I Pretend I Don’t Mind

Chapter 2

It’s raining. It’s been raining all day. Sabrina and Tucker ditched school to stay inside in the warmth and act like an old married couple. They invited me to watch movies and eat caramel popcorn with them but I chose to come to school anyway.

Times like this, I wish I had a car. I’m supposed to get a car on graduation day. That seems so far away.

At least I have the day off of work.

I trudge along the sidewalk, avoiding puddles.

A car pulls up beside me.

I see Alexander sitting in it, at the steering wheel.

“Hey!” he shouts, “Let me give you a ride!”

“No thanks,” I say, continuing to walk.

“Please,” he shouts, “I insist!”

“You’re being a creep!” I shout back.

“Can you please just accept a genuine offer?” he argues.

I ignore him and keep walking.

He inches along beside me and I finally give in and get into the passenger’s seat.

“Where am I taking you?” he asks.

“Just go straight and I’ll tell you when to turn.”

We drive in silence.

“Did you have a good day today, besides the weather?” he finally asks.

I shrug.

“Well I did,” he tells me, “I’m happy you’re letting me give you a ride. It’s too cold and wet outside for you to walking by yourself.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I respond, staring out the window.

We continue driving in silence. I think he’s nice to be giving me a ride but that doesn’t mean I need to make conversation with him.

When we get to my house, he parks.

“Thanks for the ride,” I say to him. I gather my things to get out of his car.

“Before you go inside, can we maybe talk for a minute?”

“About what?”

“I’m sorry if I did something to annoy you or piss you off. Whatever it was, I’m trying to make up for it.”

“Like I said before, you didn’t do anything.”

He stares at me confused.

“Let me help you understand,” I tell him, straightening my posture, “Guys are always nice until they get something they want. Or you know, things just change. Guys never stay nice for long. I feel like… why not just skip to the point? Are you going to lead her on? Hit it a quit it? Commit to her and then cheat on her? Take your pick. I’m sure it’s any or all of the above. I don’t need to be fake nice to you and you don’t need to be fake nice to me when your intentions really aren’t nice at all. I really hate putting all guys into one giant category of ‘asshole’ but based off of my experiences, it’s what I’ve come to. There’s nothing you did specifically to make me feel this way. I’m not a lesbian or a ferocious feminist or anything… It’s just that all of you men in general… you all sort of disgust me.”

He appears to be speechless.

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” I tell him, opening his car door to get out.

“Wait,” he says stopping me. “What kinds of things have you experienced that make you feel this way now?”

“It doesn’t really matter does it? I’m sure you’ve probably f****d over a good amount of girls in your lifetime. I don’t really get what you’re trying to accomplish with me because I won’t be added to your list.”

“You’re really good at making wrong assumptions about people.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. You’re currently assuming the worst about me.”

“Assuming the worst may be pessimistic of me, but assuming the best is naive. And downright stupid.”

“But you’re pulling assumptions about me from thin air.”

I turn my body completely towards him and look him directly in his eyes.

“Does it honestly look like I give a f**k?” I ask.

I’m so good at pretending I don’t care, I think he actually believes me.

I can tell that he feels disheartened because his eyes are telling me so.

“I’m sorry,” I say to him. “I don’t mean to be so harsh. I just like to make myself clear. Do you think I’m a b***h now?”

“No… I think you’re just angry at the world.”

“Yeah. Well… I might be.”

He doesn’t respond.

Instead he leans over and kisses me.

Unexpected.

I swore to myself that the next time a boy kissed me, he would lose his balls.

After all, I had no plans to ever willingly kiss a boy again.

But I’m lost

in this kiss.

He puts his fingers through my hair and keeps my mouth locked into his and my body is overwhelmed. I’m feeling so many things at one time that I’m not in control of.

He finally lets go and looks at me.

“I don’t know why I like you... I just really do,” he tells me.

“I don’t know what I did to make you like me but I feel very sorry for you that you feel that way about me.”

He laughs.

I smile.

“It would just be really cool if you gave me a try,” he tells me. “Instead of automatically assuming the worst.”

I stare at him, and ponder his statement for a few seconds.

I then tell him,

“Be different than everyone else who claims they’re different.”

I get out of his car and close the door after myself.

I walk through the sprinkling rain and go inside my house, thinking about what just happened with every splashing step.

Am I really doing this?

Letting him ruin my balance? My perfect peace?

I fall onto the sofa, elated, as soon as I get inside.

“Are you okay?” my mom asks from the kitchen.

“Yes,” I respond, my face buried in the couch cushions.

There is a route I can easily take in order to avoid having my heart shattered.

