Down, Then Up: A Novella

by Beth Labonte

  “Sorry. I can point to something else if you’d like. I think that’s Britney Spears down there, getting into a cab.”

  “It’s fine,” I laugh. “Our room is on the twenty-third floor. Just look for four women jumping on the beds with lampshades on their heads.”

  “You’ve been having quite a weekend, huh?”

  “The best.” I roll my eyes. “But my sister is having fun. That’s why we came. How about you?”

  “It’s been awesome. And exhausting. And, to be honest, I’m looking forward to waking up next week without a crippling hangover, and maybe without a bunch of dudes trashing my room. Did I mention that I’m exhausted?”

  I smile. “You know, after all these years, I think we might finally might be on the same page.”

  “At least you did this stuff when you were younger,” he says, hooking his fingers through the fencing. “You don’t bounce back as easily in your thirties.”

  “Poor thing,” I say, rubbing his back. “You’ll be okay. So, tell me. With all these crazy nights you’ve been having, has your cousin done anything Anna needs to know about?”

  “Nothing but drinking and making an ass of himself,” says Jamie. “You know I’d never let him do anything to hurt your sister.”

  ‘That’s sweet. Thank you.”

  “No problem. So, let’s talk about something else for a second. My cousin is marrying your sister. Doesn’t that make us related?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.” I crinkle my nose. “I don’t think so. Probably about as related as I am to Barack Obama. But what about holidays? Are we going to start seeing each other on Christmas and Thanksgiving?”

  Jamie shrugs. “I hadn’t thought about that. My family and my cousin’s family aren’t all that close.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why? Were you looking forward to seeing me on Christmas and Thanksgiving?” Jamie gives me a nudge with his shoulder.

  “No,” I say. “It’s just that here we are, not having seen each other in a decade, and suddenly our relatives are marrying each other. It’s an interesting twist of fate, that’s all.”

  “Fate, huh? If you’d wanted to see me again, you could have made it happen. There was no need to leave things up to fate.”

  “I could say the exact same thing to you.”

  “Didn’t we already have this conversation?” asks Jamie. He steps away from the railing, pulling me along with him. He leans against the inner wall, squeezing both of my hands in his.

  “I’m sorry you had to Google me,” I say, tears suddenly stinging my eyes. “It should have been up to me to find you. I wanted to. I did. I just never knew what to say. I felt like I had made my choice, and was supposed to live with it. I didn’t want to be the one to dredge up the past when you had already moved on.”

  Tears start streaming freely down my face as Jamie wraps his arms around me and pulls me into his chest. I can feel his lips in my hair.

  “Who says I’ve moved on?”

  The butterflies in my stomach—the ones that haven’t seen much action lately—are drowsily beginning to stir. Hey guys, wake up! He’s back! And he hasn’t forgotten us!

  Three nights in Vegas, and I’ve yet to feel more alive than I do right now, sobbing atop the Eiffel Tower.

  Ten Years Earlier

  “Why don’t you just come with me?” I asked, standing in the doorway to my room and looking at Jamie across the hall. It was a Friday night and he was sitting at his computer, where, to my irritation, he intended to stay.

  “It’s not my thing, Laur. You know this about me.” Jamie looked across the hall, exasperation in his eyes. We’ve had similar arguments almost weekly since fall semester started two months ago. Weekdays, we were amazing together. Thursday through Sunday, not so much.

  “Is it so wrong that I want my boyfriend to be friends with my friends? Is that not a normal request?”

  “It would be a normal request if your friends wanted to grab dinner and a beer at TGI Friday’s. But with them, it’s who can do the most shots and still remember where they live. With them, it’s guzzling beer out of a funnel. A funnel, Lauren. That is not normal.”

  “It’s normal for college.”

  “It’s not normal for me. It’s exhausting. I don’t know what you were expecting.”

  I didn’t know what I was expecting either. It was becoming clearer and clearer with every passing day, that Jamie and I were from completely different worlds. What had worked for us as friends, and what had worked for us in San Diego, was completely failing us upon arrival in the real world.

  “Fine,” I snapped, stepping back into my room and grabbing my keys. “I’ll see you later, then. Or tomorrow. Don’t wait up.”

  “Do you really have to wear that?” he asked, rolling his chair closer to the doorway, staring at my legs. “Can’t you put on some pants or something?”

  “If you’re so concerned about what I’m wearing, then maybe you shouldn’t make me go out alone.” I locked the door and marched defiantly down the hall to meet my friends.

  It hadn’t always been like this. Jamie and I were inseparable at the beginning of the semester. He’d made a real effort to spend time with my friends—even letting me drag him to a frat party. But after several weekends of escorting his drunken girlfriend, and the drunken girlfriends of his drunken girlfriend, back to their respective dorm rooms, the excuses started to flow. Too much homework. Headache. Early morning. Before I knew it, I was heading out alone.

  “Lauren, wait!” he called down the hall. I swiveled around on my heel.

  “What?”

  “Come here.”

  Reluctantly, I walked back into his room. He closed the door behind me.

  “I’m not trying to ruin your good time. You know that, right?”

  I shrugged.

  “I want you to have your own friends and your own life. But I also want you to slow down once in a while. Stay in and watch a movie with me on something other than a Tuesday night. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  The pleading look in his eyes broke my heart. It wasn’t too much to ask. Not at all. But he didn’t understand. This lifestyle was all I’d known since freshman year. These friends—the ones I’d managed to make thanks to the inhibition lowering properties of a shot of tequila—were the only ones I had. Slowing down would mean starting over from scratch.

  Besides, it was more acceptable to consume alcohol in a social setting than it was to drink alone in my room—which was where I was headed if I cut out the partying. Because, let’s face it, I was already stirring Kahlua into my morning coffee. I was already downing a rum and Coke before presenting in front of my journalism class. Lauren Oswald didn’t half-ass anything, and that included her drinking habit. I loved Jamie. I could be myself around him. But he wasn’t enough. Not when I still had to face the rest of the world.

  By the end of the semester, I sat crying in the passenger seat of Jamie’s car. Snow was coming down, and Darius Rucker was on the radio, singing to us about time.

  “We could go back to being friends,” suggested Jamie. “We were good at that.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t just turn off my feelings.”

  “No, me neither.” Jamie drummed his hands on the steering wheel. “Then we try again to stay together. We try harder to make it work.”

  “It’s not supposed to feel like work, Jame.”

  “It never used to. Something’s changed.”

  “What’s changed is that we’re back here in reality. When we first got together, we were at Comic Con dressed like elves. Then it was a month of long distance, pining away for each other, before we came back to school. That’s when it stopped working. If we can’t make it work in reality, then what’s the point?”

  “We can change reality,” said Jamie. “We can adapt to it. We can fix it. We just need to know where to start. And if you ask me, the place to start is by getting you some help. I’m not stupid, Lauren. I know what’s going on, wh
ether you want to admit to it or not. And I think that if we start there, then maybe we still have a chance.”

  The car was silent, except for Darius.

  “I don’t need any help,” I muttered, watching the snowflakes hit the windshield.

  Jamie sighed. “So, this is it then?”

  I shrugged. I nodded. I made a thousand tiny, affirmative gestures to avoid having to say the words. I didn’t want to speak my shameful choice aloud to the universe.

  Then he drove me home.

  In the spring, Sarah, Kelly, and I moved into an off-campus apartment. I still saw Jamie on occasion, when walking to class, and we would sometimes stop to chat. And then, one day, I saw him walking hand-in-hand with another girl. Not Callie the shampoo-less horror, but an actual cute girl. I watched them from afar, noting her clothes, her hair, and the way she laughed at everything he said. I wondered if maybe she had taken my vacant dorm room across the hall. I wondered if he was taking her to Comic Con this summer.

  Of all things, it was that final thought that broke my heart on the spot. I spent the next half hour sobbing in the ladies room of the Campus Center, paralyzed by the realization that Jamie had moved on.

  “Let’s go out,” I said to my roommates, that night. “There’s a party at Pi Kappa.”

  They looked at me like I had suggested we all sit down and watch the extended version of Lincoln. By spring of junior year, my fun-time girlfriends were starting to slow down. It seemed that the closer they got to the legal drinking age, the less they wanted to drink. And the fewer blurry nights we had to reminisce about, the more I realized how little we had in common. I spent an increasing number of nights alone in my room with a vodka and Sprite, typing notes into my computer about a girl who time travels in an elevator.

  But that night, I was in no mood to be alone.

  “Come on,” I pleaded. “I had a really bad day. Next weekend we’ll stay in and watch The Bachelor all day. And all night. We can even dream about it, if you’d like.”

  That did the trick, and off we went.

  The last thing I remembered about that night was the cute guy in the Red Sox hat handing me a drink. I awoke the next morning on a mattress on the floor, feeling like I’d been hit by a bus. There was somebody next to me. I propped myself up to get a look at his face, expecting to find the owner of the Red Sox hat. I couldn’t think of his name, but I had at least expected to recognize the face. I had at least expected some sort of connection to the night before. Instead, I found a totally different guy. Someone that I didn’t recognize—not even a little. I rolled over and stared across the room, noticing my clothes on the floor in the corner. Thrown there in the heat of the moment. A moment that I couldn’t remember—not even a little. That’s when the tears came. And the panic. And—

  Well, like I said, I don’t really like to talk about it.

  Let’s just say that was the last time I had a drink. In the fall, I transferred to the University of Maine, finished up my degree, and never looked back.

  Except for the times that I thought about Jamie. So, pretty much every day for the next ten years.

  5

  “Right after we broke up,” I say, the memory coming back to me with a fresh wave of pain. “I saw you with a girl.” Just as quickly, come the memories of the events that followed that moment. The drinking. The writing. Hitting rock bottom before turning myself around. And then, all of my successes. The books. The autographs. All the girls that look up to me. Left to its own devices, my life had worked itself out. Even without Jamie.

  “It’s been ten years,” he says. “There were bound to be a few girls. There have probably been some guys, right?”

  “A few,” I say, gently kicking the toe of his sneaker.

  “Doesn’t mean I’ve moved on,” he says, quietly. He wraps his arms around me and draws me in closer. “Now, Lauren, I’ve got something very important to ask you.”

  “Yes?” My heart is pounding.

  “What was Comic Con like without me?”

  I laugh with relief. “Not even close to the same. I didn’t even get to wear a costume. Just boring jeans and a shirt. Have you been back?”

  “Nope. But maybe I should have. I might have seen you there.”

  “That would have been something.”

  We stand in silence for a while—Jamie looking out at the lights, me snuggled into his chest.

  “You know, I don’t think I’ve even asked you where you live,” says Jamie.

  “Maine,” I say glumly, lifting my head. “I transferred to school there senior year. And once you move to Maine, they don’t let you out.”

  Jamie whistles. “California and Maine. We certainly got as far away from each other as possible.”

  I notice, with interest, that we’re the only two people currently occupying the observation deck. Security will probably be along soon to usher us out. I take a deep breath.

  “Hey, Jame?” I ask, quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  “I haven’t moved on either.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, um. Since we both seem to be on the same page, do you think that, maybe, it would cut some of the tension if I kissed you right now?”

  His soft laugh tells me that he hasn’t forgotten the first time those words were spoken. I move back a bit, and look up into his face. He places a hand on either side of mine and leans in close—eyes crinkling, crooked smile mere inches away.

  Then he kisses me, and it’s like I never left.

  ***

  There are worse things in life than being on a bachelorette trip to Vegas when you’ve given up alcohol. Things like, being ready to have relations with the long lost love of your life, only to realize that both of your hotel rooms are already filled to capacity. Or, perhaps—actually, no, at the moment that is the worst of our problems.

