While We Were Apart: Senior Year 4

Chapter 5

I’m not sure what I was expecting. For Morgan to chase after me? For Jeremy to stop me and tell me that I was being an idiot? For me to come to my senses and turn and say I was all wrong?

Instead, I kept walking… walking… walking until it was too late. When I did turn to look back, the door was closed, neither Jeremy nor Morgan standing there waiting. Probably already in the house, Jeremy taking advantage of his vulnerable “friend.”

I felt loss and regret. I felt my whole world blowing away, like I’d torn my life into little pieces and tossed them into the wind. Maybe I should have turned around and marched back up to Jeremy’s. I don’t know. The prospect of dealing with his smug smile was too much.

I found Dan at last. He was eating at the Caf, far less hung over than me. “You look like shit, my friend,” he said over a bowl of Lucky Charms. “How late did you stay out last night?”

I shrugged. “Where did you go?”

“Well, after Denise and I finished dealing with the trainwreck you and Molly caused, we kind of didn’t see much of a reason to go back to the party.” He stared at me, and I caught his meaning.

“She was a cute blonde.”

“Not natural,” he confessed. “Although who cares when she can suck a dick like that?”

“Sounds like you’re in love.” I fell into the seat across from him. “I broke up with Morgan.”

The spoon of cereal actually fell out of his hand, splashing across the table. “You… what?”

I groaned. “Just now. I went to Jeremy’s—”

“Who’s Jeremy?”

“Guy from the study abroad program. Pretty sure they hooked up.”

“And she was there with him?” Dan pressed.

“No, but I thought she was. Guess he texted her. She showed up later.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Still not getting why you broke up.”

“Because she was going to hook up with him eventually,” I said. “Because she deserves a guy like that.”

Dan blinked. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Like… someone good looking who’s going to graduate and make a lot of money and throw fancy parties and shit.”

Dan rubbed his eyes. “You think Morgan wants to marry a… a fuckin’ future lobbyist? Because I don’t think we’re talking about the same girl.”

He did make sense. Where was he when I needed him this morning? “No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what do you mean? And why the hell did you break up with the best thing to ever happen to you?”

“Because it was inevitable.” I said it with enough rage that Dan finally backed off. “Maybe she won’t end up with Jeremy, but I don’t think she’ll end up with me.”

“That’s horseshit, man.” Dan looked frustrated, but also softened his tone when he saw my jaw set. “You two were great—are great. I only joke that she’s out of your league. She’s not. She’s hot, yes, but she’s not hot in the way that… like Rachel is.” Rachel was a girl Dan hooked up with, on and off, until he got tired of how high maintenance she was. “She’s grounded, and better, she makes you grounded.”

“But… but England—”

“You fucked other girls, too!” Dan quieted down when he started to draw looks our way. “Stop being a dumbass hypocrite. Do you want to run off with Molly?”

“No, of course not.”

“So why do you think she wants to run off with this… Jerry guy?”

“Jeremy.”

“Whatever. It’s a phase. It was fun. And she came back to you. She didn’t need to. She could have kept things broken off.”

“I… suppose that’s all true.”

Dan picked up his spoon again and scooped some of the soggy cereal up. “Of course it’s true. So, you going to fix this?”

“No. What’s done is done.” I thought of Jeremy and cringed inside. “I’m thinking of transferring.”

“No you’re not,” he said, incredulous.

“No, I’m not, but I kind of want to crawl into a hole for the rest of this year, just get through graduation and get the hell out of here.”

“Try the library, I hear it’s pretty secluded.”

I shook my head. “That wouldn’t work. I’d definitely run into Morgan there.”

***

The days immediately after the breakup felt like a terrible nightmare, and all I needed to do was will myself to wake from it. Only, “waking up” from this dream would require me to confront what a boneheaded thing that I’d just done, and I was still very much boneheaded about it.

Morgan called. I ignored the calls. I wanted to wallow a little longer. I’d answer her the next time, I told myself. Or the time after that. But the calls didn’t keep coming. After a few days, they just stopped.

“If she really cared, she’d actually come visit,” I told Dan.

“You are a fucking idiot. You broke up with her.”

“Exactly,” I said emphatically, even though it didn’t make any sense.

“So you’re what? Just going to ghost her?”

I nodded. “That is my current plan, yes.”

“You are a fucking idiot,” he repeated. But he left it alone.

