Chapter 2
Lydia
THIS IS UNBEARABLE. How could I have ended up on the same flight to Vegas as Cole Jacobson? I didn’t even know he lived here in Michigan. What happened to Houston? This is all Josh’s fault. He never tells me anything. Not to mention, he has a complete buffoon as his oldest friend. I just wish his oldest buffoon friend didn’t smell so good.
We’re sitting at the bar now, and I’ve moved on from my two shots–both of which were actually just water, because thankfully the bartender is a dear who didn’t shy away from my request for subterfuge–to a rum and Coke.
Unfortunately, this rum and Coke appears to be more rum than Coke because it’s going straight to my head, which is the exact opposite of what I want to happen in the presence of Cole Jacobson. Drinking two straight shots of tequila without blinking was supposed to make him see how cool and suave I’ve turned out. Or is suave more of a male term? Whatever, I don’t even care. The point is, I think my plan has backfired because the bartender–who I thought was my friend–has given me a glass of rum with only a splash of Coke, and now I keep having to firmly tell my fingers to stay where they are so that they don’t do what they want to do. Namely, reach up and run themselves through Cole Jacobson’s hair.
Cole says something, and I jerk my attention away from my traitorous fingers and towards him, mentally drawing a unibrow on his face in the hopes that this will make him less attractive. Sadly, the rum has mucked up my usual imaginative powers, and I end up just staring at his eyebrows and lamenting the fact that while I have to shape my eyebrows weekly, his appear to possess a natural arch. Have I mentioned I hate him? And yes, I know Christians aren’t supposed to hate people, but I’m not actually sure he’s even a person. He’s more of an unfeeling robot. Or possibly a cyborg.
“So Lyddi-uh, Lydia,” he corrects himself with an apologetic cough, and I listen for the telltale signs of metal squeaking. Nothing. As far as I’m concerned though, this just means he’s a well-oiled robot. “What have you been up to in the last decade?”
My eyes whip down to meet his, sure he’s making fun of me, but there’s a genuine question there. My posture relaxes ever so slightly. He doesn’t know. Josh hasn’t told him. That’s something anyway. He’ll find out soon enough though, since this weekend is only the first leg of Josh’s wedding marathon. Vegas bachelor/bachelorette parties here we come. Then in four weeks I’ll be flying home again for the wedding itself, complete with a rehearsal dinner and morning-after-the-wedding brunch/gift opening extravaganza. Since Cole is one of Josh’s groomsmen, he’ll be in attendance at most, if not all, of these events. No way he spends more than five minutes with my mother before my entire disastrous life pops up in conversation. Scratch that, I should have said, before my entire disastrous life dominates the conversation.
You’d think that my parents would be proud of their daughter. I graduated high school with a 3.9 GPA, then earned myself a cross country scholarship to help fund my college education; and sure, it was just a small, division three college, but in my book anytime your child manages to land themselves an athletic scholarship it’s a pretty big deal. Somehow though, the last two years of my life have completely eclipsed any of my previous successes and marked me as a disappointment.
“Oh you know,” I blow a breath up, fluttering my bangs around my forehead, “this and that. High school. College. Adulthood.”
“Right. Adulthood.” Cole sips his drink. “Fun times, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, a real thrill ride.” I take a too big sip and repress a shudder as the rum hits my sinuses. “I love paying bills and cleaning my own bathroom.”
Cole laughs, and even though he’s enemy number 1, I like the sound. It buoys my depressed mood ever so slightly, and I allow myself to relax into my chair.“
Looks like you’ve done well for yourself in the bill paying department,” he gestures to my outfit, and I refrain from telling him that I’ve borrowed the whole outfit from my roommate who is going to be furious with me if I can’t get this mustard stain out. I also refrain from mentioning that I’m only dressed this way because I had to come straight here from a job interview. An interview for a job I most definitely didn’t get since I overheard the secretary saying that Mr. Nelson, my interviewer, had his niece coming in for an interview next. Funny, I missed the part of the job ad that said, non-family need not apply.
