Magan Vernon - The Only One

“Psh! She wouldn’t care.” I couldn’t move my wrists and the world felt like it was spinning, so I just leaned forward and put my head on his chest.

“No, Red.” He let go of my wrists and then stepped around me. “I’m not doing this right now.”

“Why not?” I pouted. “Is it because I’m a cancer freak?” I didn’t know where the words came from. There was something about the alcohol that made me say things.

“What the fuck? Where is this coming from?”

Instead of being horny I felt something else bubble inside me. “You. All you wanted to do was jump my bones before you found out I had cancer. Now you stop before we ever go all the way. It’s like you feel sorry enough for me to kiss me, and let me get you off, but not enough to fuck me.”

He stepped forward, shaking his head and putting his hands on my shoulders. “That’s not it at all. You know I care about you. I care about you so fucking much it hurts.”

“Then why won’t you just do me already?”

“Because I care about you too much to just have some mindless sex with you.”

“Pffffft!” I plopped down on the bed. My head was spinning and I wasn’t exactly sure what I was saying.

“Red...” He sat on the bed next to me, putting his hands on the side of my face, meeting my eyes with his. “You know I want you. I’ve done nothing but tell you that. But you just had another procedure done today and you’re shit faced. I’m not going to do something we’ll both regret when you’re sober.”

I shoved his hands down. “So you’d regret me?”

He shook his head, letting out a big sigh. “I didn’t say that.”

“You only think of me as some cancer freak. You’ll make out with me, sure, and take care of me, but when it comes to actually getting down? Oh no. Can’t do that with the cancer girl. Though you’ve probably done it with a million other girls at the Alpha Mu house.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You know how much I care about you. As for the sex, is that what you want? For me to just fuck you tonight while you can barely even stand? I’m not going to do that.”

“I can totally stand. You’re just using it as an excuse.” I fell back on the pillow. I could have stood...maybe.

He groaned. “Melanie, this is ridiculous. I’m not going to sit here and argue with you about sex. If you don’t realize how much I care about you by now, then I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

“Tell me that you want to make love to me and what’s holding you back from doing it.”

“What?”

I didn’t know where the words were coming from, but they all spilled out of me. I met his eyes, looking straight at him. “Tell me what’s holding you back from loving me.”

John mumbled something, but I couldn’t understand him. I wanted to ask, but my head was pounding and my eyes felt so heavy and the bed felt so comfortable.

“Red, are you okay?” He sounded so far away. So far away. I closed my eyes and I couldn’t hear his voice anymore. I couldn’t see his beautiful face and I didn’t have to face his rejection.

When I woke up the next morning my head was pounding. I moaned and rolled over, hoping to bury my head in John’s chest and sleep a little longer. But John wasn’t there. I opened my eyes and the room was too bright. I blinked and felt along the left side of the bed. Empty.

My eyes finally adjusted to the light and I saw a bright yellow sticky note on the pillow. All it said was “Sorry.” I sat straight up. John’s suitcase that was always in the corner was gone. I stood and looked out the window. His jeep wasn’t parked out front. He really was gone. He didn’t even say goodbye.

I heard a loud groan from the couch and I walked around my bookcase. Valerie was spread out on the couch, squinting and unsquinting her eyes. “Never. Drinking. Again.”

“You can say that again,” I muttered.

She rubbed her eyes, her makeup smearing on her hands. “We didn’t do something stupid like have a foursome, did we?”

I let out a breath. “Not unless the foursome involved something that would cause John to leave.”

“What?” She sat up slowly, holding onto her head.

“I don’t remember much, but I think we had a fight and all I have to show for it is a sticky note on my pillow.”

She shook her head. “I’m too hungover to discuss this now, but after breakfast, we will analyze this the whole way home.”

I hadn’t really shopped for groceries since I knew I would be going home, which meant nothing for breakfast, but that was fine with Valerie. Her idea of cooking was picking out a new restaurant anyway. We stopped at a little diner not far from campus. It was open 24 hours and was always crawling with students. But this morning it was empty.

