Three Daves, Book 1: David, Sophomore Year

by Nicki Elson

  When she woke the next morning, her fresh, renewed mind tried to put a more palatable spin on the David situation. She told herself she’d probably overreacted and that things weren’t how they seemed. Yet David hadn’t said anything to defend himself—but perhaps he would’ve if she hadn’t run away. She turned onto her back and stared at her ceiling while her internal debate raged. He could’ve come after her, though, and he hadn’t. But he’d sent Chris. She leaned onto her side and reached over her head to grab her phone from the desk. No texts awaited her, nor did any voice messages. No new e-mails from David, either. The whole night had gone by and he’d never checked in to make sure she was okay. That was the part she couldn’t get past.

  The door to the room creaked open. Kate stepped in with a towel wrapped around her long, blond hair. She was returning from the shower down the hall, singing “Tainted Love” under her breath. It was one of Kate’s favorites from the retro Romans nights. Jen threw her pillow over her head and moaned, “Could you sing something else? Please?”

  Two kisses—two stupid kisses—had changed everything. It was bad enough David had broken her heart, but he’d hurt her far more by ruining their friendship. Forever. How could she ever again be friends with someone who’d used her like that? Even if she hadn’t known what to expect from David as a boyfriend, she’d trusted him as a friend. Not anymore. Not ever again.

  As Jen lay in her bed, feeling no urge to get up and start the day, she tortured herself by thinking that at that very moment, David was probably lying in bed with his beloved Ashley. Unless… There was a chance his plan hadn’t worked. When she thought about it, Jen realized she had no idea what had happened at the party after she’d left. Maybe Ashley still wouldn’t want David back. Honestly, could anyone, even Ashley, be shallow and transparent enough to fall for such a trick? Jen raised herself up onto her elbows at the idea. A small bubble of hope rose within her. The bubble popped when Jen realized it didn’t matter whether or not Ashley took him back. Either way, David was a duplicitous bastard. She flopped back down onto the bed.

  ***

  Jen hadn’t felt much like talking when Kate finally dragged her from bed to meet Chris and Maria in the dining hall for lunch. Chris was kind enough to relay the story of the night before, with Jen only interrupting to temper Chris’s more outrageous exaggerations. Kate and Maria were furious with David, and Jen was grateful for the support. Loyal friends like these three girls were worth more than a hundred Davids.

  At dinner the following night, Chris returned with the news that David and Ashley were, indeed, back together. Jen took the news stoically, but didn’t eat any more of the pile of meat and starch on her tray.

  “It serves him right,” Kate said, a fiery gleam in her typically cool blue eyes. “She’s just going to cheat on him again.”

  “Yeah,” Maria chimed in, looking at Jen with extra softness in her dark, almond-shaped eyes. “And we all know who he’ll coming crawling back to then.”

  Jen shook her head. “There’s nothing to come crawling back to. He was never really my boyfriend, and now he’s not even my friend.” Jen read the pity on her friends’ faces. “I don’t care what happens with him and Ashley. He’s a jerk, and I’m done with him.”

  “You want me to have Tom beat him up?” Maria asked. Tom was the guy she’d met at happy hour at the beginning of the school year. Jen cringed with the realization that while her own love life had sputtered and died, Maria’s new relationship had cruised along to the point of Maria freely offering the guy up as a goon.

  Chapter 5

  The very next day, as Jen headed toward her dorm after class, she watched a flock of blackbirds scatter and regroup in the high, bare branches that arched over her path. She didn’t see David until milliseconds before she slammed into him. He caught the sides of her arms in both of his hands to keep her from falling.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “My fault,” David said. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  Jen glanced sideways, noticing he’d come from the short sidewalk leading from Rosings Hall—Ashley’s dorm. “Yeah, it is your fault.” She made a move to brush past him but one of his hands grasped more firmly around her arm.

  “I’ve been meaning to call you,” he said.

  Jen glared at him.

