“What’s the point?” Hayden said. “No one really dates here. We’re in the middle of buttfuck Maine. There’s nowhere to go. So when a guy asks you out, what he means is that he wants to hang out in your room or, even worse, his room.”
“Why would his room be worse?”
“Have you ever been in a guy’s dorm room? Blech. They smell disgusting: a combination of body odor and stinky feet.”
I desperately hoped that I’d have the chance to smell that aroma at some point.
“And what’s there to do in a dorm room but fuck? So all a guy is really doing when he asks you out is asking if he can fuck you,” Hayden continued. She shrugged dismissively. “It’s not like I’m anti-fucking—I’m extremely pro-fucking—just not on a narrow dorm bed with REM playing in the background and foreplay that consists of you giving him a blow job. No, thanks.”
Hayden and I remained close during our four years at Bates and were roommates for the last three of those years. Despite Hayden’s cautionary words, I eventually did visit my fair share of male dorm rooms, usually when I’d had too much to drink, and learned the hard way that Hayden was, for the most part, correct. College guys didn’t have a whole lot of finesse in the bedroom; they came on strong and finished quickly. But I felt devastatingly sophisticated racking up some experience for the first time in my life, eventually even losing my virginity to Cole Willis after we’d been “dating” for three weeks.
Despite her wild teenage years—Hayden had endless stories about dropping acid at all-night raves and dating guys ten years her senior—she wasn’t as impervious to romance as she pretended to be. During our sophomore year she fell pretty hard for Jason Downey, a senior with jet-black hair and smoldering dark eyes, who announced he was in love with her on their second date. That relationship lasted three whole months before Hayden broke things off. After Jason, there was a string of short, intense affairs, some with guys from our school, some with guys she knew from back home. All of these love interests shared a few things in common: The men were all incredibly good-looking and they were all madly in love with Hayden. And they were, every last one, devastated when she grew bored and broke things off.
I mostly observed Hayden’s revolving door of eligible men with an amused yet detached interest. However, there was inevitably some overlap in Hayden’s and my interests. Usually it was pretty simple: I would notice a guy—in class, in the dining hall, at a party—and would experience that small hormonal explosion of interest. We’d engage in some meaningful eye contact. And then he’d notice Hayden sitting beside me, with her elegant posture, glossy hair, and red, red lips, and, poof, just like that, I’d cease to exist.
A lot of girls would thrive on this sort of attention. I’d certainly known quite a few like that in high school, the sort who were never happier than when they were flirting with someone else’s boyfriend. But not Hayden. She had so few girlfriends that she viewed our friendship as something worth protecting. If a guy she knew I was interested in went after her instead, all he would get for his trouble would be a contemptuous glare and a sarcastic comment from Hayden.
“Asshole,” she’d say, tossing her hair back.
“Asshole,” I’d confirm. And then we’d go outside, where I would keep her company while she smoked a Marlboro Light.
It was hard not to feel a little jealous. But Hayden’s unwavering loyalty made it impossible to hold her popularity against her. There was only one time when my resentment boiled up and truly threatened my friendship with Hayden. And that wasn’t even her fault.
“I met a guy,” I sang out one night as I walked into the tiny living room of the off-campus apartment we shared. Hayden’s mom had offered us her decorator to do the place up, but Hayden had flatly refused. So our apartment was kitted out like every other college apartment, featuring banged-up and mismatched furniture we’d scavenged from graduating seniors and Goodwill.
“At the library?” Hayden asked. She’d been lying stomach-down on a scratchy brown plaid sofa with sagging cushions and was marking pages in her psych textbook with a fat yellow highlighter pen. But upon my arrival, she turned over and bent up her knees to give me room to sit.
“At the library,” I confirmed, as lit up inside as a Christmas tree. “He was in the reading room. I noticed him right away; there was something about him that I just instantly liked. But I didn’t think he noticed me. I mean, why would he?” I added with a laugh.
