third part, better than the first.
I got up from the bed feeling much better than the first time. Sitting down in my chair, I flipped my laptop open to see a few things. Checked the weather, read an email. Send anything stupid the night before? No, good, didn't look like I was anywhere near the thing at all. Occasionally I'll get out of hand on "Tequila Tuesdays" but it looked like my only problem from the night before was the visitor in the kitchen.
I kicked my feet up on the desk and lit a cigarette. The first cigarette of the day is always the best, and it was even better that morning. My bedroom caught the morning sun and the smoke would dance as it floated off the tip. I leaned back and exhaled, thinking about how things could have been a lot worse than they were. If Julie stayed over the night before and wanted to make me breakfast, I'd let her. As I was reclining in my chair, I started to think of some of the good times that we'd had.
===========
It was a couple months after that drunken night down at the bar and Julie was spending the weekend at my place back home. My parents had gone to Vegas for a long weekend and my brother was off at a friend's house. He never cared much about what I did even when he was home.
I smiled as Julie's eye caught mine over the glare of my lighter.
"Pass that bowl already!" She joked as she punched my shoulder.
I passed the pipe with the lighter between two of my fingers. She grabbed both, lit it and took a deep breath.
"You're an all right girl, you know that?" We were smoking a lot of pot in those days, but I never over did it. Julie had the habit of smoking too much and cooking various types of chicken. I would smoke too much and get intellectual, it worked out because we'd talk philosophy over a plate of spicy grilled chicken.
We worked well together at the bar, too. We'd both get ourselves nice and drunk and magically appear safely back home the next day. I personally think that was mostly my doing, but I'd be lying if I said I remembered many rides home from bars, ever.
We were getting comfortable with our situation. I hated the idea of trying to start something over the summer, but it was working out despite my fears. I figured things would either fizzle quickly or it would turn into some kind of perverted phone relationship. Nothing bad happened at all, things were actually going really well.
The rest of the summer went much the same, I would visit her and she would visit me. Sometimes we'd meet in the middle and I even had dinner with her parents once or twice. Things were moving to enter into a new stage in the relationship by the end of that summer and I felt fine with it. I liked this girl, she liked me. It's not like I had anything else going on.
As school started back up again in the fall, there were a few bumps in the road. The first couple weeks went past in the blink of an eye that year. I was excited about being so close to the end of school, the situation with Julie kept moving along, and none of my classes started before 1 in the afternoon.
Eventually the days got shorter and the nights, colder. I went out one night with my roommates to a party across campus. The place was packed by the time we got there because Derek decided to crack open a handle of whiskey before we left the apartment and we started doing shots. At some point between the second and third stop sign on the trip over, the empty bottle was thrown out the window. It was shaping up to be a fantastic night of merriment and revelry.
We pulled up to the house and saw that people were piled in tight like immigrants in a pickup.
Me - "Look at this bullshit. It might look like fun now but with that many people, this party is gonna be more beat than your butthole in about 8 and a half minutes. ... More beat? Beater? Which one is it?"
John - "It's more beat, I think, and I hope you were talking about Derek's butthole."
Me - "It was a fucking phrase, people say that"
Derek - "My butthole is not beat up. Fuck you guys." He slurred.
I was starting to slur a bit too and I didn't think what I had said about the buttholes made any sense but I remember I went with it. It's not always what someone says, it's how confident they are in saying it that matters. We decided to go to that party, in spite of my protestations earlier and continued annoyance at the proceedings, because John went to high school with someone that lived there. This connection did not go unused as within a few minutes of walking in the door I was asked to play beer pong with John's friend because John was terrible. The previous partner had gone outside to smoke and never came back, I didn't care why because I was really in the mood for some kind of game and I had some practice at this particular one.
That night is one of the biggest reasons I hate text messaging. At the time though, I liked the idea immensely. The first game went well and as I started talking to John's friend, I realized he was a generally tolerable human being. Some might even have called him a "sweet dude." I was text messaging Julie to come to the party as the second game started.
I like to think that it's my good looks and charm that bring home the bacon, but it might be my wit. Maybe it's because when I start to get drunk my eyes narrow. I drink and I get bedroom eyes, it's weird, I know. The alcohol might have made the girls on the other side of the table look better. All I know is that I started chatting to the dark haired one, Katie. I was talking shit to Katie, text messaging Julie, and about to sink the last cup to get Katie's team off the table.