I can shut this irrational s**t downright now before anything progresses.

I can pretend I don’t know he is next time he talks to me and just cut off all contact. For some reason, the idea of doing that seems so damn difficult. How can I bring myself to ignore such a guy? Even though he’s a guy and I’m supposed to be disgusted by guys.

I must be delusional.

This guy has “Future Heartbreak” written all over his perfect face.

His teeth are too straight.

His lips are too delicious.

His eyes are too f*****g blue!

It’s a trap.

It has to be.

...

“YOU KISSED HIM?!”

Sabrina is holding me tightly by my shoulders, shouting in my face.

We are sitting in my bedroom with the door closed.

“Yeah,” I mumble. “We kissed.”

“Finally,” Tucker says under his breath.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“I knew you couldn’t write off all guys forever.”

“Just because we kissed doesn’t mean anything,” I argue. “I don’t have to date him or even hang out with him. I definitely don’t have to invest emotions into him. It was nothing. It meant nothing.”

The three of us lay down on my bed staring up at my ceiling fan as it rotates around in circles.

“I’m happy for you,” Sabrina says to me.

“Well don’t be,” I tell her, “It didn’t mean anything.”

“Stop lying to us and stop lying to yourself,” she says in a bitchy tone of voice.

I can’t respond to her with anything because she’s right. I am lying to myself.

I know that the kiss meant something.

There’s no denying it.

Tucker, Sabrina, and I push ourselves through school.

I try to figure out how knowledge of linear equations is going to help me later in life. Or algorithms. Or coefficients.

Alexander waits for me in his car in the school parking lot at the end of the school day. I climb into his passenger’s seat and turn to him.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“It’s a surprise,” he tells me.

He drives up the windy road until we get to the Waltman Hills lake.

It looks pretty. The water is glittering and the grass surrounding it is lush.

“It’s so nice here after the rain,” he explains to me.

I’m surprised I haven’t spent more time exploring and discovering places like this.

“Do you want to swim?” he asks.

“I’m not getting all the way in,” I tell him. “It’s too cold.”

We slowly walk into the lake water until we’re in knee deep.

“This is as far as you want to go?” he asks.

I nod.

With one rough shove from him, I’m suddenly submerged in water.

I come to the surface and shriek at him, my hair and makeup instantly ruined by the ice cold water.

I grab his arm and yank him in with me. His entire body splashes into the water beside me but he doesn’t seem to mind how cold it is.

He floats back up to the surface, takes me in his arms, and kisses me.

This time with more passion than the first time he kissed me in his car.

He looks at my face, arms latched around my body and says,

“You are so f*****g pretty.”

I can tell that he’s not lying because he’s looking at me with these eyes that I’ve never been looked at with before. Danny never even looked at me with these eyes.

I feel myself rapidly fall for him, in under three seconds.

I feel something so strong in me that it’s uncontainable.

The stone that my heart is

crumbles away

and I can feel it pumping back to life.

“I love you,” I say to him.

It literally slips out of my lips.

I want to snatch the words back up so quickly as if I never said them, but it’s too late.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, “I really shouldn’t have said that. It’s too soon.”

“It’s okay,” he says, holding me even tighter.

“I said that so fast…” I mumble. “You think I’m crazy don’t you?”

“You aren’t crazy. Love isn’t something that gradually builds up anyway. It’s instant…”

He kisses me again and for a second it feels like the entire world makes sense.

He takes me under water with him and somehow we start to remove each other clothes. No thinking, just doing.

No wondering if it’s right or wrong, just knowing.

I feel him go inside me and I start wishing that he was the first one to go inside me.

I wish the first time was with him, but instead of letting myself rekindle regretful thoughts,

I let myself sink into the moment I’m in.

With him.

Wishing it would never end.

Afterwards, we swim to the water’s edge and struggle to put our clothes back on. We’re unsuccessful to instead we run, dripping wet, to his car. He finds a couple pieces of dry clothes in his trunk and we put them on. I ring out my hair and lean against his car, catching my breath, and adjusting to the cold air against my wet skin.

“I don’t know how I’ve gotten by so long without knowing you,” he says to me.

He presses against the front of me and kisses me.

“I wish we didn’t have to go back,” I whisper.

“We’ll be going back together. That should make it feel a little better, right?” he asks.

“It would. But I don’t know how you’ll feel about me tomorrow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Guys never stick around.”

“I’m not going to do what other guys do, Claire. Give yourself a chance to trust me. Just once.”

We get into his car and drive back down the hill. He drops me off at my house and kisses me goodbye.

