Chapter 16 Interview Time #3
“What?” I asked him. I could sense I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear. Instinctively, my hands dropped to my sides and I turned away.
“There’s something you need to know.”
“What?” I asked.
“Remember when I told you I…that I didn’t do anything with anybody for the year we were apart?”
I turned back at him and glared. I didn’t like where this was going. Not one bit. “Oh, so that was a lie? Is that what you need to tell me?”
“I mean, I… OK, I kissed some people, you know. And with some people it went a little farther than that. Don’t think I was out there just hooking up with just whoever, though.”
“What about Vivian? Does she count as just whoever?”
“It’s not that simple,” he said.
“Oh, it’s not? Because it sure sounds like it is.
You either slept with her or you didn’t.
Tell me what’s complicated about that? You do realize you lied to me, right, Jack?
You asked me to be sincere, and I have been one hundred percent honest with you since then, and now it turns out you lied to me about sleeping with someone? !”
“I didn’t know how you’d react!”
“How the hell do you want me to react?!” I screamed. “You want me to clap for you? Tell you, hey, great job, Jack? Ask for details?”
Furious, I turned around to walk out, but he grabbed my arm and stopped me. “Jen,” he begged. “I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
“Did you think I couldn’t take it? I mean, we weren’t together at the time. You didn’t owe me anything. But now you supposedly are with me, and you still can’t be honest with me?”
“Supposedly? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I couldn’t believe that was what had gotten to him out of all the things I’d just said. “Drop it, all right?” I told him.
“No, I’m not dropping it. Vivian is my friend. And it was my birthday. She’d been having a tough time, I had, too…and it just happened. It was right after that when I had my relapse. There’s the story. We’ve never done anything again since. No kissing, no nothing. I swear.”
“Jack, please. Don’t lie to me again. I can’t take it. I’ve seen her. She’s charming, she’s hot, she’s a literal fucking movie star. How can you expect me to believe you’re not into her?”
“I do like her, we hang out, but as friends! I’m not attracted to her! I don’t even see her in that way.”
“Great, why’d you sleep with her the first time then?”
That caught him by surprise. His mouth fell open, and unable to find an answer, he decided to strike back at me: “Well what about your charming, hot friend that you just happen to share half your classes with? How many times have I had to hear the name Curtis this year? You don’t see me losing my shit over it! ”
“Please tell me you’re kidding! First of all, Curtis and I don’t even hang out anymore, he’s seeing somebody and he hardly even answers my texts.
And second, you did lose your shit, like an absolute child, the first time he came over, and you haven’t stopped whining about it since.
Third, I’m pretty sure he’s more into guys.
He’s never even hinted at the possibility of us doing anything. ”
“Of course not. He’s probably putting on an act to try and get in your pants later.”
If that wasn’t the most ridiculous thing Jack had ever said, it was pretty far up there, and Curtis cracked up laughing when I told him about it.
It was funny, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t pissed off.
We were out on the lawn in front of the fine arts building, and he actually shook as he lay back on the grass.
“The act I put on,” he repeated. “Please tell me he didn’t actually say that.”
“Of course he did! I couldn’t make that up.”
“What, is he living in the nineteen-seventies? Is he one of those idiots who’s like bi people don’t exist? You know what, I don’t care. What happened afterward? Did you have make-up sex?”
“No. We just argued some more and then slept with our backs turned to each other,” I said.
“That’s how all the greatest love stories end.”
“I’m glad you think my life is so funny,” I told him.
“Seriously, though,” he added, “I get being angry, but you guys were apart when he got with Vivian. He couldn’t change his past by the time you came back, and the real message here is that he wanted to be with you again and was scared he’d lose you.
And that’s nice, in a way. I wonder if there’s not other things going on, too.
Like maybe if you weren’t so worried about your grades, you’d be more chill about it. ”
That was a possibility. The mere mention of school made me check my watch. Grades were getting posted online that day, and I was so nervous, I’d asked him if we could be together to give each other moral support.
“OK,” I admitted, “maybe you have a point. Maybe my nerves have been a little frayed. But you can’t act like him lying to me about sleeping with her isn’t a big deal.”