“Don’t do that. Don’t put yourself down,” Hayden said, frowning at me. “I don’t know why you won’t believe how pretty you are.”
I snorted. “Maybe because it’s a load of horseshit?”
“I’d kill to have your skin, not to mention your hair.”
She reached up and pulled back on one of my long corkscrew curls and then released it, so it sprang back in place.
“You’re more than welcome to it,” I said. I had tried before to convince Hayden that curly hair was not a blessing but a particularly evil curse that I did battle with every day. She never believed me.
“And your boobs—you have the best boobs,” Hayden said, looking down sadly at her own flat chest.
“Yeah, except you can wear whatever you want and always look like a fashion model. I can’t put on a tank top without looking trashy,” I said moodily. I could feel my inner Christmas tree turning brown and dropping its needles.
“Finish your story,” Hayden said. “About Library Guy.”
“Library Guy. That makes him sound like a superhero,” I said, with a snort of laughter. I deepened my voice. “He can read faster than a speeding train and chases down patrons with overdue fines—he’s Library Guy!”
Hayden laughed but nudged me with one sock-covered foot. “Come on, tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened,” I said, grinning and hugging my arms around myself.
“Why do I not believe you?”
“Okay, something happened,” I conceded. “But it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Just tell me already!”
“I’m trying! After I’d been there for about an hour, I went outside to get a coffee at Mo’s.” Mo’s was a food-service van parked more or less permanently outside the library, ever ready to cater to students in need of cheese fries and caffeinated beverages. “The guy I’d noticed earlier came out too. He was standing in line right behind me. And we started talking—”
“How?” Hayden asked, clutching a pillow to her chest.
“He noticed the poli-sci textbook I was holding and asked me if I was in Kaplan’s class. I said yes, and he said he was too.”
“You’d never noticed him there?”
“No, but it’s a pretty big class, and he said he sits in the back.”
“Okay.” Hayden made a rolling gesture with her hand, encouraging me to continue the story.
“We talked a bit about the class and both said we liked it. I got my coffee and he got his, and he asked if I wanted to sit down. So we sat on a bench, and we talked for a really long time. And it was…well, it was great. It was the first time in a really long time that a guy just wanted to talk to me. To get to know me.”
“And?”
“And that’s it. Then we went back inside, and I went to my reading table and he went to his.”
Hayden pouted disappointedly. “I thought this was going somewhere good,” she said.
“It was good. I think he really liked me,” I said, remembering the warm brown eyes, the pink flush of his cheeks, the broad shoulders in the J. Crew barn coat. He was definitely sexy but not conventionally handsome. Which meant maybe I had a chance with him. “He asked if I was going to be at the library tomorrow night and suggested that we study for our poli-sci exam together.”
“What’s his name?”
“John.”
“John what?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.” I frowned. “Do you think that’s a bad sign?”
“No, I don’t. I think it all sounds very promising.”
> Promising. I liked the sound of that. And after a few study sessions at the library with John, I’d started to think that maybe Hayden was right. Maybe it—whatever it was we were doing—was promising. Because while John wasn’t coming on hot and heavy, he also wasn’t plying me with cheap beer and telling me I looked just like Julia Roberts only prettier (a line, I’m sad to say, worked on me one night after a few too many tequila shots). We’d study at the same table, take coffee breaks together, and gradually got to know each other. I learned that he was planning to go to medical school after he graduated. That his father and mother were both tax lawyers and were in practice together in Boston. That he’d spent his childhood summers on Nantucket. That he had dated his high school sweetheart for four years but that they’d grown apart after going to different colleges and eventually broke up the summer after sophomore year.
I kept waiting for something more to happen—for him to ask to see me outside the library or maybe to kiss me on one of those nights when we spent our study break sitting on a bench talking together. But he never made a move. At first I appreciated how slowly he was taking things; it seemed sweet and romantic, and I knew that if something did happen, it wouldn’t be a disposable hookup. Then I began to worry that we’d crossed that invisible line from love interest to friendship.