I didn’t transfer, of course, but I did keep to myself a lot more. Many of my friends were Morgan’s friends, and I just didn’t want to deal with that. I studied more than I ever had. I worked out everyday—at the older gym on the opposite side of campus. I wallowed in my own misery.

Not that I didn’t see Morgan around. The first time I saw her was over a month since the breakup—amazing how quickly time passed. Dan had talked me into going to a Halloween party at some frat house. She’d come, too, along with Cassidy, from the London program. From the minute I saw her, I realized what a mistake it was to come… and yet I couldn’t make myself leave.

They were quite the pair—Morgan in red as sexy devil, Cassidy in white as sexy angel. Morgan’s costume was nothing more than a midriff baring tube top, a pair of red booty shorts, and red horns in her dark hair.

It was clear from her expression that Cassidy had dragged her here, just as Dan had me. She scanned the crowd with a weariness that I felt all the time now. When her eyes passed me, my heart jumped. I wanted to run before realizing that my identity was hidden behind my Scream mask.

She doesn’t even linger on me, though, one moment she’s there, the next she’s being pulled into the next room by Cassidy, where people were dancing

I skulked around the edges of the party like a total creep, pretending to ignore Morgan while checking her out every chance that I got. Had she always been so sexy? Had her hair always been that long, flowing in light brown waves about her bare shoulders. Had she always been so thin?

I couldn’t help thinking about the last Halloween that we spent together. This was before her trip to London, during our freshmen year. We’d spent it watching a horror movie under a blanket rather than going out. I specifically remember her saying, “I’m not going to dress up as a sexy version of whatever just to get some booze.”

Yet there she was at this party, wearing so little, and looking so… comfortable. It didn’t feel good to watch, yet I couldn’t stop watching.

Morgan wasn’t put off by the attention. If anything she seemed to revel in it now. Her navel piercing flashed red to match her skintight shorts, and her initial reluctance was soon replaced by that easy, casual smile of hers. 

She danced with Cassidy, slinky and sexy, angel and devil putting on one hell of a suggestive show. It was the kind of act that I’d seen a few times before at parties like this—girls trying to catch the attention of guys. I just never thought that I’d see Morgan doing it.

I had to admit, it was pretty effective. It also kept me away. I briefly entertained this fantasy of going up to her, dancing with her, then pulling my mask off and apologizing. In my head, it would be so easy. In my fantasy, all was forgiven.

Then two frat guys moved up behind Cassidy and Morgan, tall, muscular, good looking. The girls separated, dancing with the guys rather than one another. Mission accomplished. My heart sank.

It had been a little over a month since we’d broken up. She’d already moved on. She’d already become someone else—or maybe that transformation had happened in London and I was just now seeing it.

“Hey, let’s get out of here.” It was Dan, suddenly at my side, seeing where my eyes were fixated.

“I’m good,” I said stubbornly.

“Uh, no. You’re really not.”

The frat guy whispered something into Morgan’s ear, glancing towards the stairs as he did so. My stomach dropped. Dan tugged on my arm, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I just stared, like a doomed deer stares at oncoming headlights.

To my great relief, Morgan ended up shaking her head. Cassidy seemed to notice the exchange, too, swooping in to rescue her friend. The guys were forgotten. The girls moved on to another part of the room.

“Come on, dude,” Dan said. “I didn’t know she’d be here.”

“It’s cool. She’s not… we’re not…”

“Right.” He led me out. I followed.

So did dreams of that party, of Morgan as the devil, of Morgan as single. I knew that I’d made a mistake, but every time I thought about finding her and apologizing, I thought about how it would get back to Jeremy, about his proclamation that “Nothing I’ve seen here makes me think that you’re the one.” He was right, she could have anyone, and definitely didn’t need a buffoon like me.

Dan was a good friend. He didn’t push me to reconcile. He knew that I’d only dig in deeper. He gave me space, which I appreciated, but that space was lonely.

I saw her a few other times before we left for winter break. She’d be walking across the quad, or down on the Crossing going into a restaurant with friends. She looked the same. She looked happy. I know it was wrong, but that only helped keep me away.

In early December. I was done with my finals. Winter break was just a few days away. I was feeling relieved to get away from it all—from school, from the exams, from the constant fear that I’d run into Morgan and things would get awkward. 

Of course that was exactly when I ran into Morgan.

And it was awkward.

For me, anyway. It wasn’t so much as me running into her, but me overhearing her. I was leaving my advisor’s office when a huge group of people were let out of one of the lecture halls, chattering and relieved to be finished with whatever final they were taking. Of course, Morgan was amongst them all, looking as amazing as ever in a pair of black leggings and a big, puffy winter coat.

