Page 26 of The Boardroom: Kirk
Chapter 15-Marissa
Is holding hands in the hallways a requirement for high school couples? I mean, it’s okay if we don’t do it, right? It doesn’t make our relationship…invalid, or anything, does it? It’s not that I’m embarrassed of Kirk, or anything, it’s just…
…the idea of dozens of eyes judging us as we walk down a hallway together makes me a bit nauseous.
High school couples form naturally, unobtrusively…they form within cliques and fade out again, like clockwork. Something like Kirk and I would send the whole structure to the ground. It wouldn’t pass unnoticed.
It hasn’t been a discussion. I mean, how could it be? However, I do realize that being the person of higher social status in the relationship, it’s my responsibility to include Kirk in my social life before he includes me in his. So at lunch, I tell my friends how well the date went, and tell them I’m going to fetch Kirk to come sit with us.
Kirk is with a group of his friends at the corner of the cafeteria, bent over a textbook while he laughs with his friends about something. I signal for him to come over, and wring my hands nervously as his friends trade amused looks with each other.
He smiles at me with bright eyes and we both swoon a bit. “Come meet my friends,” I say, taking his hand, and I see his eyes go cold, but he’s still trying to maintain his smile for me as we walk over to the table.
Tara, Ella, and Sarah all freeze uncomfortably and give Kirk smiles that are a bit too wide to be genuine. They send over polite hellos and then stick to the safest topics imaginable…last week’s football game, history homework. They are frozen, almost physically leaning away from Kirk, as if he’s a bomb about to explode.
I grab Kirk’s hand under the table and smile at him reassuringly, but I can tell he’s unhappy. I stab at the salad on my plate bitterly…and I realize, I’m not quite sure what or who I’m so bitter about.
My friends are trying, and I can’t blame them…can I? A few months before, wouldn’t I have acted the same way towards someone from another table?
You expect people to really fuck something up once. Especially when it’s something this important.
But twice? Way to go Marissa. Way to fucking go, I thought, pouring the remains of a whiskey bottle into a glass. I had called a cab home, and after sobbing the whole way back, there was only one thing left to do.
So, I’m drunk. I’m not really the type to drink like this, and if I do, it’s usually at a party surrounded by other people. It’s never alone in my apartment, my head buzzing as I sway around the room, trying to remember exactly when it was that everything went wrong.
It was Ella again. No, not Ella, I had to stop blaming her. It was me…once again, I could have stopped this. I could have stood up for Kirk, but I was a coward.
I was woman enough to admit that this had been a bit of a recurring issue. I had a lovely group of friends in elementary school…nice girls from my soccer team who spent summers with me exploring creeks by my house. We had laughed and told secrets and grown up like sisters. I remember middle school however, a drive set in…the same competitive streak, in a way, that had landed me this prestigious position at Torver. I had to be liked, by everyone, all of the time. I had to wear the right clothes and sit at the correct tables. I fought my way up, and left my old friends in the dust, dumbfounded.
Right where I kept leaving Kirk.
I swerved around my coffee table, leaning against the wall with the room spinning. It stopped here,it had to.From this day forward, there would be no more. No more silencing myself to protect my reputation, no more acquiescing to the whims and demands of others to remain as well-liked as possible. It ended here.
I was the girl in that age old ‘would you rather’ question…would you rather have one hundred fake friends or one true one?
I had always picked the first option, but only now did I truly feel the weight of its cost.
