CHAPTER 2
I’m sitting outside of the library, beside the big window that birds smash into and then fly away. Only the lucky birds fly away. It’s like a bird graveyard along that wall. They should put curtains up, or a picture of hawk; something to make them rethink their flying choices.
“There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Patrick says and he sits down beside me, unlit cigarette in his mouth.
“I’ve been sitting here, admiring the view.” I turn around and look at the window.
“How many have flown into it since you got here?”
“Five.”
“How many of them flew away?”
“Four.”
“Sad story.” He lights his cigarette and doesn’t inhale and the smoke rolls out of his nose.
Patrick’s a good friend. When I say he’s a good friend, I mean Patrick would take a bullet for me, even if I was a terrorist and had taken people hostage. That’s how much he cares and how forgiving he is. In tenth grade, I slept with his girlfriend when we were both drunk, and even though he was pissed, he never yelled at me, or cursed, or even went off. He just let that be that, and broke up with her. Never called her names, never got mad at her either. Just, let it go.
“I’m beginning to dislike this campus more and more.” I say.
“Yeah, I’m right there with you. It’s like every year it keeps getting worse. But maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be? Like we’ve overstayed our welcome.”
“I’ll say I’ve overstayed my welcome when they’re done sucking money out of my account.”
“I’m right there with you.”
Patrick takes a long drag and looks up at the sky, then looks at me.
“So I ran into Ashley earlier.” Patrick says.
“Who’s Ashley?”
“The blonde girl you met at John’s party last week. The one who gave you her phone number. The one who couldn’t keep her eyes off of you.”
“What’d she have to say?”
“Wanted to know why you hadn’t texted her yet.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“Told her your phone was broken.”
“Good cover.”
“She asked how I got in contact with you, and I told her smoke signals.” He says, as he blows out two puffs of smoke. ’You really do need to get out there and find someone. She was cute too.”
“She wasn’t my type.”
“What is your type? Short, brunette girl? Half Asian, half Portuguese with an eye patch and a stutter?”
“No. She can be tall.” He laughs and puts the cigarette down.
“Seriously though. You need to find someone. You’ve been single for five months now. It’s time you got back in the flow of things. Start fucking drunk girls at parties who can’t remember their own names.”
“I’ve been single for four months.”
“The fact that you’ve been counting shows that you want back in.”
“That fact that you’ve been counting shows that you have an obsession with my love life.” I say.
“Just because Jessica cheated on you doesn’t mean the next one will. You can’t put everyone into that category. Look at me and Sarah. We’ve been dating for three years now. There were some shit girlfriends before her, but look what I have now. It all pays off eventually.”
“See, you’re the settling type though. You’re the type of guy who wants a long lasting relationship. The type of guy who can put up with the bullshit if it doesn’t matter in the long run. It’s something I just can’t do.”
“Well, then I don’t know what the to tell you. Either start fucking around, dating around, whatever, or be stuck in this rut for the rest of your life, thinking about Jessica and her five other boyfriends.” He stands up and throws down his cigarette and I stomp on it, before he can.
“I’ll be okay. Just give me some more time.” We start walking down the sidewalk, passing by freshmen running to class with their backpacks flapping in the wind.
“Do you ever think Jessica feels guilty?” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you ever think she feels bad for cheating on me. Like, do you think she ever just wants to call and say she’s sorry ‘Please forgive me? I was a fool for cheating on you. I apologize, from the bottom of my heart. Could you ever excuse my cunt-like behavior?’ He snorts when he laughs, then starts to cough.
“I don’t think you’re going to get it out of her. Unless the boyfriend she cheated on you with ends up cheating on her. But knowing Jessica, I’d say she’s already cheating on him. So, in all honesty, no, I don’t think she feels bad. That’s how the world works though. That’s how people live. That’s the person who goes to sleep at night and sleeps for hours. The person who has no regrets, or no morals, and they don’t see where they’ve done anything wrong.”
“Fuckers.” I say.
“Yep.”
We stop walking and get to a coffee shop that looks exactly like a crack den, but it’s got the “best coffee in town” according to Patrick. I tell him I don’t really give a shit, and that I put enough creamer in my coffee to make it taste more like creamer than coffee. We go inside and it’s dark, but crowded. The music is blasting as loud as it possibly can, so there’s no way you can distinguish the difference between voices and music. There are a ton of kids, all sitting at booths, dressed like they just got out of a time machine that puts them in the ugliest possible clothing. There are a couple of people by themselves in the big chairs, reading, but I don’t know how they can read with the music being as loud as it is. I like to think that they’re not actually reading. That they’re just sitting down with a book in front of them to look cool. Maybe one day I’ll catch one of them with their book upside down.
“Hi, can I take your order?” The cashier says to Patrick, and Patrick pauses for a moment, forgetting that there’s a gigantic menu behind the counter.
“Can I just get a large, dark roast, no cream or sugar?”
