3/8/11

And He Gets the Girl
By Dan Buyanovsky


We were the only members of “the crew” on the bus that day, and it was rainy. My pants were drenched and I sat alone in a seat that could otherwise fit three children. I lay down as I usually did in the afternoons, blasting Jay-Z into my ears as I pretended to sleep.

She tapped me, and I sat up. She was sitting across from me, smiling. I smiled back as she slid her shoe off and raised her leg toward me, plopped it down on my three-person chair. With the grin glued to her face, she slid her toes closer and closer toward my crotch. As I closed my eyes and fidgeted, I heard her ask – “how does that feel?”

*

“Bro, you should let Lexie come over! Why not?” Antonio beckoned on a Friday morning. Lexie was Jessica’s friend, who apparently wanted to take my virginity. I graciously resisted the offer. As I refused for the last time, I looked at Jessica and saw a shy smirk as she turned to Antonio and said, “Told you.”

*

“Your girlfriend is a whore,” she nonchalantly mentioned as we talked about her ex-boyfriend. Thrown off, I asked her to elaborate. “I saw pictures that Ed took of her naked. She’s such a slut.” I went on to date the whore for three years, and didn’t talk to Jessica for a year after she broke the news.

*

I didn’t invite her to my 17th birthday party. I didn’t think she’d mind. She always had so much going on, or at least pretended to, that I figured it’d slip through her calendar of fun events anyway. I did invite all of our mutual friends, though. She texted me before midnight – “Thanks for the invite.” I would have answered, but instead I threw my phone into the pool, before falling asleep inside a Fritos bag.

*

I did invite her to my 18th birthday party. She came with her boyfriend, who she remained stuck to the entire night. I stole glances at her every few minutes – she looked beautiful, and happy. Every time I approached her, she walked off with him as some sign of immature protest for the year prior. So, I made out with my girlfriend in the middle of the party for a few minutes to make sure everyone could see. I would have said “bye” to her, but I was busy lying naked on the shower floor in my brother’s apartment, vomiting on myself.

*

I invited her to my brother’s apartment late one night after she broke up with her boyfriend. She came with her best friend and two bottles of wine. After one bottle, my brother pulled her friend into his bedroom. As she and I made our way through the second bottle, I asked if she wanted to watch The Darjeeling Limited. She did, so we did. By the time my brother and Ariel emerged, we’d fallen asleep on opposite sides of the sofa.

*

She called me from my building’s lobby – “Hey, come and get me.” I rode the elevator in my underwear and opened the door for her, and saw her smiling wide with a bottle of white wine in her hand. She hugged me and took my hand, and led me to my bedroom. I sat on my bed, she sat on my loveseat , and we drank a full bottle before we got halfway through Back to Black.

I was on antibiotics and loopy by the last drip. She was too, but she was still acting. We started talking about love again, and she started crying. Loud. So loud that my father opened the door to my room and asked if everything was alright. I assured him it was and he left. And so did she.

*

The next night she came over again – this time sober and again with her best friend. We sat on my bed and joked about my brother’s “moves” until five in the morning, when he came home and had sex with Ariel again. We stayed in my room again, this time watching Eternal Sunshine and staying up until dawn.

*

I drove her and her friend home at 8am, and after dropping her off, continued driving north on US-1 along the beach. I stopped at Michigan Avenue and pulled into a spot fifty yards from the ocean. I picked up my cell phone and quickly sent two text messages – one to my girlfriend, reading “I can’t do this anymore. Sorry”; and one to Jessica, reading, “You’re incredible. Thank you.”

*

We sat in the hot tub outside my father’s apartment for the first time since the text message, and she admitted that at this point, all she wants to do is “have fun.” I nodded, even though I didn’t know what she meant, until she divulged that she had sex with our mutual friend Daniel a week prior. I’d told Daniel just two before then that I really liked her, to which Daniel responded, “Don’t do that. You guys are friends.” This made a lot more sense, now. When she asked me if she should do it again, I coyly replied, “Don’t do that. You guys are friends.”

