part 4, maybe the end.
I decided I'd fucked around enough putting this whole awkward morning exchange off. It was time to go downstairs. If I didn't go down soon, I had a feeling my breakfast would get burnt. Either that or if I waited too long then breakfast would get cold. If I had to choose, I'd rather deal with Julie than have a shitty breakfast.
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The first time I broke up with her, it was after the better part of a year being together. I had all kinds of issues when I tried to quantify my feelings for this girl. I remember asking myself if the amount of time spent together should be taken into consideration. It was hard for me to think of the time we spent together, time that I spent with someone, as wasted. Was Julie a tramp? Was I an asshole for not seeing it sooner? I liked her but she was kind of a bitch. I was honest with her while she liked to hide things from me. We spent a lot of time together and I felt comfortable with her. I was a man. She was apologetic. It's not like I had anything else going on.
Once we did get back, things seemed to be going really well. We'd get together nearly every afternoon for about three weeks, smoke pot and fool around. The ground picked up its first coating of white for the season sometime during those weeks, we didn't notice and couldn't have cared less. I forgave her, we got over it and moved past it, but I never forgot it happened.
Jules started staying at my place almost every night at that point. My roommates kept giving me shit about the whole thing though. Every time she left in the mornings, John would come running upstairs to my room and ask if Julie was going for a jog to "get some real dick." John was under the impression that Julie was "brainwashing me with pussy and weed."
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I got up out of the chair and stood there, took a deep breath, and walked towards the door. I shouldn't have been wary of this girl. She was someone I might have loved at one point, maybe I could again. Before my foot touched the top stair, I was smiling a little smile. I wasn't mad at Julie for staying over, but I wasn't exactly enthused either.
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We stayed together until the end of that semester, but I always looked back on those first 3 weeks together as 3 of the coolest, most comfortable weeks I've ever spent with someone. We spent most of our time together for the rest of that semester until finals rolled around. At the time, I was on this "finish my senior year strong" kick and I had a lot of paper writing to do. Julie went to a party with some of her friends on one of those work nights of mine. It was the Saturday right before classes were over. I got a call from John.
Me - "Yeah, I told you I'd call you when I was done."
John - "Right, but Julie's here. She's tanked and making out with some dude."
Me - "What the hell? What dude?"
John - "I don't know, some dude with a beard. He's got a blue shirt on and a goofy hat."
Me - "Fuck it. Whatever, I wanna finish this. I'll deal with it later."
I didn't get done until much later that night and never went out. I asked Julie about it the next day and she said she didn't remember. She said she wasn't sure what happened, but she woke up at bearded dude's place.
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I was a couple stairs down, treading quietly. All these memories and feelings this girl was bringing forth weren't making for an awesome day. It's tough, that whole relationship thing. That was a long time ago, I was a different person now. I was younger then, I had questionable morals and a more idealistic outlook. I narrowed my eyes as I steeled my resolve to finish this confrontation through to the end. I was older, wiser and stronger.
That second semester of my senior year was a wild one. I had almost all the classes done that I needed in order to graduate save for a few electives, mostly blow off stuff. I hadn't talked to Julie since New Year's Eve. It was one of those nights that started late, I wasn't that drunk by midnight and so I stayed up until 5 in the morning calling people and leaving voicemails or lecturing anyone bold enough to answer. The call to Julie came much later on that early morning. She sent me a text message the week before wishing me a merry Christmas, so when I was drunk off my ass I felt it was the best time to wish her a happy New Year.
The worst part about the whole thing happened the next day. I woke up just before noon to a pounding coming from upstairs. A friend of mine at home hosted the party and I wasn't real familiar with the layout of the house. I stumbled upstairs from the basement and found that I was the last to wake that morning. The pounding was my roommate Derek, he was stomping on the floor arguing with someone about something or another. There were a couple people spread out around the living room and my other roommate John was in the kitchen making himself a bowl of cereal. I was glad that they were able to come hang out over the holiday.
John - "Morning sunshine, how's the day treating you?"
Me - (pulling out a chair and sitting down, I grabbed at a bottle of water on the counter) "Give me that."
John - (with a mouthful of cereal) "What the hell happened to you last night?"
Me - "What do you mean? Nothing, I was here the whole time. Is there anything else for breakfast?"
John - "You could have a beer. Breakfast of champions. How long were you on the phone last night?"
Me - (checking my calls) "I don't know, I think I just called my mom and then my brother ... ahhhh fuck. 48 minutes here on a call to 'Jules.' Why'd you let me do that? Asshole."
John just laughed. I tried to forget about it. Don't know what was said, she was probably too drunk to remember herself. It made me think more self-referentially the next couple times I went out and got crazy, though. I was a bit more careful with who I called.
It'd been about 2 months since I broke things off with Julie that last time. It'd been about a month and a half since the drunk dial she got from me on New Year's. It was important to me that I wasn't being a dick about things. So when I saw her, I would always exchange some minor pleasantries. I was trying to stay on the high road. It was weird sometimes, sure. That didn't stop me from trying to move on with my life. The pleasantries devolved after that month of being back at school.
I saw Julie one day at the library while researching for a paper for some class that didn't really matter. I waved, neutrally. She waved back and I went to a computer to look up some books. In the middle of writing down the books I wanted, she came and sat next to me.
Her - "Hi."
Me - (leaning back in my chair) "Hi, I'm kind of busy."
Her - (leaning towards me, almost whispering) "Yeah, ok. Well, I wanted to talk about what we talked about on the phone on New Year's."