  “You’re still mad, then?” he asked.

  “Mad? More like humiliated. How could you do that to me?” She shook free of his grip.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of it to turn out the way it did. She just…she was there, and—”

  “And you thought you’d use me to get her back. Congratulations on winning yourself a shallow girlfriend.”

  David scoffed. “If she’s so shallow, why did you offer to help me get her back?”

  “I didn’t offer!”

  “You’re the one who said I should make her jealous.”

  Her mouth opened and closed but she was too furious to make anything other than an indignant squeak come out.

  “Look. I don’t want to fight,” he said. “Getting back together had nothing to do with her being jealous, anyhow. She was missing me, too.”

  Jen wished Ashley would’ve shared this information with David a lot sooner, like before Jen wasted so much time consoling him, before she let herself believe anything with David could be real.

  “She was relieved you and I weren’t serious,” he continued. “She thinks you’re really pretty and the kind of girl who could succeed in stealing me away from her.”

  Was that supposed to make Jen feel better? It did, actually, a little bit, but that was beside the point. “She thinks I’m pretty. Wow.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “Maybe I’ll start fake-dating someone and then she’ll want me!”

  “You don’t have to be a bitch about it,” David snapped, a hard look coming over his face. “It’s not like it would’ve been tough for you to figure out. I ask you to be my fake girlfriend and a week later we start dating. It’s not rocket science.”

  Jen gasped. “Gee, David, thanks for putting it in perspective for me. ’Cuz I didn’t already feel like a giant enough of an idiot!”

  David pressed his lips into a tight frown and peered intently at Jen. His dark eyes burned, but something about the crinkle in his brow made Jen wonder if he was feeling something other than anger. A touch of remorse, perhaps? In Jen’s opinion, it was too late for that. Way too late.

  “Have a nice life, David.” She turned and resumed walking toward her dorm. She was a good ten yards away before he called out to her.

  “Jen. Jen! C’mon. Let’s calm down and just talk about it.”

  She couldn’t turn back now. Giant tears had started streaming down her face. She quickened her pace and practically ran the rest of the way to Longbourn.

  ***

  The week before Christmas break, Jen checked her mail cubby in the dorm lobby and found a CD with a note taped to the case: Please listen to this. ~David

  She suspected the CD was one of David’s retro playlists. It had been a while since he’d made her one. She walked past a trash bin and considered tossing the disk into it, but didn’t. Kate left for class right after breakfast, so Jen had the room to herself. She popped the disk into her laptop and started the player, recognizing the beginning chords immediately. It was The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry.” She stepped back to listen to Robert Smith whine his apologies.

  The band always reminded her of David, since he was the one who’d introduced her to them. A familiar jumble of happy instrumentals mixed with somber lyrics brought flashes of freshman year, of meeting David, of hanging out with him and laughing. Of him making her that first playlist and her feelling the first tingle of “what if.”

  Jen jumped to the computer and popped out the disk. Heartache radiated from the center of her chest and clambered up her throat, bringing with it a flood of tears. She sank to the floor, pressing her hands to her face. It was so perfect for David to try to reconcile this way. She wanted
to forgive him and go back to the way things were, but how could she? The damage was done, and it was irreversible. He’d shown her exactly how little their friendship meant to him.

  Jen’s tears eventually subsided, and she pulled herself up and went to her desk to write a note to David. She attached it to the CD and walked it over to David’s dorm mailbox on her way to class. All the note said was: No.

  ***

  Jen and the rest of the students returned from Christmas break to a campus that alternated between slushy and frozen solid. Every day was gray, and the slush turned black with all the students tromping through it. When the filthy crystals refroze, the sidewalks transformed into virtual deathtraps. The slick, uneven lumps were nearly impossible to traverse.

  The unfriendly conditions kept CIU’s students dorm-bound, except for excursions to class and the library, and even then, only when absolutely necessary. One chilly day, Jen was just beginning to unwrap her scarf from around her head when she found a hot pink sheet of paper taped to her door.

