Maybe she was right. Maybe it didn’t matter that it seemed too fast, not the best time, not realistic. Just because it usually didn’t, didn’t mean it never could.
"Love is love, huh?"
"Yes, that is your mantra for the new few weeks. Anytime you're feeling doubt, remember, love is love."
***
As I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I received a text from Troy.
Troy: You awake?
Miranda: Yeah, but Darcy's asleep, and I'm too comfortable to get out of bed.
Troy: I'd be more comfortable if you were in my bed.
Miranda: ☺
Troy: Too much, too soon?
Miranda: No, we can talk about sex all you want.
Troy: Okay, Okay.
Miranda: I liked kissing you. We can talk about that.
Troy: What did you like?
Miranda: You taste like peppermint and strawberries.
Troy: You taste like...
He paused for a minute.
Miranda: What?
Troy: If I were told I could taste one thing for the rest of my life, I would choose your lips.
It was my turn to pause.
Troy: You still there? :|
Miranda: That was sweet.
Troy: It was corny, but I don't care.
Miranda: I will put up with your corniness if you put up with my neurotic tendencies.
Troy: Deal, but what do you have to be neurotic about?
He had no idea.
We texted goodnight, and I tried to close my eyes, but I couldn't sleep. I spent half the night occupied with thoughts of worst-case scenarios. The other half was spent convincing myself how Troy and I deserved to be together. I dreaded having the next two days to obsess over it because Troy and the team were headed to Utah to play Brigham Young University. They wouldn't be back home until late Saturday night.
I pulled myself out of bed, promising myself I could return after class.
I ran into Darcy and Brooke after class, and they invited me to lunch. Sleep would have to wait a little longer.
"Hey, Miranda," Brooke said. She had a strange tone to her voice.
I turned to Darcy. "What did you tell her?"
"It wasn't a secret, was it?"
"I'm so happy for you. Troy's an amazing guy. I heard he wasn't nearly as big a slut as the other freshman guys."
"Okay, your slut freshman theory doesn't work. Robert is a junior, and he acted rather slutty last night," Darcy said.
"You're not a slut if you're sleeping with your ex," Brooke said.
"Troy said he hooked up with enough girls last year to get it out of his system,” I said.
"This makes you feel better?" Brooke asked.
"Well, yeah, I don't want to date him and worry about keeping him from sowing his oats or whatever."
"So you would rather he already had all the girls on campus?"
"Yes." I knew it sounded insane, but I had to go with it. The logic worked for me. Although the look they gave me made me wish I hadn't agreed so quickly.
"Miranda, you have had a boyfriend before, right?" Darcy asked.
"Yes." I stole one of Darcy's fries and took my time eating it, hoping someone would change the subject. They waited. "Well, not exactly."
"You're kidding," Brooke said.
"But you're gorgeous," Darcy said.
"I haven't always looked like this."
"What do you mean?" Darcy asked.
I dug around in my bag for my phone and flipped through it until I found the photo. I've tried and couldn’t make myself delete it. It was the one piece of evidence of the person I hoped I never became again.
I passed the phone to Darcy.
She didn't say anything. She looked at the phone and at me, then back at the photo, again.
"You still have the same eyes and hair."
I took the phone and looked at it again, making sure she saw the same thing I saw. In the photos, I had the same long brown hair except for it was shaved on the left side. The dark circles under my eyes, enhanced by the thick eyeliner, made me look older. The bright red lipstick made me look slutty, and if you couldn't see the extra weight I carried in my face, you could imagine it under the tent dress.
Brooke grabbed the phone.
"You lost a lot of weight." Brooke handed the phone back to me. "What did you do?"
I couldn’t believe they wanted to talk about my weight loss regime.
"This is who I used to be."
"No, that's how you used to look," Darcy said. "And, that doesn't explain why you've never had a boyfriend."
Brooke nodded in agreement.