“I don’t know,” Curtis said. “I just don’t see it that way. Maybe it’s because I’m a guy. Anyway, you’ll probably come home and find out he’s bought you flowers.”
“Screw flowers. I want a cake.”
His phone dinged. It was time. I sat there in a panic as he opened the page on his phone. If his grades are bad, I won’t even look at mine, I thought. That was silly, but it gave me something to hang on to while I was waiting in agony.
“All right,” he began, “here goes: pass, pass, fail, pass, fail. Not bad, right?”
“Curtis! You’re so smart! How did you fail two classes? They’ll put you on academic probation.”
“Whatever, I saw it coming. I’ll be fine. I don’t know what the hell I want to do with my life, anyway, I was already thinking I might go back home for a few months and try to get my head together.”
“You’re unbelievable,” I said, taking out my phone and navigating to the page. Heart pounding, I added, “I guess this is it. Let’s see. A, great. B, OK, sure. A, amazing… Oh my God, Curtis, I passed everything! I just got one C! I can’t believe it!”
I jumped up so high that I sent my phone flying, but I didn’t care—I could get a new one if I had to.
Curtis was excited, too. We fell on the ground and hugged and rolled back and forth, while the other students stared at us, perplexed.
I didn’t care. I’d set a goal for myself, and I’d accomplished it.
I was still overjoyed when I got home that afternoon, so much that I could hardly remember being angry the night before.
Mike and Sue were sitting in the living room when I arrived. I skipped in, and she observed, “I guess you’re not fighting after all.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
Mike explained: “We were arguing about what the hell had happened between you guys that would make my brother go into the kitchen to try and cook dinner. We figured he had to be making up for something he’d done wrong.”
I turned and saw Jack wearing a pair of red oven mitts and pulling a casserole dish out of the oven.
He hadn’t heard us—he had on his noise-canceling headphones.
I grabbed his phone off the counter and saw he was listening to a cooking tutorial on YouTube.
It was so sweet. I walked in there without thinking and tapped him on the shoulder, hoping to see what he was cooking.
“AAAH!” he screamed, twitching and dropping the dish, sending whatever it contained—it was some unidentifiable black-and-red mush, and in all honesty, it looked atrocious—flying across the kitchen.
We both stood there staring briefly at the disaster. “Oops,” I said.
Jack took off the oven mitts with a defeated gesture. “There goes my first and last attempt at cooking lasagna.”
So that charred, runny mass was supposed to be lasagna? I had the feeling I had saved our household from certain death. I to conceal my disgust as I told him, “I’m sorry, Jack. It looked…great.”
“You don’t have to lie,” he said, removing his headphones.
“Did you decide to cook to tell me you’re sorry, or are we celebrating because the school year’s officially over?”
“I was more thinking the second, but if you’ll accept this as an apology, I’m cool with that, too.”
“It’s just two words,” I told him.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hidden something like that, and especially not for so long.
But I meant what I said. There are no feelings there whatsoever.
She’s my friend, that’s all. And she doesn’t have feelings for me, either.
I know she was mean to you. It’s because she’s got this…
idea about you, because of the things I told her a year ago.
I’ve been trying to get her to understand that it was complicated, and that isn’t who you are or were, but she’s struggling with it. ”
“Look, Jack, there’s something I need to admit to myself, too: I did it.
I did leave. I made up that story about Monty because I thought I knew better than you what you were supposed to do with your life.
I can’t keep pretending otherwise. So let’s make a deal: you focus on your things, and I’ll see if I can soften Vivian up.
And if not, it doesn’t matter. But I don’t want you to have to worry about it anymore.
You’ve already got too much on your mind. ”
“Does that mean you forgive me?”
“How about we do this: I’ll clean up your lasagna disaster, you make me your famous chili, and we’ll agree to forgive each other.”
“NO!” Mike and Sue shrieked in unison.
“Don’t listen to them, they’re just a couple of haters,” I said.
“Deal!” Jack shouted. He got to work, and I turned to Mike and Sue, who were groaning with disgust. I stuck my tongue out at them.