The Girl He Used to Know (Page 28)

Janice said that Jonathan always seemed proud to be with me. That made me feel good, because until I met him, I never thought I would be the type of girl anyone would be proud to be seen with. And Janice was always reminding me that relationships were all about compromise.

“Like when you said Joe wasn’t a great kisser but had a bigger than average penis?”

“I said that?”

“You did. After seven wine coolers.” Joe had been replaced a few weeks ago by a graduate student who rode a bicycle everywhere and whose penis according to Janice was merely average. “But his hands are magical,” she said.

Jonathan made lots of concessions for me, and I didn’t need Janice to tell me that. He kept me away from loud noises before they could overwhelm me. He was always kind—to people, to animals, to strangers. He made me feel special and smart.

Jonathan wanted to go to the party, and I wanted to be the kind of girlfriend who compromised, who made concessions. So at nine thirty we put on our jackets and we headed out into the rain and we went to the party.

* * *

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The host’s name was Lincoln and I only spoke to him briefly, when Jonathan introduced us. For some reason, Lincoln’s girlfriend took a shine to me when she found me sitting at the end of the hallway playing with the fattest cat I had ever seen. Her name was Lily and the cat—whose name was Tiger despite it not having one single stripe—belonged to her. It turned out she liked cats almost as much as I did. I told her about Mr. Bojangles and suggested she get Tiger one of those balls with the bell inside. “But take out the bell because you will hate the noise it makes and it will drive you crazy,” I said.

“Tiger hates balls, but he loves string.” She left abruptly, and when she returned a moment later, she had a stick with a piece of string tied to the end. Tiger went nuts, and we took turns holding the stick and dragging it along for him to chase.

I didn’t know if her kindness was genuine. I still struggled with that, because I’d learned that sometimes people were kind only because they wanted something. “Don’t you like parties?” I finally asked. If her boyfriend was the host, it surprised me that she’d want to spend time sitting in the hallway with a stranger.

“I like them, but I don’t drink and Linc and his friends have a tendency to get loud after a few beers.”

“I don’t drink much either. I mean I will drink, but it’s an acquired taste and I haven’t finished acquiring it yet.”

Jonathan poked his head into the hall. “Hey, there you are,” he said. He crouched down beside Lily and me. “Looks like you’ve made a friend.”

“Do you mean Lily or the cat?” I asked.

“Both,” Lily said. Jonathan smiled really big when she said that.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, because I wanted to show him he could take me to parties, and that I could fit in. It didn’t matter to me that so far, my only interaction had been with a girl and her cat.

Lily was right, though, because later it did get loud. Tiger disappeared around eleven thirty when the hallway became crowded with people going in and out of the bedrooms and bathroom. I found a small spot near the laundry room off the kitchen, and I hung out there for a while by myself. The living room was packed, and I didn’t really want to fight my way through the crowd to look for Jonathan. Instead he found me fifteen minutes later.

“Where’d you go? I’ve been looking all over for you. I was worried.”

“There are so many people in the living room. I thought I would hide out here until it was time to go.”

“Let’s go now. I’m ready to climb back in bed. I just want to say good-bye to Lincoln real quick.”

Jonathan clasped my hand firmly in his and led me through the crowd. Lincoln was sitting on the couch with Lily on his lap. There were several guys seated next to him and a few standing in front of it talking to them.

“This is my girlfriend, Annika,” Jonathan said.

“Hey, Annika,” they said. Everyone smiled at me, and I was so glad we came.

“So, we’re taking off,” Jonathan said. “Thanks for the party. It was great.”

“It was nice talking to you, Annika,” Lily said. I felt so tongue-tied that all I could do was nod and smile.

A super tall guy with blond hair and a patchy beard winked at me. “When you get tired of Jonathan, give me a call. I may not be as smart, or as handsome, or a chess wunderkind, but I’ll treat you right.”