  Beat the Winter Blues

  Get Away to Daytona Beach this Spring Break

  GREAT STUDENT RATES!!!

  We’re going! Was scrawled across the bottom. A few hours later, Maria bounced into Jen’s room. “Are you in? My cousin just got a car, so she’ll drive us down to Daytona, and we won’t have to take some hellish bus.”

  “Oh, it was you,” Kate said, waving the pink form.

  “Who else?” Maria flung her arms into the air.

  “Why isn’t Tom driving?” Jen asked.

  Maria and Tom had become practically inseparable. He seemed like a really nice guy, and as a bonus, he had a car on campus. These two traits combined meant transportation was rarely a problem for the girls of Longbourn Hall—assuming they were going somewhere with Maria.

  “Who?” Maria winked. “I told you, my cousin’s got a car, so what do we need him for?”

  Jen quirked an eyebrow. Maria always seemed so smitten whenever her preppy new boyfriend was around, and it was obvious he was bigtime into Maria. They were an “opposites attract” situation. Tom was tall, thin, and reserved while Maria was short, curvy, and vivacious. Even their coloring was at alternate ends of the spectrum with Tom being fair and Maria being dark. Jen thought they balanced each other out nicely, but now she wondered if Maria was getting bored with him.

  “Relax,” her friend said. “I’m just joking. This is going to be a girls-only trip. Tom’s cool with it. So are you coming or not?”

  “I though Daytona was so nineteen-eighty-seven,” Kate said. “Why not Mexico?”

  “Daytona is cheap, cheap, cheap. And it’s making a comeback,” Maria said. “I looked up videos of last year’s spring break to make sure.”

  Jen wanted to go, but… “I’m going to have to run it past my parents.” She expected a battle with her conservative mother and father.

  “We have to get our deposits in by the end of the week, so find out soon.” Maria snapped her fingers in a bossy sort of way and left the room.

  Jen spent the next hour figuring out how to best sell the trip to her parents. Then she placed the call. “Hi, mom.”

  “Hi, honey. Did you happen to accidentally pack the leather driving gloves I put in your father’s stocking? He can’t find them anywhere.”

  “Maybe they’re still in the stocking.”

  “No, I packed those up weeks ago…oh, but I suppose you could be right. I don’t remember taking the gloves out.”

  “Mom, I have a question to ask you.”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you mind if instead of coming home for spring break I went with Maria to visit her cousin in Florida?”

  “Where in Florida?”

  “Um, I can’t remember the name of the town. By Naples, I think.” She’d make the other girls promise not to tag her in any incriminating pictures online.

  “How would you get there?”

  “Maria said something about a bus. A few of us would travel together, so it’d be safe.” She let out a calculated cough. “I just really need the incentive of warm sunshine to get through the first half of this semester. It’s been tough.”

  “Let me talk to your father.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Her mom went on to give her some family updates. Later that evening, her mother called back to say it was fine with Mr. Whitney as long as she had enough money in her savings account to cover the cost of the bus and expenses.

  As Jen had expected, Kate opted out of the trip in order to go home and see Jake. But Chris was in. Soon it was settled that on the Saturday before break, Maria’s cousin Celia would drive down to CIU to pick up Maria, Jen, and Chris for the big trip to Daytona. Thus, the winter began to brighten in central Illinois.

  Another spot of sunshine arrived in February by way of Chris. She came down to breakfast wearing wide grin—too wide for so early in the morning. “You’re not going to believe this.” She slammed her tray on the table, joining Jen and Kate.

  “You look like you’ve got some dirt. Tell us, tell us,” demanded Kate.

  “David and Ashley broke up!”

  “No,” Kate gasped with a sideways glance toward Jen.

  Jen said nothing. A chunk of pancake seemed to be blocking a critical passageway. But her disbelief spoke clearly in her widened eyes.