*

I met my girlfriend at the Starbucks on Biscayne Boulevard and we sat on a curb as I now explained the text I sent to her. I couldn’t look at her while I spoke, knowing that her eyes would force me to reconsider and say the whole thing was a practical joke. I explained how unhappy I’d been and unflinchingly told her that I’d always wished she were someone different, and how she unfortunately never panned out to be that person.

She cried. I didn’t. When I hugged her goodbye, she asked, “Do you want to go see a movie?” Confused, but riding high on my newfound assertiveness, I said, “We just broke up, didn’t you get that?”

As I climbed back into my car, I called Daniel, as he was on his way to my house to drive down to South Beach. Jessica was with him. We went to Heathrow and the three of us danced in a circle most of the night. Most of the night, not all. The times that Daniel pulled her in close for a one-on-one, I stumbled to the bar for more $10 Vodka-Pineapple’s – alone in more ways than one.

*

As we walked into Buck15 on my last night in town, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” growled through the speakers and I jumped into the middle of the dance floor, with elbows and feet flailing about. Afterwards, I bought Jessica and Beatriz beers, and watched Daniel hit on unattractive older women, while unattractive older men pulled the girls aside to tell them stories that most Miami girls pretended to be intrigued by. Alone again, I drank my Red Stripe and waited for the night to end.

When one group of men finished their tales, I had my turn and asked Jessica to dance. She accepted and we sloppily swayed to an Outkast song, and I tried to kiss her. She pushed me off and walked away. We left soon after that. On the ride home, Daniel and Beatriz fell asleep, and Jessica and I held hands. When we got back to her house, I passed her a letter I’d written before going out, and smiled, knowing it’d be the last time I’d be able to for a long time.

*

I arrived in Fort Lauderdale six months later at 9pm, and had dinner with my mother at the barbecue restaurant where my brother and I had told her about our father’s affair. The locale had become her favorite for family dinners – not so much for the food, but rather for the symbolism of a masculine figure still existing in her life. Since daddy didn’t come to dinners anymore, Tony Roma served as a surrogate.

After we went home and she fell asleep, I snuck out of the house and took my mother’s car, and drove to Jessica’s. I called her from outside – “Hey, I’m here.” She hopped into the Prius a minute later, and we cracked open the first of many Old E’s, and started catching up.

*

In the half-year that we hadn’t spoken, I studied in Paris and lived a life that had before only been entertained as a fantasy. I’d become engrossed in other women and affairs that left me with morning smiles rather than remorseful frowns about the things I didn’t say.

Meanwhile, she returned to Washington DC and regressed into a misery she thought she’d outrun. She drank heavily every day, cried every morning, and sought the wrong kind of attention every night that resulted in two handfuls of new men – one of whom had “pretty much raped” her. She was bulimic again, and as she told me about her suicide attempt on the roof of her best friend’s house, I could see in her eyes that it may not have been a singular event.

She fell into a pit of self-loathing, while I’d finally started liking myself, and I felt guilty for my contrary joy. What I didn’t feel, however, were any of the same feelings I did before leaving home.

*

It was on the night of my return, though, six years from our meeting, that we found ourselves naked on the beach, facing each other. Staring at her, I laughed at myself for finally getting what I wanted, only when I no longer wanted it. Still, I took what was given.

We tried to have sex in the ocean – but the cold January current had other ideas. So, I carried her upstairs and laid her down on my mother’s pullout couch and we finally did what I’d always hoped for but never really envisioned, in the exact way that I could have imagined it – drunk, sandy, tangled in my Mickey Mouse bed-set, and holding each other’s mouths so as to not wake my mother in the next room.


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Dan Buyanovsky is a hopeful romantic living in the city that is said to never sleep - though he sleeps often. He is a literate student and a enjoys cheap pizza.