We won that game, and the next, but Katie stuck around for a while. I wasn't thinking about doing anything with Katie and I wasn't exactly getting the vibe that she was into doing anything with me either, but that didn't make things look any better to the untrained eye. Julie walked in to see me engaged in an argument with Katie.
Me - "Vin Diesel's way cooler than Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris is, in fact, an asshole."
Katie - "Chuck Norris would kick Vin Diesel's ass. Period. You're smoking crack rocks if you think any different."
Julie - "Heeeeeyyyy baby, who's your friend? I'm Julie, by the way." She introduced herself to Katie.
It was a totally innocent argument anyone could have found themselves in with anyone else at any given point in time. Julie made it a little awkward for a minute, but Katie left. No harm, no foul. We lost the next game and I wanted to leave, but Julie had wandered off. I figured she wasn't very far so I went out for a cigarette to wait.
The air was cold enough to see your breath. I love those first fall nights where it's cold enough to do that, I always walk around pretending I'm some kind of steam breathing dragon about to terrorize a small town. Katie must have seen me walk out the door and wanted to say goodbye before she left. It was kind of embarrassing to be seen walking around like a drunk dinosaur huffing and puffing all into the night. So when Katie saw me and started laughing, I did too. It was funny, I was drunk and my phone started ringing.
Me - "Hold on a second, lemme get this. I wanna tell you something."
Katie - "Ok, but my friends are leaving."
Me - "Yeah babe, outside. ... That's just my friend, don't worry about it. ... Yeah, come outside and let's go. ... Yeah, bye, get out here. ... I'm sorry, actually that's what I wanted to say to you, Jules gets weird sometimes when she's drunk."
Katie - "Oh it's no problem, are you talking about that awkward exchange earlier?" She forced a polite laugh.
Me - "Yeah, she's really a nice girl. But I gotta go find her around front."
Katie - "I'm going that way too."
Julie didn't say anything when she saw me walk around the corner still talking to "that girl." She waited until later when we were back at my place. I guess it looked bad, I still don't know. It was entirely innocent, or mostly innocent. We got into an argument about it regardless.
Julie - "You seemed a little friendly with that girl."
Me - "Jules, I just met her a few minutes before you walked in and then I saw her outside later on. It was a coincidence. I wasn't getting friendly with anyone."
Julie - "I saw what I saw and it looked like you were getting a little friendly with her."
Me - "Julie, I don't want to deal with this shit right now, you're drunk ... I'm pretty drunk, let's just go to bed."
It went on like that for awhile until I let it slip that if I knew she was going to be acting like that I never would have told her to come. She took this to mean something entirely different. She was madder than hell and it was cute. I probably shouldn't have laughed at her that night either, but she reminded me of a toddler throwing a tantrum. I told her that, thinking it would calm her down, but it didn't.
It was a couple of weeks after that night and I wanted to surprise Julie with some kind of peace offering. We fought a bunch of times after that party because, basically, some words were thrown around that neither of us meant. I still really liked her, but we both needed to apologize to each other and be serious about things before anything got out of hand. I bought a bottle of wine and took my nice bong and a bag of weed over to Julie's place. She mentioned earlier that day that she needed to study for some test she had the next morning, so I figured if I went over later she might be in the mood for some making up, so to speak.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
I walked up to the door with the bottle stashed in my bag hoping I could keep it a surprise. Julie's roommate answered the door and told me that Julie would be right downstairs. We were past the point in our relationship where I waited for her to come down any stairs, anywhere. So, I walked up the stairs and turned the corner to her room and found it was locked. I started knocking on it.
Me - "Hey Jules, open up. We gotta talk."
Julie - "Yeah, gimme a minute."
Me - "What the fuck? Seriously girl, I've seen that before."
She came to the door and opened it, but not all the way. She told me she was busy studying with someone from class. I told her to open the door, that I had weed and wine, and they were two of her favorite things. She told me it was an important test. I told her she needed to open the door before I got mad. She refused, I got mad.
Turned out I arrived just in time to interrupt Julie and her friend from consummating their evening of study. She cleared her study friend out of her room and we talked. She chose this time to tell me the whole truth, thinking that maybe if she were honest I would be fine with her plans to fool around with some dude from her stats class. We argued about a few things, I called her a few names and she called me a few of her own. I stormed out of her house with the weed and wine and kept it to myself that night.
Since she didn't technically cheat on me, I took her back eventually. I didn't know what else to do, I really liked her, I hoped we'd be able to move past the whole thing and go back to the way things were.
I learned one important lesson that night at the party, that text messaging is the devil. I would later learn another lesson, that things can never go back to the way they were.
to be concluded...
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