Page 48 of The One That Ran Away
“Yeah, about that. When I asked you if you were fit to go visit her, you said you’d rather fuck a cactus than be around her.”
“I did not!”
“How do you know? You say you don’t remember anything.”
“What do I do? She’s gotta be so pissed at me.”
“You probably broke her heart. Just think, while she was waiting for your date, you were helping me screw some dude. Pretty sure that’s what lesbians write about in their memoirs.”
“Fuck off, Kels.”
“Whatever. Let me know when you sober up.”
It took most of the morning and half of the afternoon to reach a point when I could brave facing Jess. I didn’t have her number – a mistake, in retrospect. All I knew was what dorm she lived in. I didn’t know the number.
Luckily, Jess lived in one of the smallest dorms on campus. As soon as I had showered, ate something, and thrown on some decent clothes I headed across campus, rehearsing what I wanted to say.
Her dorm was deader than mine. Not surprising, since it was mostly a sophomore dorm, and they were probably likewise recovering from their partying wounds. I walked up and down the bottom floor, unable to find Jess’s name anywhere.
I found her room on the second floor.
I stared at the green letters spelling out her name, feeling sicker than ever before. Anything I had rehearsed was now gone from my memory. It took the last of my courage to rap my knuckles against the door.
No answer.
Maybe she was gone. Maybe she was still asleep. Or maybe she knew it was me, and she wanted nothing to do with my flaky ass.
Like most of us, she had a whiteboard next to her door. I grabbed one of the markers and wrote a simple message that I hoped would clear things up.
“Jess, sorry about last night. Please let me make it up to you. -S”
I knocked once more to be sure she wasn’t there. After a minute of waiting, I headed down the hall and turned the corner the moment I heard the bathroom door open and close.
My gut told me to turn around and face her in her towel. I didn’t. I was terrible at following my gut, because for some reason, I thought it was out to get me.
***
Jess looked at the old, clunky bike as if it were out to personally kill her.
“Oh, come on.” Shannon held the helmet out to her. “You’re not gonna die. If you do, the hospital is like… five blocks away.”
“I feel so much better now.” Jess put her backpack down with a sigh. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. You know what happened the last time I tried to learn how to ride a bike?”
Shannon shrugged, helmet still extended before her. “You scraped your knee and Mom got you ice cream?”
“I wish. I busted my leg open and my ex-boyfriend told me I was a wimp for being twenty-two and incapable of holding my balance on a bike. Bastard took the training wheels off before I had a chance.”
The helmet smacked against Shannon’s leg. “Your ex tried to teach you how to ride a bike?” She didn’t touch on the detail that Jess was twenty-two, meaning she was either seeing this guy while still in college, or right after they graduated. Either way, it hovered dangerously close to one key event that occurred between them senior year.
“Would you get on the damn bike already? You’re stalling.”
“Sorry!” Jess snatched the helmet out of Shannon’s hand and stuffed it on top of her head. Shannon had to hide her snort of amusement when Jess’s head of brown hair was completely engulfed by a helmet one size too big for her small head. “How does this thing work?” The bike was pushed away while Jess looked upon it with disdain. “I know that the moment I get on, I’m gonna fall over.”
“With that lack of confidence, uh, yeah.” Shannon held the bike by the handles to ensure Jess didn’t collapse like a sack of potatoes the moment she awkwardly sat on the seat.Oh, goodness. Look at that.Could Shannon possibly hide her disbelief that someone could look sodonewith bike riding already? Jess was akin to a pouting child on a birthday gone awry. There was a reason Shannon had conjured the image of Jess scraping her knee as a little kid. Sometimes, she really did look like a kid. “You have to trust your body to do what it’s meant to do. You know. Balance… and stuff.” God, here was hoping Shannon never had kids, or at least was never expected to teach them how to ride a bike. She would spend half their childhoods in the emergency room.
“Shan,” Jess said through gritted teeth, her eyes narrow and the strap of her helmet digging into her chin, “I ain’t got no balance. You might as well ask me to start speaking in tongues. Hell, I might when I go down!”
Shannon kept a firm grip on the handlebars to assure Jess that she wasn’t going down anytime soon. “I won’t let you fall, okay?” She hoped she could keep her word. Jess already had enough issues to keep her from fully trusting the woman who now held safety in her hands.
