by Jamie Knight
My mom always made me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Always. And her mom always made her bologna and cheese.
When we realized our shared plight, the solution was obvious. We never had lunch apart after that. I got a friend for life and some variety in my otherwise meager lunch options.
Her father also worked at the same auto-parts plant as my father did, but he was in management. Our dads actually got along, because my dad would suck up to hers.
So, thankfully, despite my controlling parents’ restrictions, slumber parties and best friend bracelets with Lindsay were a bright ray of light in my otherwise bleak social exposure.
Things were great now. Lindsay had a scholarship to a fancy college called Pacific Day University, which was only a few hours’ drive away, luckily. It was a place where her brother had gotten a scholarship as well.
But her school had a different fall break schedule, so she had time to come down and spend a few days with me. I had to go to classes, but we still had plenty of time to hang out.
We were walking across campus after leaving the dining hall, where some weird guy had been stuffing food into plastic bags and then loading them in his backpack, which was already bulging with everything he was storing in them. Some of the students here were really strange.
“I like your campus a lot,” said Lindsay, brushing a strand of her long brown hair behind her ear. “Mine is a lot more uptight. You know, that’s the way fancy colleges are. Everyone is so rich. It’s like everyone already knows what to do and I’m just barely starting to catch on. I don’t really fit in.”
Her brown eyes looked down at the pavement beneath our feet.
“But your mother must be proud, right?” I asked.
Lindsay’s mom was just as religious as mine was. They both just wanted us to find a man and get married.
“Oh, no, she keeps complaining,” said Lindsay. “She thinks every boy that’s ever talked to me has had sex with me.”
“Jeez, is it that bad?” I asked. “I guess, my mom’s version of that is not too different. She kind of does the same thing. She’s always pushing me to find a husband.”
“Oh, yeah, exactly,” said Lindsay, with a laugh. “My mom thinks the only reason for women to even go to college is to find a husband who will have a better job than my dad has. Do you know she doesn’t seem to even care about my scholarship? I try to tell her about what I’m learning in my classes and all the things I can do after college with my major in chemistry. Nothing. Nada. Zero interest or response. Ooooh, but if I even mention a date I had, she’s all ears.”
“Yeah, my mom too,” I admitted. “It’s like, they want us to meet a guy and then get engaged a week later. And yet they somehow manage to still be so… anti-sex.”
Lindsay stopped in her tracks and threw her hands up in exasperation.
“I know, right? It’s like, Mom, this is the modern era. I mean, people have sex. All the damn time. There’re ways to have it and not get pregnant. And it doesn’t have to be a big deal,” she said. “I’m not going to just give it away in bucketloads or get all cam-girl about it, but c’mon. I’d still like to get laid at least once in a while.”
I laughed nervously, not meeting her gaze.
“Still no action, huh?” surmised Lindsay, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I brushed her hand off and played with my hair.
“What? Why do you ask?”
“It’s fine if you’re a still virgin, Tina,” assured Lindsay. “I’m not, but it’s cool if you are. Have you started getting out there on the hot streets of Kensington State?”
“I’m trying. Sorta,” I said.
I led her over to a waist-level wall lining the path. We put down our backpacks, then scooted up and sat down, our shoes dangling a foot above ground.
It was slowly getting dark, but the paths on campus were well lit. It was a pretty campus, with lots of landscaping and trees. The wide sidewalk in front of us took a winding, curving path down a hill, with large open lawns on either side.
Students were sprinkled throughout these grounds, kicking around soccer balls, lying on blankets to stare up at the sky, some still trying to read by the dying light. A few had even set up portable LED lights to keep reading in the dark.
I watched a shirtless hunk throw a Frisbee to his friend and realized I felt no inclination to approach him, despite his profound hotness.
I turned my gaze back to my friend and admitted, “I’m so just nervous around guys.”
She smiled and looked off into the distance.
“I know. Remember that time in school when we were kids? That boy on the playground?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered, trying to figure out what she was talking about.
Elementary school sure was a long time ago.
“We were playing hide and seek in the tunnels, remember? Those big concrete tubes towards the end of the playground, by the big trees?”
Lindsay looked at me and I shook my head, still not remembering.
“Anyway,” she continued, “the bell to return to class had rung but you hadn’t found me yet. So, you were still looking because you wanted to win. You were totally dead-set on winning. Remember? You were so focused that even that black-haired boy in our class tried to tell you to hurry and that we needed to get to class. You punched him in the nose! You didn’t even say anything! Just wham!”
I stared at her blankly.
“You don’t remember that?” laughed Lindsay. “C’mon, that was classic Tina.”
“Okay, yes, I do remember,” I admitted, picturing that boy with blood running down his face. “I was trying not to. It was embarrassing.”
“Who was that kid you punched again?” she asked, twirling a dark brown strand of hair around one of her fingers. “Didn’t he live in the same apartment building as you or something?”
“It was Seth,” I admitted, reluctantly.
“Whoa. That’s right, Seth,” remembered Lindsay.
She sighed.