"Brooke has a boyfriend, and I've broken up with enough boyfriends; we'll help you become comfortable around guys."
Being comfortable around guys wasn't my problem. Being comfortable around one guy and feeling like I deserved to have him. Now that was the heart of the issue.
I spent the remainder of lunch listening to story after story about guys they had dated in their past.
Rethinking my logic from this morning, I should have stayed in bed.
Later that night, Troy sent me his usual text.
Troy: You awake.
I crawled out of bed, put on a jacket, and went downstairs. I sat down at our table and called him back.
"Hey, babe," Troy said.
"Isn't is too soon for you to be calling me babe?"
"If you don't like babe, I could call you honey, or sweetie, or sexy."
"Troy, I'm serious. Don't you think we've skipped a few steps?"
"If you ask me, we haven't moved fast enough."
"I can't have this conversation right now." I was ready to hang up on him.
"I'm sorry. What's going on? What's this about?"
"You don't know me. You don't know a thing about me, and like we're this couple, and we haven't even gone on a date yet."
"If I remember correctly, you stood me up on our first date."
"Why do you want to be with me?" I whispered, not sure he heard me.
"Do you remember when we were little, and I fell off the fence?"
"What?"
"I cut my calf on the way down and had to get twelve stitches."
"Yeah."
"I don't remember the fall exactly, but I do remember lying on my back looking up and seeing your head peeking over the fence. You were screaming your head off."
"You scared the shit out of me." I pulled my jacket around me to ward off the shiver traveling up my spine. "And then you started crying."
"Because you scared the shit out of me," he said, "and you jumped over the fence."
"And landed on my feet."
"Yeah."
"And I remember thinking only a boy would fall off of a fence."
His frustrated sigh made me laugh.
"The point is, when I fell, you cried. Watching you cry made me cry. I told you to stop crying, and you told me to stop first, and it turned into this laughing fit, and I forgot I had a huge gash on the side of my leg. All I remember about that day is how much fun we had."
"Fun? You could have bled to death."
"You took off your sock to stop the bleeding, and I told you to get your dirty sock away from me."
"I tried to drag you into the house, but you were too heavy."
"I still have a thing about dirty socks, by the way."
"My mom freaked out, because we were both covered in blood."
"Your mom ignored me and picked you up and started looking for the wound."
"I started laughing and screaming that it wasn't me, it was you."
"She finally got us in the car, and we were laughing so hard because she couldn't find her keys."
"Then she yelled at us for laughing."
"God, I'm surprised you didn't bleed to death. How long did it take us to get to the hospital?"
"I don't know. I don't remember."
"Again, what's your point?"
"I don't know."
"Troy!"
"Okay, I remember. The point is we have this cool history together and when I think about you and me, when I think about us; it makes me feel good. I feel happy. I know that no matter how bad, scary, or insane things get as long as we're together, it's going to be fine."
"God, you're such a sap." I didn't bother wiping the tears welling up in my eyes.
"Listen, if it takes you a little while longer to get to where I’m at, that's fine. I'll wait."
"Why are you being so sweet to me?"
"Because you’re letting me.”
“Isn’t that a line from an old movie?”
“You’ve seen The Breakfast Club?”
“Yeah, it’s my mom’s favorite movie. One of the few things we both like.”
“I knew there was a reason why I liked you.”
I hung up the phone feeling better. I felt more secure and stronger, but I needed a distraction. I couldn't obsess over Troy and me for two days. I decided to contact my Aunt Alaina.
***
Aunt Alaina was my dad's younger sister. She lived in Hyde Park about a thirty-minute walk from campus. When I came to Austin last fall for my audition, my mom and I stayed with her. She and my mom had been best friends before Mom married my dad. Now, they tolerated each other for Dad's sake. Mom thought of Alaina as a flaky hippy who married a wealthy guy and divorced him to get his money. Alaina accused my mom of not only changing, but forcing my dad to change, too.