I stand in the shower, my forehead pressed against the wall. A tear sheds down my cheek and it’s instantly washed away by the fresh water washing over me from my shower head.

My heart aches.

I’ve allowed him in. I’ve given him the opportunity to break me.

If he breaks me, I’ll be worse than I was after Danny…

If he breaks me, I will be ten times worse because I knew what to avoid and I gave into it anyways.

If he breaks me I don’t think I could bear it.

Sabrina, Tucker, and I walk through the hallway of our high school before class.

They are passionately discussing college. Tuition, class scheduling, professors, etc. I have a hard time focusing, because all I can think about is what happened at the lake with Alexander.

Sabrina, Tucker, and I all purposely applied for Shorewell University together and we all got accepted.

We applied for other schools of our own choices too, of course, but our ultimate plan was to attend Shorewell together.

“I’m not sure if Shorewell is the right school for me anymore,” Sabrina says to us.

Tucker stops walking in his tracks and stares at her with big eyes. “Why not?”

“I’ve been considering Dukesmith. I got accepted there too and it’s such a beautiful campus. It’s only a couple of hours away and they have a great program for my major.”

“Have you been considering this for a while now?” Tucker asks her, nearly gaping. He sounds appalled.

“Sort of,” she mumbles. “I mean Shorewell is cool and everything but the only reason I’d really choose to go there is because you two are going there too.”

“Well if you don’t want to go to Shorewell I don’t see a reason for me to go there either,” I say, “I was thinking about going somewhere else too. Or maybe not even going to college at all. I’m really on the fence about it all.”

I’ve never admitted that to my friends before and I haven’t even dared admit it to my mom, but college has become something I’ve been questioning. I know I should go but a huge part of me doesn’t want to. The fact that I’ve said it aloud makes me feel somehow unburdened.

“Wow,” Tucker says, interrupting my thoughts, “This is so f****d up. I’m the only one who really took our plan to go to Shorewell together seriously?”

“I’m the only one who took our plan to not attend prom seriously,” I argue.

“Prom is irrelevant right now,” Tucker says to me. “I can’t believe you’re considering going to college so far away from me, Sabrina.”

“For Pete’s sake, Tucker. Don’t you want me to be happy?” Sabrina asks him. “Shorewell isn’t the best place for me. I’ve been doing a lot of research and... it’s just not.”

“And you figured this would be the perfect moment to break this news to me?” Tucker asks, his tone of voice rising.

“I don’t want to keep it a secret anymore,” she responds.

“But I can’t apply for Dukesmith now, it’s too late!” Tucker is starting to sound exasperated.

“Well we don’t have to go there together. We’ll be fine if we don’t go to the same college. Why wouldn’t we be?”

Tucker appears to be confused and sad that Sabrina wouldn’t want to go to the same university as him. His facial expression says it all. Sabrina is shocked and sad that Tucker isn’t understanding her perspective. Her facial expression also says it all.

They usually never argue so this heated exchange of words between them is making me fairly uncomfortable.

I see Alexander coming towards us from the other end of the hallway. I start to feel butterflies dancing in my stomach so I try to mentally calm myself down.

He approaches and hands me a bouquet of flowers that he had been hiding behind his back.

“What are these for?” I ask him, my heart thudding.

“Prom. I’d really like it if you went with me.”

Everyone in the hallway stops what they’re doing to watch this scene unfold.

Last week I would have pushed the flowers into his face and said “f**k no.” I would have scoffed at the sappiness of it all or maybe even laughed at the novelty of it.

Today, I accept the flowers, hug him tightly, and say, “Yes.” I feel like a different person than I was and it’s very strange.

But it’s strange in a good way.

Sabrina and Tucker momentarily stop their argument as we all walk down the hallway together in a row.

Alexander and me, and then Sabrina and Tucker.

Like two happy high school couples, living the teenage dream.

I’m one of those girls who gets asked to prom with flowers in front of everybody now.

I’m one of those girls.

No longer the girl who watches everyone else get asked to prom in romantic ways and pretends she’s unaffected by the teenage dreams around her.

It’s something that guy’s will never understand.

They have so much power and they don’t even realize it or utilize it.

The simple act of handing a girl flowers in the hallway, makes all the difference in the world.

A guy telling a girl she looks beautiful can change the trajectory of her entire day… just the simple handful of words: “You look beautiful.”

If they only knew what a difference their words and actions could make in a girl’s heart.

They tend to be so oblivious.

Somehow Alexander read right through my “I don’t give a f**k” persona and did what he somehow knew I wanted. So unexpected.

So... what I’ve wanted.

I hold the flowers close to me and I feel different.

It seems surreal. Completely unrealistic.