Me - "Wait a second. I want you to know that I was hammered drunk, shit faced to the extreme, whatever you wanna call it. I don't remember even talking to you. Not to be a dick or anything."
Her - "I figured. I wasn't as drunk as you were though. I told you I was sorry and you said it was all right."
Me - "Well whatever I said was all right might have been at the time but that doesn't mean it is now. I don't want to get into this. Like, not at all."
Her - (she grabbed for my hand and I pulled away) "All right, maybe some other time. I miss you. I want you to know that I feel bad too, I don't know. I miss you. I miss you."
Me - "Yeah. I'm going to get books. Write this project up right fast and ... well, maybe I'll think about calling you later."
It was hard to put my foot down with Julie. She looked cute. I had to keep myself mentally prepared for anything because she knew me very well, knew me well enough to know that as soon as I told her I'd think about calling her, I would eventually do so. I made her wait a couple days before doing it, but I did. The next night we had dinner together. By the end of the week it looked like we were back together. By the end of that weekend people were wondering where we were because things were back to the way they used to be. We spent most of the week indoors getting re-accustomed to each other. By the end of the following week we weren't on speaking terms anymore. It's hard sometimes.
I waited until we were "back together" for one week and I went out with my roommates, got tanked and made out with a girl from my Intro to Islam class, Katie. She's the one that originally got Julie all excited. Julie thought I would cheat on her with that girl because she was thinking of cheating on me, maybe with the bearded dude. At least that was how my thought process was going, I thought it was poignant. Almost like, haha, got you bitch!
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I reached the bottom of the stairs and made the turn towards my kitchen. My bong was sitting in the middle of the coffee table in my living room alongside a couple of empty beer bottles. Apparently the festivities of the night prior were not quite enough and when I got home, I decided I needed a nightcap. Taking a couple long bong rips after getting home from a bar was one of my favorite things to do. It helped center me before going to bed. I thought all these things because they pointed towards me having a reason to get centered before bed. That reason, just around the corner, had a really sweet jam playing on the radio. It's amusing, the things I think about to distract myself.
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Julie blew up when she found out that I was kissing some other girl. I calmly told her she deserved it. That she had it coming, that I was just letting her know it wouldn't be tolerated.
Things never were the same as those first months or those three beautiful weeks during the fall of my senior year. Our relationship didn't die completely. I knew I could count on Julie to always be there for me. Even though I hated her sometimes, I knew who she was and still had feelings for her in spite of it. She was loyal, but fidelity strangely wasn't a factor in her idea of loyalty. She was like the cat that would run away from home for a while but always came back. Kind of, I didn't see myself as her home by any means.
We spent the better part of the following year seeing each other every two weeks or so, once a month we'd get together and smoke pot and drink until the sun came up over a weekend. We'd fool around most of the time but it never moved past that until the following spring.
There had been two girls I went out with while still spending illicit evenings with my ex. It was strange, Julie was seeing other people and so was I, but we were both still kind of seeing each other. I never questioned it, I didn't want to because I knew that we didn't work well being 'together.' We'd go so far as to talk about the other person when we'd meet up. She would rate her fling against me and I would rate mine against her. It was a very self-conscious and honest undertaking that we were venturing in on. I think at some point that honesty morphed itself in my mind and made me somehow forget the greek tragedy that was mine and Julie's relationship.
That following spring saw a rebirth of Julie and I as a couple. It had been over two years since we met and we had slowly developed a comfort level again with each other. That round lasted from April to June and we started fighting. One thing that could never be said about Julie and myself was that we lacked passion. The unbridled emotions that flowed forth when we would fight were terrific. In one day I would hate her, love her, loath her, want to kill her, have sex with her, want to toss her down a flight of stairs, and then at night we'd fool around and cuddle.
We started fighting one drunken night and she pulled a knife on me. It was a steak knife from the kitchen, I could tell, as she was holding it to my throat.
Me - (grabbing her wrist) "I'm going for a walk, maybe go pick up a prostitute or three."
Her - (dropping the knife) "FUCK YOU!!! But, I won't stab you, not for real anyway. You just make me so mad!!"
Me - (pulling her head close to mine) "Look, babe, what's wrong with us?"
She couldn't tell me, so I kissed her instead.
June rolled around and I told her I needed a break. That was the last time 'together' but I saw her every once in a while. I'd get drunk and call her, or she'd get drunk and call me. Sometimes I'd see her 3 or 4 times in one week and other times I wouldn't see her for a month or two. We would inevitably get together though.
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Relationships are hard sometimes, I thought, as I stood in the doorway to the kitchen. This past stretch of being apart from Julie with no drunk dials and no word was longer than usual. I'd made some progress in a normal relationship with an interesting girl I'd recently gotten re-acquainted with in the frozen food section of the supermarket up the block. It was poetic, in a way, that it was Katie in the kitchen.
Katie - "Good morning. You were a drunken wreck last night."
Me - (smiling) "Yeah, I've been trying to piece everything together. Did I do anything embarrassing?"
Katie - "Nothing more embarrassing than anything I did. I made a mix cd the other day I forgot about, how do you like it?"
Me - (sitting down at the table) "It's great. I mean it, heard it upstairs. It reminded me of some of the old days."
Katie - "The old days? Let's make some new days, you want to go for a walk after this? Maybe read a book outside? It's such a nice day."
I leaned over the table and kissed her. It's not like I had anything else going on.
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