She picked me up after class on Friday.
Two seconds after I stepped out of the music hall, I heard, "Randa."
I waved as I crossed the street. She met me halfway, grabbed me around the neck, and pulled me into an awkward hug while standing in the middle of the street. I tried to push her toward her car before we got run over.
"Aunt Alaina."
"Please, just call me Alaina. Aunt Alaina sounds so old." She pulled her long, stringy hair up over her head and put it in a knot. "You look so pretty."
"Thank you."
"No, really. You lost weight."
"Yeah," I said.
Safe on the curb, we stared at each other for a minute. The grin on her face made her seem stoned. She had declared last time I saw her that she'd given up drugs and alcohol. Alaina's yogi boyfriend inspired her new pure life. She had the same tall, thin frame, like my father’s, but not as fragile and pale as last time. Today, she appeared solid, more alive.
"Are you hungry?"
"I could eat."
"Great."
"I am really glad you're here," she said over the car. "We are going to have so much fun together."
That was a strange thing for her to say.
We headed toward Sixth Street and grabbed a table at The Grill Room. The restaurant reminded me of an over-exaggerated Mexican cantina you might find in downtown Guadalajara. We sat by the window and watched people for a while strolling down the famous street. Even at two p.m., the weekend had begun, and people congregated.
"How's your piano going?"
Alaina started with the go-to question. Considering it was the one thing to hold my interest for the last ten years, every adult who knew me asked, because they couldn't think of anything else to say to me.
My go-to answer: "Fine."
"How did you lose weight?"
This question, I flat-out hated.
I was never huge, at least, not in my mind. Sure, climbing the stairs at school left me winded, and thank God, because of my gift, I got to skip gym to practice. I told myself the weight comforted me, but that was only because it didn't do what it was supposed to do. I thought if I gained weight, it would keep guys from noticing me, but it had the opposite effect.
"Worked out, ate healthy food," I said as I grabbed a chip and dipped it in the creamy bowl of queso. The restaurant staff ran around in a choreographed chaos catering to the crowd that gathered even at this time of day. "Are you still a vegetarian?"
"No," Alaina said. She grabbed a chip from the basket, but didn't dip. "I missed meat. I eat chicken and fish, but no cows." She pulled her hair out of the knot and then put it back. I noticed her tattoo. The phrase “World Peace,” with a peace symbol anchoring each side, ran down the back of her arm.
"Cool tattoo. Is it new? "
She looked at her arm like she forgot it was there.
"Yeah, thanks." She focused on the basket of chips between us.
I guessed there were things she didn't want to talk about, either. Bummer, because I wanted a tattoo so bad, but I changed the subject.
"What are you doing? For work?" I asked, but I didn't hear her answer. I was being watched. I turned and seated at the bar, a pair of steel-blue eyes fixated on me. I lingered on his a second too long. I looked away and pushed a strand of my hair behind my ear.
Oh shit.
I guess he interpreted my innocent gesture as an invitation.
"I've been singing with a band on and off for about two years and getting some freelance work from local shops," Alaina continued.
"Freelance work? In what?"
"Painting, graphic work, murals, that kinds of thing."
I had no clue my aunt could draw.
"What do you sing?" I tried concentrating on her words.
"Folk and blues, mostly. We should write a song together; you play the piano, and I could sing."
"Uhm, maybe. I don't really play the type of music you can sing to," I lied, but I didn't have a chance to feel bad. The guy from the bar stood over us. With his cargo shorts and wife beater, he looked like every guy in Austin. Must be the uniform of choice for cute Austin guys.
"Can I buy you a drink?" he said to me, but Alaina answered.
"Sure, I would love a margarita."
She surprised him. His focused one hundred percent on me.
"How about you?" He rubbed my forearm with the back of his hand and a chill ran up my spine.
"No, she will not. She's eighteen years old."
That didn't sound like my voice. It wasn't. Alaina must have figured it out. The guy came over to talk to me.