“That’ll be $2.46.” He pulls out his wallet, hands her the card, she swipes it and then prints out a receipt that he has to sign, but he just scribbles what looks like hieroglyphics.
“I like your shirt! Where’d you get it?” She says to me, very flirtatious, and Patrick nudges me with his elbow.
“I got it from a homeless guy. He was selling them for a buck a piece. It still has the smell of cheap soup on it.” She stops smiling and asks me what I want. I tell her a medium white chocolate mocha, hand her a five and tell her to keep the change.
“Smooth.” Patrick says as he sips his coffee.
“She has a lazy eye. I wasn’t sure who the compliment was for.” I pick up my coffee, which is probably three quarters coffee and one quarter spit.
We sit down at a booth and the people behind us are whispering something about either me or Patrick. We can’t tell which one. They’re all young sorority girls. Probably just came from buying their first, but not last, morning after pill.
“Can you make out a goddamn word any of them are saying?” Patrick leans in and whispers to me.
“I’m pretty sure I heard weird, and retarded spliced in there. But who knows? They might just be talking about each other.”
This is the thing I hate about coffee shops and will always hate about them. Your conversation, no matter how important it is, is never as important as the conversation beside you. So, if you’re talking loud enough to where someone can hear you, chances are they’re soon to be screaming about somebody that they ran into last week, and your conversation drifts away into nothingness.
“So me and Sarah are going up to the mountains this weekend if you’d want to come along.” I shrug and look at my coffee.
“No, you guys go. I’d play third wheel and ruin every romantic moment you two would have.”
“Do you think we’d end up pushing you off the mountain?”
“Either that or I jump.”
One of the girls that were sitting behind us gets up and walks to the bathroom, and another one of her friends follow. They’re wearing grey sweat pants and have the college logo basically tattooed on their skin with how many logos they have on. They’re walking advertisements.
“Do you ever get the feeling that God ran out of ideas on how to make women, so he re-used a copy of some dumb one and just made a million of them?” I say.
“Yeah, I get that feeling a lot. It’s like having déjà vu mixed with gonorrhea.”
“It’s a shame. When did they stop making girls with personalities?”
“I think it was around the time they stopped telling women to smoke during pregnancy.”
We hear a bit of tossing and turning in the booth behind us, and then a brown haired girl whose face is covered so thick in foundation that she might be a clown, pops her head up and looks straight at me, and Patrick turns his head around, and then turns back to me with a sour look on his face.
“Who are you assholes talking about?”
“Which part of the conversation did you hear?” Patrick turns and says to her.
“The part about girls not having personalities.”
“Oh, that was just about some friends of ours. You might know them actually. They’re in your sorority. In fact, you might just be one of them. I start to lose track of who’s who.” I say, smiling as I say it.
“Fuck you, you small dicked fuckers.” She yells, but nobody in the coffee shop notices because of how loud the music is.
“No need to shout. You might have some type of airborne STD that hasn’t been discovered yet. I don’t want that getting in my coffee” Patrick says, and when he finishes, he picks up his coffee to take a sip only to have the brunette smack it out of his hands, where it lands on the table and spills everywhere.
Patrick gets up, the girl not realizing that he’s 6’4, and a giant compared to all of them, and most of the guys in the coffee shop.
“Now hold on just a moment. You got coffee all over my table. Think you could come clean it up?” At this point, I’m laughing so hard I don’t notice the girls from the bathroom coming back.
“What’s going on here?” The shorter, blonder and slightly more attractive of the two says, with a very concerned look on her face, like she’s the deputy of the coffee shop.
“Nothing, mam. I was just asking your friend to clean up the coffee she spilled on our table.” Patrick bows a little, and I’m still laughing, but not loud enough to give up his act.
“Meredith, why did you spill this guy’s coffee?”
“He was being an asshole.” She says, her eyes getting kind of watered up, about to do some fake crying to pull sympathy from her friend.
“Then I think you kind of deserved it” the short blonde says, shrugging her shoulders.
The rest of the girls from the booth get up and are all standing beside each other, except the brunette, who is still fake crying in her corner behind Patrick. The cashier with the lazy eye comes over and is looking at all of us, because no one is talking.
“What happened?” she says with the biggest look of confusion on her face.
“These assholes were making fun of my friends.” The blonde says, and as much as I want to punch her in the throat, I know that no matter what we say, no matter what we do, that all of the friends will lie to back up the blonde girl’s story.
“I must apologize” I stand up. ‘It will never happen again. My friend Patrick here’s Grandmother just died today, so he’s just working through the stages. Now, I’m sure we can all just work through this and forgive each other.”
The cashier looks at the blonde girl, and back at me, and then pulls a towel from her apron and starts wiping up the coffee.
“Poor, Grandma.” Patrick starts fake crying to mock the brunette. “She never saw that dump truck coming.”
“It’s going to be okay, buddy. Let’s get you out of here.” I pat him on the back and we make our way to the door, when one of the girls tries to trip me up, and I skip my leg over it.