“And once that happens, there’s no going back,” I said to Hayden a few weeks after the night I’d first met John. I was perched on the edge of the bed, watching her get ready for a semiformal mixer. She was wearing a short black fitted dress edged with white piping that she’d discovered at Goodwill and yet looked like couture draped on her tall, angular frame. She’d twisted her hair up into a neat chignon and was now carefully applying her signature red lipstick.
“That’s not necessarily true. Remember When Harry Met Sally? They were friends who first met in college, and they eventually got together,” Hayden said. She blotted her lipstick and then tossed the capped tube into her black satin evening bag.
“Eventually? Didn’t they get together, like, fifteen years after they first met in that movie?”
“Something like that.”
“I don’t want to wait fifteen years.” I sighed dramatically and traced one of the poppies on Hayden’s Marimekko duvet cover with my finger.
“Maybe he’s shy. Maybe you should make the first move.”
Just the idea of this made my stomach twist.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
Because I want him to like me enough to ask me out, I thought. I want him to think I’m worth it. And if I asked him out, even if he agreed, a part of me would always feel less valued.
I knew Hayden would never understand this, though, so I just shrugged and, to placate her, said, “I don’t know. Maybe I will.”
The doorbell rang then, Hayden’s date arriving to pick her up.
“Would you mind getting it?” she asked. “I have to pee.”
“Sure,” I said sliding off her bed.
While Hayden ducked into the bathroom, I padded to the front door. I opened it and found myself face-to-face with…John! My heart gave an excited lurch and then seemed to zoom up into my throat. He’d come to see me! And since I hadn’t given him my address, that meant he must have tracked me down! Which meant he must really, really like me! Joy bloomed inside me. It was finally, finally happening for me.
“Hey!” I said.
“Hey yourself,” John said. He seemed confused. “Do you live here?”
Now I was confused too. Hadn’t he expected me to live here? And why was he wearing a jacket and tie? He looked fantastic—his shiny dark hair curled back from his face, his brown eyes dark with excitement, and the jacket emphasizing his sexy broad shoulders—but it was a departure from the wool sweaters and beat-up Levis I was used to seeing him in.
“Jonathan!” Hayden said, gliding into the room, her face aglow. “Did you meet my roommate, Lucy?”
And it all became horrifyingly clear. His name wasn’t J-O-H-N…it was J-O-N. Short for Jonathan. More to the point, short for the Jonathan that Hayden had been half in love with ever since she quite literally bumped into him on the quad a week earlier. She’d been gazing skyward, wondering if it was going to rain; he was looking back over his shoulder, talking to a friend. They’d had coffee twice, lunch once, and tonight he was taking her to the semiformal.
And I had convinced myself that he was falling for me. Shame and humiliation welled inside me, pressing upward.
“We already know each other,” Jonathan said.
“You do?” Hayden asked, looking delightedly from him to me. “You didn’t tell me that, Lucy.”
I don’t know how I managed to keep my face set in a neutral, pleasant expression that completely disguised what I was feeling inside. But somehow I must have, because Hayden didn’t notice my distress.
“We have a class together,” Jonathan said.
And before he could go on and disclose that he was the John I’d been mooning about for the past few weeks, I said quickly, “That’s right. We’re old buds.”
This was patently untrue; we’d known each other for only a few weeks. But it was the sort of teasing patter the best friend of the love interest can get away with—Jonathan would just assume it meant I was giving Hayden a subtle thumbs-up of approval—so he grinned and said, “That’s right. Lucy’s saved my sorry ass. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be failing poli-sci.”
I was sure that would give it away, that Hayden would immediately figure out that Jonathan was John. And I didn’t want her to know. Hayden was a zealot when it came to loyalty. If she even suspected that I had feelings for her Jonathan, she would immediately dump him. I didn’t want that; it would make me feel even more pathetic and humiliated than I already did.