  We’re heading haphazardly in the direction of Caesar’s, making frequent stops against the sides of buildings, behind construction barriers, and at one point, in the middle of the pedestrian overpass.

  “Remember that time in San Diego when we had two empty hotel rooms?” I say. We’re pressed up against the wall of a relatively secluded little alcove beside some restaurants and shops. My hands have found their way underneath Jamie’s shirt and are tracing their way around the waistband of his jeans. One of his hands is on the back of my neck. The other keeps half-heartedly swatting my hand away from the waistband of his jeans.

  “You’re going to get us arrested,” he mumbles.

  “We’re in Vegas. This kind of thing is totally acceptable.”

  The sound of a police siren, most likely a mile down The Strip, makes the both of us jump apart.

  “You’re such a goody-goody,” I laugh, pulling him towards me by the waist, and giving his backside a squeeze. He leans his forehead against mine.

  “So are you,” he says. “At heart. A goody-goody and a geek. That’s what I’ve always loved about you.”

  “You know what I’ve always loved about you?”

  “What?”

  “Your butt in those elf tights.”

  Jamie laughs as he turns and slumps against the wall next to me.

  “What? Did I kill the moment?”

  “By bringing up the fact that you’ve seen me in tights? Of course not.”

  “So what do we do now?” I ask, my breathing slowly returning to normal. The rest of my body, however, remains on fire.

  “We get another room at Caesar’s?”

  “Deal.”

  Jamie grabs my hand and pulls me out of the alcove.

  “Hey, look,” he says. “Donuts.”

  He’s right. Our alcove is directly outside of a coffee shop with a display case full of colorful donuts. The word Open flashes in the window.

  “One more stop?”

  The last thing I want is another stop. But, seeing as how I’m about to ditch my sister and her friends to spend the rest of the night with Jamie, the least I can do is drop them off some donuts.
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  “They might be a bit stale,” says the clerk, as she starts loading up a box. “I’ll be putting out some fresh ones in a few hours if you’d rather come back.”

  God, no.

  “No, it’s fine,” I say. “They’re for a bunch of drunk attorneys. Just give me everything you’ve got.”

  As we stand there, impatiently waiting to pay, I start to feel a bit panicky. Once we go back to the hotel, that’s it. The beginning of the end. Jamie and I live on opposite sides of the country. Running into each other like this may have given us closure on our college years, and—what I imagine will be—one incredible night together, but is that it? I mean, we’ll see each other again at Anna’s wedding, of course. But will he bring a date? Will I bring a date? The thought is completely revolting, on both ends.

  As we walk back to the hotel, I continue to obsess over whether or not I should mention any of these things to Jamie, or if I should just let it ride. We’re in Vegas, after all. That’s what people do. I continue walking for a few paces before I realize that Jamie is no longer beside me. I turn around and find him standing a few yards back on the sidewalk.

  “I have a proposition,” he calls out.

  “Oh, Jamie. I know we’re in Vegas, but I can’t get married at my sister’s bachelorette party. It wouldn’t be polite.”

  Jamie doesn’t laugh. He just walks up to me, and looks me firmly in the eye.

  “Come back to California with me.”

  “What?” I know perfectly well what he just said. But all of the lights of Vegas are suddenly a bit blurry and swirly, and I just need to make sure that I heard him correctly.

  “Don’t fly home tomorrow,” he says. “Come to California. For a week, or whatever. You’re a writer, so you must have your laptop with you. You can work from my house. Or take the week off. It’s up to you. Either way, please. Come with me. I don’t want this to end tonight.”

  So, I did hear him correctly.

  “It’s been a long time,” I say, slowly. “How do I know you haven’t turned into some sort of serial killer?”

  Jamie shrugs. “I’ve got Cheez-Its, Cherry Coke, and all of the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings. If that sweetens the deal.”