“I am able to pay my bills,” I reply vaguely. Which is true. I have no spending money to speak of, and I exist largely on off-brand Pop-tarts and yogurt, but I pay my rent without fail thanks to my jobs subbing and coaching girls running at Faith Christian, a small middle school right outside of Holland, Michigan. Of course, the job I didn’t get today was a cozy office job. One that would’ve afforded me the opportunity to buy name brand Pop-tarts. But it’s fine. I do love the girls I coach, and I’ve never really been one for desk jobs anyway.
Cole finishes his beer and slides the empty mug across the counter, raising his finger to indicate he wants another.
“How about you?” I ask, fighting to sound less interested than I actually am. Mentally I kick myself for striking up a conversation with him in the first place. I should’ve pretended not to recognize him. Or better yet, been all, Oh my gosh, I forgot that you even existed Cole Jacobson!
“I too pay my bills,” he says with a wink that makes me frown. He’s bordering on chummy now, and I’m not having it. Not from him. Not from the guy who made me the “yeah...no” girl for my entire high school career.
Let me explain. Growing up Cole was literally the boy next door that I fell in love with. He, of course, didn’t know about my feelings, but I had great fantasies about us one day getting married. As my brother’s best friend, he was over at our house all of the time, and I imagined that one day he’d realize the depths of his own feelings for me and we’d live happily ever after.
But then, at the end of my eighth-grade year, his dad’s company transferred him to Houston. I was devastated; but my best friend at the time, Whitney Donovan, convinced me that this was the perfect opportunity to confess my feelings. “What have you got to lose?” she’d cajoled me. “He’s leaving.” Her words were what convinced me to attend the good-bye party Josh threw him despite Josh having emphatically told me that I wasn’t invited.
At the time Josh had been crushing hard on Whitney’s older sister Tori, so when Whitney and I walked in behind Tori, Josh had had no choice but to let us stay. No choice but to let us join in on the game of spin the bottle that formed on one side of our cavernous basement. I spent the next four years of high school wishing Josh had made us leave.
I still vividly remember sitting there on my parents’ gray carpet, watching eagerly as the bottle Cole had just spun twirled around the circle, slowing down until at last, by what I’d assumed at the time was the hand of God, it stopped directly in front of me. I barely contained a squeal of excitement as I looked up from the bottle to meet Cole’s gaze, my knees already inching forward to the center of the circle. Cole’s eyes found me, and he gave a soft chuckle. “Yeah...no,” he said, then he grabbed the bottle and spun it again. That time it landed on Ashley Allen, a senior cheerleader, and Cole happily kissed her while I made a mad dash to the bathroom to prevent anyone from seeing my tears.
Now I know what you’re thinking: that’s not that bad. At least not bad enough for me to harbor a decade old grudge. He was almost eighteen, I was thirteen, it made sense he wouldn’t want to kiss me. The thing is, if it had all ended there, I may have been able to forgive him and move on. But it didn’t. Instead, those fateful words, “Yeah...no,” followed me through the next four years. I became the “Yeah...no” girl.
Freshman year I ran for class president, and Whitney Donovan made a last-minute decision to run against me. And guess what her slogan was? “Vote for Lydia Hamlin? Yeah...No.” She told the whole school the story of those words, and I lost by a landslide. Needless to say, we weren’t best friends anymore after that.
Then there was the time I asked Theo Murphy to the Sadie Hawkins dance. His answer, “Yeah...no.” Followed by raucous laughter.
Over and over again, that phrase was used against me. Always sure to make me a laughingstock. It even popped up in youth group my junior year. Our leader Miranda, a cool college girl with pink hair and a nose ring, suggested one night that we practice abstinence. She was going on and on about how oftentimes believers can find themselves in sexual situations where they are so overcome by lust that they may find themselves struggling to remember their beliefs. Her plan to counteract this was to put on abstinence skits. She went around giving us specific scenarios and pairing us up so that we could practice what we might say should we find ourselves in such a situation. It was a mark of how cool we all thought she was that any of us even agreed to this in the first place.
My partner Liam and I practiced our scene as we’d been told. When it came time to perform in front of everyone, I stepped up to him, feeling stupid as I pretended to try and kiss him. As I leaned in, Liam went off script, taking a step back and looking me up and down he said with a cheeky grin, “Yeah...no.” The laughter of the group in the minutes that followed still haunts my dreams.
“Attention airport guests,” a voice comes over the loudspeaker, yanking me from my memories. “Unfortunately, we are experiencing flight delays owing to inclement weather. Please standby for more information.”