"You're eighteen?" Blue Eyes asked.
"Yes," I said, without looking at him.
"At least you're legal," he said and rubbed my arm again. No chills and no goose bumps this time. From my experience, when a guy concerns himself with whether your legal or not, he doesn't want to take you out for dinner and a movie.
"Yeah, I'm legal. You want to go at it right here on the table, or maybe I could blow you behind the bar."
I held his gaze as the shocked look spread across his face. He rubbed the back of his neck and walked away muttering under his breath.
"Miranda, I can't believe you said that."
"What? He was a dick."
"He only wanted to buy you a drink."
"No, he didn't."
"Sweetie, I know you haven't had much experience with guys. You're right; some of them are jerks, but there are good ones out there.” For someone who had such bad luck with men, Alaina’s optimism about love surprised me. “You're in college, and you're so attractive, guys are going to want to talk to you and date you. You should be living it up. Breaking hearts and having a good time."
I thought of Troy and smiled before I could stop myself.
I ate another chip to distract myself and pretended to listen. I nodded at the appropriate places in Aunt Alaina's little speech. I didn't have the heart to tell her I was quite familiar with what guys do and say and what they wanted.
I learned in high school what guys wanted and what they were willing to do to get it.
I didn't come to school to find a man, but a week in, Troy was all I could think about.
Even Aunt Alaina couldn’t distract me from thinking about Troy. Worrying was a more accurate description.
I believed Troy and his feelings. Things were clean and simple for him. Nothing in my past was simple. It was dark and dirty. I couldn't shake the feeling; if he found out he wouldn't just walk away. It would mess him up first, and then he would walk away.
> On Saturday, Darcy, Becca, Brooke, and I watched the game on The Six Pack. Flanked by bronze statues of former nation leaders, the lush green park located on the south side of campus, staged the perfect away game party for students. Assembled on three sides of the park were large screen televisions. If the wind was blowing just right, you felt a fine mist from Littlefield Fountain blowing across the crowded park. Students had been camped out since sunrise with blankets, chairs, and enough provisions to last until the end of the game.
We managed to find a space just an hour before kickoff. When the broadcast began, Troy's image popped on the screen. I stifled a scream. All morning I'd been thinking about our conversation from the other night and seeing him in animated full color, tossing a football, made my concern compete with the all-encompassing sexual attraction I had for him. I started thinking I had a heart problem with the way my heart skipped whenever he flashed across the screen.
He wore a serious, tight-lipped expression, and he stared at whoever was speaking, whether it was his Coach, Michaels, the starting quarterback, or another teammate. He was in his element.
In the fourth quarter, Michaels went down after a hard hit, and it took him a while to get up. Troy entered the game, and the crowd in the park went wild. He handed the ball off to Ryan, who ran twenty yards for a touchdown. You would have thought we won the Super Bowl, and I have to admit, I got caught up in it. After Ryan scored, Troy ran after him, and they tackled each other in the end zone to celebrate.
I jumped up and started hugging strangers. The whole park joined hands and sang the fight song, and as the pandemonium continued, a wide grin spread across my face. I bit my lip to reduce on the outside what I felt on the inside. I enjoyed watching him do what he loved.
The next series the starting quarterback came back on the field, and Troy took his position next to the coach, focusing on whatever the coach needed from him.
That was Troy; dependable. Ready for when his team needed him.
***
The team arrived back late on Saturday. Sunday morning, I woke up to the sound of my phone beeping. It was a text message from Troy.
Pick you up in thirty minutes. Can't wait another second. Bringing coffee.
I jumped in the shower, trying not to wake Darcy. She disappeared after the game, and I didn't see her again until 2:30 in the morning. She had woken me up, trying to give me a hug. I thought it might have been a dream until I noticed a trail of her clothes from my bed to hers. Thankfully, she shed them after the hug and not before.
Another New Life Page 5