“It’s always so weird to me, thinking of Seth. Since he’s been such good friends with my brother, on the one hand, I just remember him as the kid that kind of looked like Pig Pen from Peanuts who was always at my house. And always had dirt on his face from one of Robert’s crazy adventures. Then, I remember this Seth, how you punched him and how before that, he pushed you down in the dirt and that for all your life, he’s basically been your mortal enemy.”
I looked down at my shoes as I listened to her voice wind throughout my history with Seth.
In a thoughtful tone, Lindsay continued, “My brother’s best friend is my best friend’s worst nightmare. Yep, mine is definitely ‘A Tale of Two Seths.’ You know, I never asked Robert what Seth’s up to these days. I wonder where he is now.”
I sighed. There was no sense in hiding it.
“He goes to school here,” I said. “He actually lives in the same dorm building as me. His room is literally five doors down.”
“What? No way!” laughed Lindsay, crinkling her nose slightly. “That’s crazy. What’s he look like now? I mean, I remember he got taller in high school. Did he get hot over the summer, now that he’s all grown up?”
“Why does everyone keep saying Seth is hot? He’s not hot. I don’t think he’s hot,” I insisted, a little too loudly.
The thought crossed my mind that maybe I kept insisting Seth wasn’t hot because I knew he was. But I wasn’t about to admit it, after all this time spent denying it.
I stood up and started walking back towards the dorms at a fast pace. Lindsay jumped up and followed.
“Oh, my God!” Lindsay giggled, grabbing my shoulder to turn me back towards her.
“You’re into him,” she declared, with a jokingly accusatory tone.
“What? No! Ew!” I swatted her hand away.
“Of course you are!” she laughed. “Look at the reaction you’re having. You’re blushing, just thinking about him.”
“I am not into him. I’m not attr
acted to Seth. Ew! No. Never. Can we change the subject, please?”
I took off walking once more. Lindsay skipped happily behind me, giggling with delight.
When we got inside the hall, Seth was coming out of his dorm room. Perfect timing, of course. He had on a crisp pair of jeans, a charcoal gray sweater and a leather jacket.
Everything was well fitted, showing off his muscular chest and arms. Okay, he was hot, but I didn’t have to admit it.
His black hair was gently tousled. A few of the longer strands from the top ran down his cheeks and accentuated his chiseled jaw.
He had a girl on his arm. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help but notice that he had been dating a lot of different women. He was making such a gross display of desperateness.
This one was the third in this week alone. It was disgusting. Lindsay and I just stopped and stared.
“There’s Seth,” said Lindsay, smiling.
“He did get hot over the summer,” she added, nodding appraisingly.
“God, he’s gross. Do you realize that’s the third girl he’s had in that room this week?” I spit out, outraged. “That’s just ew.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. My pulse was racing, and I could feel sweat on my palms.
Lindsay started to say, “Whoa there, Classic Tina…”
But I ignored her protests as I marched up to Seth. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I couldn’t stop now.
“You are disrespectful to women,” I snapped, looking up right into his face, with my arms straight and stiff down at my sides.
“What?” laughed Seth.
His deep brown eyes were wide with shock.
“Have you ever heard of ‘pick a girl and stick with her’?” I snapped, whirling and walking away.
I returned to Lindsay, who was barely stifling a laugh. Seth excused himself from his date and walked up to the two of us. He got right in my face, looking down at me with a scowl.
“Excuse me, but I don’t think it’s any of your business what I do,” said Seth. “And need I remind you, you’ve had half the campus over here. Drinking and partying at all hours. So, don’t lecture me, Tina. Hi, Lindsay, looking good. Say ‘what’s up’ to Rob for me when you get back to campus.”
“Hey. Will do,” smiled Lindsay.
Rob was her brother. She grinned and gave him a slight wave.
I rolled my eyes. Traitor.
Again, I didn’t love how my life was looking very much like high school. Not that Lindsay ever paid Seth any mind. Like she said, her balancing act with him could pretty much be summed up with a shrug on her part.
It was just that this setting was all so familiar: Lindsay, me, her brother’s best friend being practically one of her family members, while I hated his guts with the power of a thousand suns. Same ole, same ole.
Seth walked back down the hall towards his date, but before I knew it, I found myself following. I grabbed him by his jacket and turned him around.
“For your information, I wasn’t with any of those guys who came to my room, okay?” I sneered.
“You said they weren’t your boyfriends, but why would I believe that?” snapped Seth.
“I mean, why would I care?” He turned away from me.
“That’s right! It’s none of your business,” I snapped, grabbing his jacket a second time. “You’re such a jerk!”
He swung around and pulled his jacket out of my hand.
“I’m not the one who’s instigating shit, and up in everyone’s business at the moment, okay? Look, I’m with this chick…” said Seth, pointing to the girl.
“‘This chick’?” repeated the girl, walking over to us. She was not pleased. “Do you even remember my name?”
“Yeah, Becky,” said Seth, proudly.
“And last name,” she continued, pointedly.
“Something… Polish, I think,” trailed Seth.
His eyes were cast downwards, as if he was trying to remember.
Becky frowned and started to walk away.
“Wait! Becky,” yelled Seth, chasing after her.