Everyone looked at me, but no one said anything. I didn’t say anything either, because I loved Jonathan and wasn’t ever going to get tired of him, and I certainly wasn’t going to call up this guy who I’d just met for the first time and barely knew. Lily, though, seemed like someone I might actually want to get together with sometime. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at making those kinds of things happen.

“I wouldn’t wait by the phone if I were you,” Jonathan said, slinging his arm over my shoulder. Everyone laughed and then Jonathan pulled me closer and asked if I was ready to go.

I said yes because Lily was right. It was really loud. Besides, I hadn’t seen Tiger for a while and my back was hurting again.

* * *

On the way home, I watched the windshield wipers sweep the rain away, enjoying their rhythmic motion and the silence inside the truck. I found it very soothing. I tried to tell Jonathan about Lily and her cat, but he kept his eyes straight forward and only answered when I asked a direct question. I knew I’d done something wrong but didn’t know what it was.

I got ready for bed and slipped beneath the covers, but Jonathan didn’t join me. I read for a while and then went into the living room to see what he was doing. He was flipping through the TV channels, a beer on the coffee table in front of him.

“Aren’t you coming to bed?”

He clicked through the channels on the TV. “Eventually.”

“I don’t understand why you’re mad at me.” I wanted to know what I’d done so I wouldn’t do it again.

“I’m not mad,” he said. But he was, and I wasn’t so dense that I couldn’t hear it in his voice.

“Yes, you are. I don’t understand why you’re upset. I don’t know what I did!”

He set down the remote. “You’ve got to give me something to hold on to, Annika. You’ve turned me into this … this lovesick fool, and all I get in return for my romantic gestures is a blank look. When someone hits on you, especially when they come right out and reference your current boyfriend, it would be nice to hear you say that you’d never be interested in that person because you already have someone. Someone you claim to love. So, help me out here. Throw me some kind of bone once in a while.”

I didn’t get the bone thing at all, but I finally figured out that everyone had been waiting for me to make some kind of proclamation about how I felt about Jonathan. I squeezed my eyes shut, angry, so angry at myself. My eyes filled with frustrated tears.

“I did think that! I thought it in my head, but I was afraid if I said it out loud, I’d mess it up somehow and then everyone would think I was stupid. I’ve never been in love before, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. What I’m supposed to say. But when you walk into the room my whole body relaxes because I think ‘Jonathan is here.’ And I never want you to leave, even when it’s just to go to class or work or the pool. I want you to be with me. So when we go places or you introduce me to people, I’m so happy to have someone like you holding my hand or standing by my side that I don’t think of those things. I just see you, and I think ‘Jonathan wants to be with me.’ I love you more than I’ve loved anything in my whole life except maybe Mr. Bojangles but that’s because not a lot of people love him. Probably just me and my mom and maybe the vet, which isn’t very many and that makes me so sad.”

I was really bawling by then and Jonathan pulled me onto his lap and put his arms around me. “I’m sorry, Annika. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I know you love me. You show me all the time in your own special way. I’m being an asshole.” He pressed his forehead to mine and we stayed like that, our eyes closed, until I stopped crying.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I was curled up in a little ball on his lap, and I never wanted to leave. “Yes.”

“I love you, Annika Rose.” He wiped away my tears and kissed my forehead, my cheek, my lips.

“I love you, Jonathan Hoffman.”

He started laughing. “You put me in the same category of love as your cat.”

“But I love Mr. Bojangles!”

“I know you do. You love him as much as you love me. And that’s funny because you make no attempt to hide it.”

“But why is it funny?”

“Because most people like their boyfriends a little bit more than they like their pets. And if they don’t, they probably don’t say it out loud.”

“You can love both.”

“Yes, you can.” Jonathan kissed me again and soon we weren’t doing much talking at all. Janice had mentioned having more make-up sex with Joe than any other guy she’d dated. She told me it made the arguments worth it, and the way I felt that night, as we made up right on Jonathan’s couch, I would have to agree even though the couch wasn’t nearly as comfortable as his bed.