I can’t watch sports because I don’t have a penis?”
“Whoa,” he said with wide eyes. “I’m just saying most of the time when girls watch sports they’re just pretending to be interested to impress a guy,” he continued. His palms were outstretched in surrender. But it was too late.
“Really? You think I just spent two hours of my life watching that because I was trying to impress you? Are you really that conceited?”
“You’re kind of rude,” he said after a moment. For some reason he was smiling.
“You’re kind of dumb,” I retorted.
“I’m just saying, if you were trying to get my attention, it worked.”
“And I’m just saying that I’d rather eat my own eye balls…I don’t even know why I’m having this conversation with you, it’s a waste of my time.”
“So I’ll see you tomorrow then?” I heard him say as I slammed his front door.
---
My plan didn't exactly work out.
But the thing was, it was really his fault. I hadn’t expected him to be that much of a jerk. Still, I couldn’t believe he had managed to get under my skin so quickly.
Nevertheless, I could move past it. Tomorrow I was going to do something that I rarely ever did; I was going to apologize. Nevermind that no part of me believed he deserved it.
Some things, We Don’t Talk About
I came back from my run with Rachel this m
orning feeling more awake than I’d felt in a while. I’d already assessed that she intended on making this a routine. I hated it as much as I loved it, but I cherished feeling like I’d already accomplished something today while most of the world was still sleeping.
Still, running wasn’t the miracle cure I suspected Rachel wanted it to be. Ever since the graduation party, I’d been going back and forth between thinking I was better off without he-who-shall-not-be-named and wishing that I’d never caught him with Nikki so I could continue to live in blissful ignorance.
Today was one of the days when I wished I could forget about the entire incident. I wished I were beside him on the old, brown sofa in his living room, laughing at one of his stupid jokes, waiting for his mom to come home so that we could band together and tease him about whatever faux pas he’d made recently as she made us lunch.
So after rolling around in bed for a while and trying to go back to sleep because it was still fairly early, I decided that I needed to leave the house. I settled on a place called Our Town Café on the pier after I’d gotten tired of walking. There weren’t really that many options, especially not this early.
I walked up to the counter to order tea, because I couldn’t imagine eating at that moment. I looked around for a table while I waited for a number.
I hadn’t noticed how crowded the place was when I walked in. Every table was occupied, and I hardly felt like squeezing in beside the bar. I was prepared to turn around and tell the cashier I would take my order to go, when I made eye contact with him. Our neighbor, the one Rachel had created did this whole bet around. He waved eagerly.
I’d forgotten telling myself that I was going to apologize to him today. I don’t think I was ever actually going to go through with it, but I wanted to be able to say I tried when Rachel chastised me for not following her plan. That way, I would be free to spend the summer making voodoo dolls of Ryan and Nikki in peace.
He motioned for me to come to his table. I stood still for a good five seconds, contemplating my options. I walked towards his table slowly, my order number in hand.