But Hayden was too smitten to notice. Her eyes seemed to drink Jonathan in, and an almost goofy smile played at her lips—something I’d never seen before. Jonathan was gazing back at her as though he couldn’t believe his good luck. I had never in my life felt more extraneous.
“Have a great time,” I said, backing away from the pair.
“Bye,” Hayden said.
“Yeah, bye, Lucy,” Jonathan echoed.
I spent the rest of the evening in my bedroom, curled up in a fetal position on my bed, my hands clasped to my stomach and my eyes sore and puffy from crying. I listened for Hayden’s return. Please don’t let them come back here together, I thought. Meeting him by the coffeepot first thing in the morning is more than I can bear.
But I didn’t hear them return, and eventually I fell asleep. And the next morning, when I first listened at the door, then knocked softly, and finally—sure it was safe—cracked open the door to Hayden’s bedroom, I discovered that she hadn’t come back at all.
I never did tell Hayden about the John/Jonathan mix-up. Their relationship lasted longer than most of Hayden’s flings; they were still together by the time we graduated. I got over Jonathan eventually, and the ache of seeing him regularly sprawled out on our couch, Hayden’s head resting companionably on his shoulder, or, worse, the bitter jealousy that rose up in me like bile when I heard the soft, sighing sounds of their lovemaking through our paper-thin walls first lessened, then disappeared.
Jonathan and I were thrown together so often that we grew to be pretty good friends. And even after he and Hayden eventually broke up the summer after graduation—or, I should say, after Hayden unceremoniously dumped him, claiming that she wanted to transition into the next phase of her life unencumbered—Jonathan and I stayed in touch. He went on to med school at Dartmouth, eventually became a pediatrician, and was now married with two kids and living in Baltimore. I hadn’t seen him in years, but we e-mailed back and forth occasionally, and every Christmas I received a card with a picture of his two adorable, dark-haired, apple-cheeked daughters, both of whom had inherited his smile.
After graduation. I moved back to Florida, got my teaching certificate, and applied for teaching jobs at a number of l
ocal high schools, including Andrews Prep. Hayden moved to Manhattan to pursue her acting career. Her biggest part was playing a golfer in a tampon commercial. In it, she pranced around in white shorts, taking graceful swings with a golf club.
I called Hayden the first time I saw the commercial air.
“Hey there, movie star!” I said, when she answered the phone. We hadn’t talked in a few weeks, which felt like forever after having seen each other nearly every day for four years. I even felt a little uncertain about calling her. She’d been distant the past few times we’d spoken, and I’d never heard the whole story of why she and Jonathan broke up. But as soon as I heard Hayden’s warm, rich chuckle and the deep exhalation of her cigarette smoke, it was as though no time had passed at all.
“Sadly, one tampon commercial does not make me a movie star.”
“I thought you did a great job. You nailed the part. I totally believed that you had your period and yet felt secure wearing short-shorts.”
“Not to mention that I actually played golf,” Hayden said. “All of those years my mother dragged me to lessons paid off. Who would have thought?”
“I have a hard time picturing you being dragged anywhere you don’t want to go,” I said.
“I was madly in love with my golf coach. He had the best legs I’ve ever seen on a man,” Hayden conceded. “So I didn’t mind the lessons so much. But I never told my mom that. She would have stopped bribing me with Chanel lipsticks if she’d found out.”
“Chanel lipsticks? How old were you?”
“Eleven,” Hayden said. She laughed again. “Eleven going on thirty.”
Hayden never did get her big break; after a few years she gave up acting altogether. She flitted from job to job, each time fizzing with excitement over the dazzling future she was suddenly envisioning for herself. For a time she worked as an assistant to a famous photographer and was convinced that it was only a matter of time before she’d become a photographer in her own right, with Vanity Fair and Vogue clamoring after her. Then there was her stint at an art gallery, organizing exhibits and acting as a liaison with artists. And then she landed a job as the assistant to a rising fashion designer.
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