CHAPTER TWO #2
“Babe! There you are. I’m so glad you’re here. Paulie was helping me find my shoe.”
That was the lamest excuse I’d ever heard.
I snorted. “You somehow lost your shoe by the back alley dumpsters of the Mexican restaurant?”
“Well… yes.” Her blue eyes were open wide and staring up at me with zero guile. She was un-fucking-believable.
“Cut the crap. I saw y’all. You were going at it, and from the looks of things it wasn’t the first time.”
Paulie went white as a sheet, but Annika just pouted. “Oh, come on, Tim. We’re in high school. It’s hard to be faithful with so many options around, you know?”
“What the fuck, Annika? You said you loved me.” I was dangerously close to crying, which would be about the worst thing I could do right now.
“I do love you! I just like to… try things with other people.” She shrugged like it was no big deal.
“Man, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have touched your girl. It’s just… well, she and I have had kind of a thing for a while now,” he admitted.
“How long?” I could feel my heart breaking into a million pieces.
“Don’t.” Annika put a hand on his arm and shook her head at him.
He shook her off. “A couple of years.”
I was speechless for a moment. I stared between the two of them. Two years. We’d been together for four. So, half of that time she’d been lying to me. And one of my best friends had been, too.
Annika tried to come over and hug me, but I stepped away from her. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed at her.
She frowned, her pretty face turning to a calculating expression I’d never seen before. “It stops now,” she said firmly. “I swear. From now on, it’s just you and me.”
I laughed without humor and rubbed the back of my neck. “It’s a bit late for that, considering I thought it had been just you and me since we were fourteen years old.” I shook my head. “What about Jayne?”
Paulie looked like the one about to cry now. “Don’t tell her. Please don’t tell her. It will crush her.”
I sneered at him. “She deserves so much better than you. You know that, right? Than both of you.” I turned to Annika. “Some friend you are.”
“Jayne doesn’t want to sleep with anyone yet. Can you imagine how that makes poor Paulie feel?” She rubbed his arm. “You know guys have needs. I’m taking care of that for her so he won’t break up with her.”
“You’d break up with her because she’s not ready to fuck you?” I stared at Paulie. I’d been friends with him since we’d been on the same T-ball team in second grade. He had changed sometime over the past couple of years without me noticing.
Paulie shrugged. “I gotta have sex, man. You know how that goes. Annika’s kind of doing me and Jayne a favor, you know?”
I was disgusted. “The two of you deserve each other.” I looked at Annika. “We’re over. I never want to talk to you again.” I turned to walk away from them but thought better of it. “And I’ll be letting Jayne know just how ‘helpful’ your little arrangement is for her.”
Both of them freaked out, begging me not to tell Jayne. I just shook my head as I walked away.
“If you walk away from me,” Annika shouted after me, “you won’t have any friends left at school. It’ll just be you and that nerdy little ugly girl you hang out with all the time.”
I turned. “Are you kidding? I didn’t make friends through you.
I’ve had the same friends my entire life.
You moved here in eighth grade. All of these people are my friends not yours.
And don’t ever talk about Nat like that again.
She’s not ugly, and she’s a hundred times better person than you are. ”
“Don’t walk away from me,” she screamed. She was losing her shit. “No one breaks up with me!”
“Fuck off,” I said calmly, as I walked back into the Mexican restaurant and sat down with my table of friends.
***
Over the next few months, I mainly hung out with Natalie.
She and I played with her tortoises, who she’d named Anne and Gilbert after the two main characters of Anne of Green Gables.
We were pretty sure they were both boys, but neither of us thought Anne would mind.
The tortoise, that is. Not the fictional character.
I’d found out the hard way that young love rarely lasts. I’d also found out to trust the people closest to you. Nat had told me over and over that Annika wasn’t a good person, but I hadn’t believed her.
It turned out that Annika hadn’t just been with Paulie. She’d been with half the guys in our grade. It was shocking to find out that I’d trusted her so blindly and that I’d been oblivious about her many hook-ups with other guys.
I didn’t exactly vow to never have another girlfriend, but I’d found that I was having a really hard time trusting anyone.
I slowly found myself turning into a one and done kind of guy.
I hated the term hit it and quit it, but that’s basically who I was now.
I always made sure the girls knew what was up before going on a date with them.
I could tell Nat, my older sister Sadie, and my parents were disappointed in me. It felt bad, but not bad enough to put my heart on the line again. Besides, there wasn’t anyone else in town I was interested in having a relationship with anyway.
So, I’d just started fucking around. The first girl I was with had been Jayne. After I’d told her what Paulie and Annika did, she was devastated. Then she asked me to take her virginity to get back at both of them, and we fucked a few times where Paulie and Annika were sure to run across us.
Was it petty? Hell, yes. Was it also a way for both of us to heal?
Absolutely. Annika lost most of her friends after what she did to me became widely known.
It wasn’t long before she and her family moved away, and I know she was relieved to get a fresh start somewhere else.
Small towns can be rough when the gossip turned against you, whether it was deserved or not.
I felt sorry for whoever fell for her next.
The way my relationship with Annika ended changed me, and there didn’t seem to be any going back. I had loved her, and that love had made me na?ve. I would never let that happen to me again. It wasn’t long before my new reputation as a player solidified, and it just became who I was.
And for the most part I was fine with it. I fucked all the pretty girls I wanted to in town, and somehow remained friends with them afterwards.
The only real relationships I had with women were my family members and Nat. And I was just fine keeping it that way forever.