My heart skipped. It would have been so natural to slip in beside her, give her a sheepish “hello,” and move past the last few months of separation. Even in my head, I knew it couldn’t possibly go down like that. I almost did it anyway, swept up in the exuberance that came at the end of a hard semester.

Only she wasn’t alone. I blinked and realized that Jeremy was beside her. Worse, they seemed chummy and chatting. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I couldn’t even really see their faces from where I was, lost in the crowd behind them. But my motivation was dead and buried in the cold, winter ground. Were they together now? Had I done that? My gut churned regardless.

I lagged behind, letting the crowd flow around me, taking Morgan in its wake. I watched her go, seeing her turn to Jeremy and smile at something that he said. My chest tightened. I felt awful. Just awful. I let her go.

***

I did a lot of navel-gazing over winter break, reflecting on my actions and my attitudes. I was a profoundly jealous person, and I’d let that jealousy turn small things into epic events. Would I have done things differently? Absolutely. But what was done was done. All it took was the thought of Morgan and that smile that she shared with Jeremy, and I was done.

“No Morg?” my older brother, Alexander, asked when he swung by our parents’ house. “See, Justin, I told you he should have gone to England with her last year.”

Justin, my younger brother, was only half-paying attention. He was glued to his phone, sending texts to his own girlfriend. “Right, like it’s that easy.”

“For a girl like Morgan, I would have done everything I could to get into that study program.”

“Like get good grades?” Justin needled. “Now that’s some crazy talk.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

I excused myself from my brothers, and they seemed more than content to mess with each other. At least the break wasn’t going to be a quiet one. Meant that I wouldn’t spend the majority of it thinking about Morgan and what she was up to.

But I didn’t need to imagine. I found that out during my first week back at school.

***

“So how was your break?”

“Kind if slow. Hard to find much pussy in my sleepy little home town.”

“That’s why you bring the pussy along with you.”

That was Jeremy talking.

“Easier to do when you spend your winter break in Aspen.”

That was some guy I didn’t know. And me? I was frozen in the stall of the gym’s locker room as these two had this painfully stereotypical, locker room chat.

The guy I didn’t know pressed on. “So who did you bring this time? Bianca? Cassidy? Morgan?”

Hearing Morgan’s name in the mix was like getting struck by a bolt of lightning. I nearly choked. The fear of being discovered, hiding in a bathroom stall, sent a second, teeth-clenching bolt through me.

“Yes?” Jeremy said with a chuckle. “My parents’ chalet is big enough for a nice group of us.”

“Your parents chalet,” the guy chuckled. “Where was my invitation?”

“Corey, I did invite you. You told me that you hated skiing.”

The guy—Corey, apparently—said, “If I’d known it was just an excuse to party, I would have been happy hanging out in your hot tub.”

“Everything is an excuse to party, Cor. And there was plenty of hanging out in the hot tub.”

“Damn, man. Bummed I missed that.”

“You should be,” bragged Jeremy. “Here, check it out.”

I heard the swick of a phone being unlocked. The desire to see what Corey was seeing was vert strong. Especially as he gasped and said, “Wow. Mo’s got some great tits.”

Zap.

“Right? It’s like the more you take off, the bigger they get.”

Double zap.

“They keep those tops on?” Corey pressed. 

“Fuck no, but they wouldn’t let me take any more pics. You’re just going to have to believe me when I tell you that Morgan may have the most perfect pair I’ve ever seen. Don’t get me wrong, Cassidy’s got some nice, big tits, but I like Morgan’s more—like the perfect, perky rack.”

“So fucking jealous.” Corey said it, but I was feeling it—feeling it like bile rising up my gullet.

“I still can’t believe her boyfriend broke up with her,” Corey said.

“It definitely made senior year more exciting,” Jeremy agreed. “It’s fucking hot to see the fun girl we knew in London again. You should have seen her eyes light up when I told her I invited Lo to Aspen.”

“Lorenzo was there? Now I’m really bummed I didn’t go.”

“Next time. We’re thinking of flying out to Ibiza for Spring Break. His parents have a place there…”

They were getting quieter now, heading for the exit at last.

“Count me in. Not going to miss another…”

And they were gone. The door shut.

I wanted to throw up the whole way back to my place. When I got there, I jerked off instead. It was… confusing.