  “She was at Romans last night,” Chris explained, “really drunk and all over this other guy. So I was like, ‘What’s up?’ and her roommate told me Ashley came home a couple days ago crying that she and David were through. Apparently he’s the one who did the breaking up.” Chris chomped on a sausage. With at least half of it still in her mouth, she announced to Jen, “So, he’s avaiwabul.”

  “No, thanks” was Jen’s immediate response. She meant it, but she couldn’t help wondering what had happened to make the renewed relationship so short lived. Then she wondered why she should care. He was still a deceitful jerk. She was diverted from these thoughts by talk of apartment hunting. The girls planned to move out of the dorms next school year.

  “We gotta move toward downtown and be close to the bars,” Chris said. That sounded good to Jen.

  “But those are all party apartments or old, dingy houses,” complained Kate. “I’d rather get something nicer and close to campus.” Jen thought that made sense, too.

  ***

  The following week, when Jen emerged from the basement stacks at the library, she ran into David at the top of the stairs. They exchanged awkward hellos. The last time they’d seen each other was when Jen had laid into him in front of Ashley’s dorm. David’s gaze dropped from hers, and they ducked around each other, with him heading toward the steps she’d just ascended.

  “Hey,” she heard from behind her and turned. David stood at the top step, looking at her. Jen noted subtle changes in his appearance during the two months since she’d last seen him. He’d always been a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy and still was, but his shirt was tighter and darker than what she was used to seeing him in, and his jeans seemed more worn than usual. He’d traded in his high tops for black biker boots, and although he still wore his denim jacket, it now sported bleached out symbols and safety pins. His mussed bangs hung nearly into his eyes. As much as she didn’t want to, Jen thought his evolving look suited him.

  “So, Ashley and I broke up,” he said.

  “Yeah, I heard,” Jen replied in a way she hoped conveyed her “Who cares?” attitude.

  “Oh.” He glanced down at his boots.

  Jen felt a stab of guilt for being so cold when he must be hurting. Contrary to her assertions that she didn’t care, she asked, “How’re you doing?”

  David let out a small, bitter grunt. “It’s crazy, but I’m actually doing great.” Jen shot him a skeptical look, to which he replied, “No, really. She’s kind of a bitch. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

  In mock exasperation, Jen said, “Well, I could have told you that a long time ago and saved us both a lot of trouble.”

 
David laughed, and they both smiled. He watched Jen for a few moments, and then added in a quiet, tentative voice, “Now you and I can be friends again.”

  Jen’s smile faded. “I don’t think so.” She averted her gaze back to the floor. “It actually kind of makes things worse, because you did that to me for someone who was so not worth it.” She raised her eyelids and watched David’s expression fall. “I can’t be friends with someone who’d treat me like that.”

  “Jen, please. I told you I’m sorry and that I didn’t mean for anything to turn out the way it did. I don’t know what else you expect me to do.” The pleading in his soft, brown eyes threatened to make her waver.

  “Honestly, David, I don’t expect anything from you.” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Not anymore.”

  David’s mouth tightened. Jen could see he was holding back from saying more. She held his injured gaze in silence for a few moments before turning and walking away. There was nothing else to do. She couldn’t simply forgive him and go back to the way things were.

  Jen didn’t know whether he turned to go down into the stacks or stood and watched her, but he didn’t say another word. She appreciated his reserve and kept walking, leaving the warm glow of the library behind as she stepped into the dark night. Waiting for the thrill of vindication, she instead felt something far different. The flicker of friendship had re-opened the wound of losing him. It almost physically hurt to walk away.

  Chapter 6

  Maria’s cousin Celia arrived at CIU in her shiny, ruby red Mazda. She was a tiny girl with a sculpted pouf of jet-black hair. Maria, Chris, and Jen fit their bags into trunk and climbed into the car. After they crossed the Illinois state line and their excited conversation died down, Jen settled in with her headphones and music. She decided to brave the new playlist from David. It had reappeared in her mailbox the day before, along with a new note: