January 16, 2009
It made me mad. It wasn’t the fact that he didn’t call me like I asked him to and instead called my cousin. It was the fact that he would flirt with me in class, but decided to act like he never knew me outside of school.
“Okay, we’ll be there soon. We’re driving somewhere up by your house anyway,” my cousin Allison spoke into her cell phone.
“What the hell!” I yelled just as she snapped the phone shut. “We just left your house,” I said in a quieter voice. “Don’t tell him we’re driving somewhere by his house. It makes me sound like a stalker.” I now drove down the street a little faster.
She giggled and opened her phone again to text her new mysterious boyfriend. I had never met him but I was excited to get to tonight when we went to the movies. It was the first real boyfriend I had known of Allison having. She never had dated a lot. She had a lot of crushes, but never a real boyfriend.
I guess you could say the same for me though. Until about a month ago I had a really great boyfriend. I thought that he was the best thing that had ever happened to me until he cruelly dumped me the night of my senior Morp (the non-formal form of Prom at my school). I will never forget that night when ripped a huge hole in me by dumping me over text, and then came over to get the ticket I had bought for us and went to the dance leaving me at home.
I took a left turn that lead us up a huge hill.
After that horrific night it had been very awkward between us. I saw him for most the day, everyday, because we had most our classes together and he worked at the Gymnastics Academy where I worked out every day. This made it even harder for me to try and heal from the huge scar he had left in me. And to make matters worse he started to hang out with my best friend and teammate April, and eventually got to the point where they were almost dating. It didn’t happen though because of the fact that it almost literally killed me. He would text me and asked me what I thought of him and her dating. One night it got to the point that I was so stressed out that it caused my blood pressure to sky rocket and I ended up passed out in the hallway outside of my room and almost had to go to emergency room.
I took another left, and then a right that put us onto a dimly lit street.
He had been known for that though. He always knew had to get into my head and push me until I almost went over the edge. I never really knew what his motivations were for doing that kind of stuff to me. Maybe to make me jealous to try and win me back or maybe he was just trying to push me away. I also questioned myself why I forgave him every time, but I knew that answer. I was hoping that maybe the old person who I loved would return. The one who I had met two and a half months ago. The new kid in school from Arizona. The person who had the softest gaze when he looked into my eyes. The one who would hold me when I was feeling down, and call me beautiful.
I pulled over to the side of the road in front of a small cream colored house. His house. My ex-boyfriend Justin.
As I got out of the car to go and knock on the door he came out of the garage door and hurried down the driveway. I shut my car door and unlocked the back passenger side door for him to get in. He slammed the door shut and I headed off to the movie theater which was all the way across town back by my house. He pulled out his can of chew and put in a dip. Allison made a nasty comment about him chewing and he opened the can and put it in front of her nose so the she got a smell of it. She pushed the can away and they began to argue about chewing, and Justin started to brag about how he was now eighteen and could buy tobacco products.
I started to tune him out at this point. This was just another thing I hated about the new Justin. He thought that he needed to impress people. The Justin that I knew never would have to feel the need to do that. Justin had never chewed when he and I were dating. I never asked him to stop or anything of that sort, he just didn’t do it.
The next thing I knew I got a huge smell of tobacco. Justin was now holding the can in my face. “Stop, I’m trying to drive,” I said shoving his hand back into the back seat.
“It smells so good,” he said opening the can a crack and smelling it. “Oh, and I spilled some back here,” he shoved the can into his back pocket.
“What!” I yelled taking my eyes off the road and looking into the back seat.
“God I was just kidding,” he said snickering and giving me an annoying smile. It was not the soft smile like the one he always had when we were dating. I turned around to look back at the road and take the exit that lead to the movie theater. “What would be the problem if I did?”
“Uh, the problem would be that my dad would kill me,” I said sarcastically. The mention of my dad stung a little bit deep down inside of me. My dad had been hit with a bad case of lead poisoning. I never forget when we got the news that he was in the hospital in Boise because of it. My dad had never gotten any better since then, just a lot worse. That is why it hurt me to talk about him so much, so I never did. When my teachers asked me why my grades had been dropping I had simply just told them I didn’t know. When the truth was that I just couldn’t concentrate when I was worrying what would happen to my dad and possibly my family if he lost his job, which was our main source of income.
Justin didn’t say anything after that. I found a parking spot at the movie theater and we all got out of the car. Walking into the movie theater I was silent and walked by myself, while Justin and Allison walked behind me and Justin complained about Allison’s sister, Stephanie, new boyfriend Chandler. I had a feeling that the only reason Justin didn’t like Chandler was solely because he could. Chandler was another person he could act like he hated and try to be tough by saying he wanted to beat him up. Again another reason why I couldn’t stand the ‘new’ Justin.
Allison’s boyfriend John was waiting outside for us. At first I thought that he was just a middle school kid until Allison ran up and hugged him. I was taken off guard, this kid looked way younger then I had imagined. It didn’t even look like he was in high school yet. He was about as short as Allison with blond hair and his voice hadn’t even cracked yet.
We waited inside the door of the theater for my sister, Stephanie, Chandler, and their friend Mell to arrive at the movie theater. When they got there and we got in line to buy tickets Justin told me not to buy a ticket. We were going to see Unborn, which Justin had already seen once before. He had two extra tickets from last time he had went. So I stepped out of line and stood awkwardly by him. When everybody bought their tickets we all walked inside. I walked inside and waved to my old friend Cabe who was working behind the concessions counter. I hoped that Justin saw me so that maybe he would feel a little hint of jealousy.
Mell and Justin went in together, then my sister and I, Allison and John and finally Stephanie and Chandler. We all grouped outside the theater doors and waited for everyone to get through. I lead the way into the theater pulling open the heavy theater door and walking into the darkness. The theater was pretty full so I picked an empty row at the front of the theater. I went to the third to last seat in the row and sat down. I expected my sister to be seated right next to me because she was behind me the whole time, but I found that Justin had somehow managed to squeeze his way through our eight people group and sit right between us.
We sat there for a while and Justin started to flirt with my sister. He would nudge her elbow with his. She would giggle and say “stop it!” in a little girly voice. This annoyed me. If I was her I would just punch him in the face.
He started to talk to my sister about how scary the movie was so I sat up and tried to get Allison’s attention to tell her a story about school to try and get my attention off of Justin. Just then he said “It’s okay though it’s not too scary,” in a joking voice and put a hand on my sisters knee.
I had no idea what my sisters reaction was because he looked toward me and saw the reaction on my face that he had wanted. I knew I had an expression of shock, annoyance and jealousy on my face. I slammed back into my seat and started at the screen that was showing an ad for the popcorn at the concessions.
“Your mad,” he said with a smirk on his face.
“No,” I replied quickly.
“You look mad,” he said.
“I’m not mad,” I snapped.
Justin then continued to try and tick me off by putting the arm rest between him and my sister up and scooting closer to her. All my sister did was sit there and continue to say “stop it”. This was the point where Justin was trying to push me over the edge. I reached over him, grabbed the arm rest from in between their seats and slammed it back down right on top of his thigh.
“Ow!” he shouted. I slammed back into my seat and folded my arms across my chest. At this point I knew that the whole group was looking at us. “If you didn’t want me to come you didn’t have to invite me,” he said staring at me.
“I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t want you to come,” I replied not taking my eyes off the screen.
He then talked to me about how horrible the movie was and that he would probably end up just falling asleep. I thought to myself what his intentions of coming with me were for then. I hadn’t expected him to come because of the fact that he had already seen the movie. But yet here he was sitting right next to me.
The movie began and we watched the movie. My cousins and sister were screaming their heads off at everything scary that popped onto the screen. About halfway through the movie my arm started to fall asleep from having them folded so long, and so I set my hands on my knees with them close to the arm rest. Justin then took his left hand and set it on the arm rest. He started to rub his fingers together and I just stared at his hand not able to watch the movie. He then rested his head on his arm, extremely close to my shoulder. Slowly he started to move his hand toward mine. It seemed like an eternity before his fingers were touching the side of my hand.
I new that I should move my hand away but I couldn’t get my self to do it. Eventually I moved my hand slightly away but right away his finger darted finding my hand again. I don’t know how many times I moved my hand away but every time his fingers found there way back to touch my hand. Then he shifted his head on his arm and rested it on my shoulder.
I could have cried at this point. He was ripping open the scar that he had made the night he broke up with me. I wanted so bad to just take him in my arms like I used to, but I knew I couldn’t. He put his hand on my knee and started to slide his hand up my thigh. This was too much for me to stand. I pushed his whole body away from me, but he just repositioned his head back on my shoulder, and put his hand of my up turned palm. He slowly weaved his fingers between mine. He spread his fingers apart which allowed me to move my hand into his with our finger weaved.
Cherish this Amanda I thought to myself it will probably never happen again. I thought of myself as a drug addict. I was going to take one more hit, and then I was going to be done, but each hit left me wanting more. It will never happen again I promised myself.
Just then the old man on the screen turned into a monster and started chasing after an old lady. People in the movie theater started screaming and I couldn’t help but laugh. At this he again shifted lifting his hand from mine and resting his hand on my shoulder and his head on top his hand.
For the rest of the movie we sat this. At the end of the movie I regretfully nudged him off my shoulder and he sat up and said “Is the movie over?” like he had actually been asleep.
“Yeah,” I said quietly standing up carefully. This is when I noticed that the rest of the group was staring at me. I then realized that they had saw everything that had happened. My sister started at me like I was stupid, and my cousins and Mell had a look of Oh! How cute! on their faces.
We walked out of the theater Justin always keeping his distance from me, pretending like nothing had happened. We walked back to the car just the way we had before, and I drove to Allison’s house hoping that dropping her off first would maybe give Justin time to think about talking to me about what happened.
He said nothing all the way home though, except for a few directions of how to get to his house because I was too deep in thought to try and concentrate on how to get there. I pulled up at his house and he said “Thanks,” and opened the car door.
“Yep,” I replied in a weak voice.
He got out of the car and slammed the door. I watched as he walked up the driveway. All I could help but think was there goes the best thing that has ever happened to me as he threw his dip out of his mouth and into the grass and shut the door behind him.