Flight delays? I frown, glancing out the window to see that while Cole and I have been talking, the light snow I’d driven through to get here has turned into a full-on blizzard. Groaning, I put my head in my hands. I do not want to be stuck at this airport with Cole any longer than I have to be.
“Great,” Cole sighs and pulls out his phone, opening the weather app to view the forecast. “Snow for the next eight to ten hours.” He sighs again, knocking back the last swig of his beer then standing up. “We’re not going anywhere tonight.”
I’m about to ask him how he can be so sure, when my eyes catch sight of the flight signs on the wall over his shoulder. The big white letters next to the flights have very suddenly switched to flashing canceled . Oh no.
“You’d better finish your drink quickly or leave it,” Cole says. “Unless you want to end up sleeping on one of the chairs in the terminal.”
“Wait, what?” I stare at him without comprehension.
“Look around.” He gestures to the hordes of people I suddenly notice streaming towards the various service desks. Anxiously I throw back the last of my own drink. “Everyone here is now trying to find somewhere to sleep. They’ll be asking the airport to pay for hotels. It’ll take hours.”
“So what are you suggesting?” I ask him. My head has started spinning a little from the rum.
“I know a guy,” he tells me, holding up his phone. “He can get us booked into some rooms at the airport Holiday Inn if we move fast. ”
He knows a guy? What is he in the mob? I eye the windows once more, debating my options. I can’t drive home in this, that’s for sure. Especially not when I’ll just have to turn around tomorrow and drive back. And it’s not just my safety I’m thinking about. The cost of gas for that trek is outside of what I’ve budgeted for this trip.
“I think I’d better just get in line,” I tell him, gesturing to the forty people deep lines snaking around the terminal. “Better to be at the hotel the airport chooses, so I can make sure I get all of the flight updates.” No way I’m telling him the real reason. The airline will surely pay the cost of the hotel room if I book through them.
“I’ve got an app for that,” he says reasonably. I have no good response to this, so instead I choose to simply shuffle slightly sideways towards the closest line. “You did hear me say rooms,” he adds, “plural. This isn’t me trying to seduce you or something.”
Now that gives me pause. His words instantly turning me into that thirteen-year-old girl sprinting out of the circle as he kissed some other girl. I straighten to my full height, throwing back my shoulders like I don’t have a blob of mustard splattered across my chest. I’m not sprinting off this time.
“Please, as if you’d have a chance even if you were.”
Then I see it, the spark of amusement that lights in his eyes at my words. Which, okay, may be because I made the mistake of tossing my hair, which obviously didn’t have the desired effect since my hair is currently securely fastened into a bun. Basically, instead of pulling off the hot-girl-with-long-hair move, I provided him with the perfect demonstration of how to act should he ever find himself holding a slip of paper that says Seabiscuit while playing charades. Even so, that spark ignites something inside me. He thinks the very idea of him not having a chance with me is funny? That he’s just that irresistible? Yeah...no.
“Okay fine.” I heave an overdramatic sigh, as if I’m the one doing him the favor. “I’ll go to the hotel with you.”
Cole raises an eyebrow, like he’s not buying my nonchalance, but then just nods.
“Okay, then. Let’s go.”
He heads off, and I follow closely behind him. Now that I’m paying for a hotel room on top of all the other expenses of this trip, I may have to forego actually ordering dinner at the fancy five-star restaurant Josh’s fiancée Delia chose for her bachelorette party; but if this night goes as planned, I will be too high on life to even care. Cole thinks he’s such hot stuff with his soft hair and jeans so worn-in they leave little to the imagination in terms of his sculpted, uh, anyway…Where was I? Right. He may think he can just brush me off the way he did when we were teenagers, but I’ve learned a little bit about men in the last decade. Even dated a few. So, yeah. I know what men want. Believe me, what they want is the reason the last two guys I’ve dated broke up with me . They found out I wouldn’t give it to them. The laughter that came following my abstinence skit with Liam may have stuck with me, but so did the point of the whole lesson. No sex till marriage. But Cole doesn’t know that, does he? So won’t it be fun to make him think he has a chance, then at the last-minute look him in the eye, give a soft chuckle and say, “Yeah...no.”