By the time Valerie downed two cups of coffee and ate half her omelet, she finally talked. “Okay, Mel, spill.”

I forked my bacon. I wasn’t really hungry, but Valerie swore that greasy food cured a hangover and my head was pounding. “Spill what?”

She clanked her spoon against her coffee cup, pouring another pound of sugar into it. “What the hell happened with you and John? You two were all over each other on the dance floor and then he just leaves you a sticky note? That does not sound like the same guy.”

“How would you even know what was going on at Gatsby’s? You were all over Brad.”

I looked up as Valerie rolled her eyes. “Oh come on. Don’t put this on me. So I made out with one of John’s random frat brothers. It didn’t hurt anyone and I didn’t care that he left. You actually love this guy.”

I almost choked on my bacon and had to pound my fist against my chest. “I never said that I love John.”

“Yeah, but you do. That’s as plain as day. You need to stop being such a girl about it and get rid of whatever is holding you back and fall in love with full force.”

“Even if I did love him, it takes two people to be in love and by the way he left last night I’m not sure he feels the same way.”

Valerie clanked her spoon on her mug. “Seriously, stop with the pitying. Is this what you did last night to make him leave?”

I could feel the tension building up and I put my hands into tight fists. “No, he left because I did what you said. I wanted to sleep with him and he turned me down.”

She blinked. “Ex squeeze me? Did you just say that the guy that was practically screwing you on the dance floor turned down sex?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Could it have been because you just had another procedure done? Or maybe because you were so drunk that you could barely walk and he didn’t want to do that to you?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t feel that bad after the biopsy and I wasn’t that drunk.”

“Puh-lease. You kept telling me that you were white girl wasted and fell into a garbage can outside the bar.”

“No I didn’t.”

Okay, so that might have explained the bruise on my hip. It still didn’t excuse John for just leaving a sticky note. He had stayed with me through a lot worse things than drunken stupidity.

“Whatever, Mel. It was nice to see you let go, for once, but it was like you still couldn’t get over your insecurities. Just let the boy love you and stop over thinking. I promise that you’ll be much happier.”

“Whatever you say, Val.”

Valerie chatted most of the way back to our mom’s in Princeville, but I was busy checking my phone. I wanted to text John, but I didn’t know what to say. If I really was as drunk as Valerie said I was, who knew what else I probably did. Which made the forty five minute ride home seem like it took even longer when I just kept thinking about all of the stupid things I probably did.

My parents bought a ranch home in a wooded subdivision when it was first built. I was just a little kid when we moved there and was so excited to get out of a tiny apartment and into a place with sidewalks and a fenced in back yard with a wooden swing set. Thirteen years later and the place had lost its luster. It also didn’t help that the more my parents fought, the more the house took the brunt of it. Our grass had long been dead and the siding was more of a beige color than white. It was almost embarrassing to pull up to the house.

“Home sweet home,” I muttered.

“She really needs to just sell this place and get something with less maintenance,” Valerie said, stepping out of the car and grabbing her bag out of the back.

“Agreed. But she never will.”

After the divorce we tried to get mom to get a condo or even just an apartment but she kept saying she would never move. She fought for the house in the divorce and said that she wasn’t going to get rid of something that was paid for.

Mom was still at work when we got there, but at least the house was clean. Last time we went home, she had boxes stacked in the entry way and dirty dishes all over the kitchen. It looked like she got over whatever funk she was in and the house was actually looking a lot better. The living room was freshly painted a light gray color and where it opened to the kitchen, she had new tile laid down. The beige carpets didn’t look like they needed to be vacuumed badly and the hallway to our bedrooms and bathroom was clear of any laundry or other obstacles.

“Looks like mom cleaned up,” Valerie said.

“Yeah.”

I stared at all that she had accomplished, even in my bedroom. She had always left it just as is after I’d left, even though I basically cleared everything out to move, but this time it looked like she had rearranged. The futon I slept on was made with a clean, white quilt and she had a small book shelf and desk to the side of it with some real estate books sitting next to her ancient laptop. I guess my room was doubling as an office. An office she was using to possibly study for her real estate license.