With her back to him, she threw up a hand and flipped him off.
He stopped his run short and looked back at me. His brow furrowed deep when he said, “See what you did? Thanks a lot, Tina. Maniac.”
“Happy to help, ass!” I shouted back. “Learn how to treat women better! Maybe don’t go through them like they’re revolving doors.”
I stormed back into my dorm room and slammed the door. Lindsay was sitting on my bed looking at me and trying not to laugh. Her body was shaking but she had her hands over her mouth.
“What are you laughing at?” I demanded. “You see how he is. What he’s doing is wrong. And bad for society! And normal people shouldn’t condone it.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her.
Lindsay burst out laughing, unable to hold it in any longer.
“He lives above you when you’re kids and now he’s down the hall from you in college,” said Lindsay. “That’s fate, girl. You’re going to end up with him.”
“What?”
I backed up a few steps.
“Stop saying that. Why do you say that?” I implored in a suddenly hushed, shaken tone.
“First off, you’re clearly hot for him,” explained Lindsay, holding up a finger and pointing at me. “Look at how excited you are right now.”
“Oh, my God, Lindsay!” I exclaimed with outrage. “That’s not true.”
My voice squeaked a little in my protest and that sent Lindsay into another laughing fit. She leaned back on my bed and roared with merriment.
“You’re waaaaay into him,” she teased. “It’s not obvious to you, but it’s obvious to me.”
“No way. I could never date a womanizer like him,” I objected, as I plopped down into my new computer chair.
My old one had been broken a few parties ago. Thankfully, my little crew of party friends all pitched in to cover the cost. Something I couldn’t begin to see stupid Seth doing, with his high and mighty attitude.
Thinking about him just pissed me off. How could Lindsay see anything between us?
“Why would I want to get disrespected like that? I don’t want some one-night-stand in Seth’s dinky dorm room, only to be replaced by some other co-ed the next day. I want real love. A relationship. Something that will last forever,” I told Lindsay.
She agreed, nodding, but she still laughed.
Chapter Six
Tina
Later, when Lindsay was long gone and I was alone, lying on top of my bed sheets, I thought back over my long and crazy history with Seth. I figured that since I couldn’t avoid him, I might as well conduct a forensic examination of our past to see what the hell was up between us.
So, yes, our elementary school days were not the most peaceful. But I calculated that, with what we’d done to each other, him pushing me, then me punching him a few years later, we were actually square.
Those actions on each of our parts canceled out each other, like an equation. More than that, I well knew we had just been little kids anyway.
I’d actually started to soften on him a bit by high school. I couldn’t avoid his stupid ass, since he was often at Lindsay’s house.
Back in those days, she and I mostly roamed the apartment complex area, her parent’s duplex, and the woods by a small lake nearby. She got along okay with her brother Rob, but since he was older, super active and always up to something, she found more freedom and space at my apartment.
When I sat and really thought about it, I knew the real reason why my hate for Seth had solidified and hardened into a giant mountain of stone.
The Sadie Hawkins Dance. Eleventh grade.
For as long as I could remember, my parents kept our entire social life concentrated at church. Therefore, my school actually looked pretty cool by comparison. So, when the annual Sadie Hawkins Dance came around when I was sixteen, I was raring to take part.
The Sadie Hawkins Dance was a
formal function where only the girls asked the guys to be their dates to the dance. It was an official school function, so plenty of teachers, coaches and chaperones would be there. My parents had no excuse to deny me participation in such a wholesome and well-policed affair.
So, for months and months before the dance came, I was already planning. This would be my only chance to step out, dress up and feel like a real teenager having a real teenaged life.
I was sixteen. Lindsay had already decided who she was asking, what she was wearing, everything. I said little because I just didn’t know how I was going to actually pull it all off.
I had my dress picked out, and had saved up my tiny allowance for literally years to make sure I got it. I had worked on my hairstyle too, experimenting in front of the bathroom mirror for such long stints that my dad would bang on the door, lecturing me about vanity and whorishness— and not with his inside voice.
There was only one missing piece. A guy. I racked and racked my brain to think of who I wanted to be my date. With my parents’ long years of forcing me to socialize so heavily with their church friends, I already knew those boys way too well to want to dance with them.
But beyond that crowd, I didn’t really know anyone. I wasn’t exactly shy; it was more like I was cowed by my parents’ fear that everyone away from church was an unholy demon bent on corrupting all that was good in my heart.
While I’d been thinking and pining for the Sadie Hawkins Dance since I was a freshman in high school, it was only a month away when I really started to panic about finding a date. I even started losing sleep over it, tossing and turning and seeing no way to find someone in time.
I don’t know why I even started thinking this way, but now that I was looking back, I knew it was sheer desperation that made me even consider asking that asshole Seth. And maybe it was actually sleep deprivation that led my weakened mind to think he would ever be suitable to be my date.
Whatever it was, I found myself thinking more and more about Seth as a possibility. We hadn’t seen each other much, except in the halls in between classes. He’d grown tall and not bad looking. He had these huge, deep dark eyes framed under black brows and heavy lashes.