“Have a nice life.”
That’s the last thing she said to me. Well, I think. I really don’t remember much after that. I walked into the library after I had finished my last final, looking for someone, but not her. I saw her standing there, talking to Amy. At first, I didn’t know if I wanted to talk to her. I hoped she didn’t see me. We had only gone out once in the past year after having an on-again, off-again thing my whole sophomore year. We really never were a couple, but we had all the problems that ex-couples have. When she spotted me, I figured I had to at least go talk to her.
I wasn’t drunk at all. Not like the last time I saw her a few weeks before. Somehow, we managed to spend an entire evening at my fraternity’s spring party without pissing each other off. That hadn’t happened in a long time. But we spent the whole night together—her in that pink jumper she wore that drove me crazy for some reason – and had a blast. I held out hope that maybe that would lead to one more chance at a real relationship, but she never returned my phone calls, and we somehow never ran into each other on campus.
Which sucked because that whole date came about as I wandered the campus, ready to ask out the first person I ran into. I never thought I’d have one last fling with her. After an afternoon of drinking on the golf course, I needed to find a date for the evening festivities. I didn’t want to know what the guys would do to me if I showed up at the only guy-girl function without a date, so I just went in search of someone who wanted to have fun and drink for free.
Christy fit the bill. I didn’t even see her across the street. But she yelled two or three times until I finally heard her. She denied that she was fishing for a date, but I never believed her. She always had a way of making sure I noticed her when she needed company. And she always seemed to show up at our parties with someone.
In the library, I knew I had no way out when Amy pointed in my direction. I had to go talk to them. In different circumstances, I could get away with a nod or a wave. But I knew Amy just wanted to see what would happen.
I walked toward them and tried to wish my sobriety away. As much drinking as I had done with the guys that final semester of my junior year, I had to have some extra alcohol in my system somewhere. Why didn’t I have a hollow bone or something to save up for emergencies like this?
“Hey, what’s up,” I said, failing for the 363rd time to act nonchalant around Christy. The problem with relationships that begin with a drunken kiss is that you never find a way to get over that initial awkwardness. I had talked with Christy dozens of times before she cornered me at the beach party two years before. But as she pulled the beach ball out of my hands with one hand and put the other on the back of my neck, I lost the capability to converse casually with her.
“You done?” I still have no idea why Amy felt the need to set me up. She had the same final I did just 15 minutes before. But out of all the girls Christy lived with, Amy wanted to see us together the least. And she’d like nothing more than to orchestrate an awkward goodbye the day before Christy graduated.
“You were in the classroom, too, Amy. Remember?” I never really liked her.
“Well, that was nice,” Christy said.
“I didn’t walk out in the middle. Yeah, I’m done. How about you guys?”
Christy didn’t deserve that kind of set up. I knew she had finished earlier that morning. Despite the way she pulled me in and out of her universe, I made sure to find out pretty much everything she did. I didn’t stalk her like that idiot Kevin, but I paid attention. I asked the right questions of the right people. Because I knew that kiss in the basement of my fraternity house was no accident, no random occurrence. I had to keep thinking that or the dream I had chased for the last two years of college would die, proving that I had wasted precious energy trying to flatter her when I could have been drinking.
“Finished this morning. I’m heading home later today.”
“Got any plans for the summer?” Another question I knew the answer to. And Amy knew that.
“I thought Jen told you what Christy is doing?”
“Maybe she did. I don’t hang on every detail of Christy’s life now, do I, Amy?”
“That’s something only you would know.”
Things couldn’t get much worse. I had set myself up to hear a goodbye from the girl I wanted. She would tell me she would head to England to spend the summer with her sister before going to law school across the country in the fall. If I hadn’t come into the library to look for Pear, this never would have happened. That bastard owed me $40 for typing a paper, and I wanted to get it off him to get a head start drinking. I knew he had one more final, so I wanted to grab him before that. I should have made him pay up when I finished the paper.
If I had done that, I would have been perched on a bar stool at the Elbow Room, drinking dollar drafts with a few other guys. My last memory of Christy would have been a hurried kiss at the door and the door slowly closing as she whispered goodbye early that morning a few weeks ago. We took extra precaution to make sure we didn’t wake up any of the other girls—and their boyfriends—in the house even though most of them were at the party the night before. The ones who weren’t undoubtedly got the news of my presence. God forbid anything stay secret among those girls.
But Christy always wanted to keep things between us secret. Even though 50-some people saw us making out that night and a good dozen or so saw us leave together, she wanted to pretend we never spent the night together. She hustled me out the door almost embarrassed that we’d hooked up yet again. Still, I could live with that last memory. Because even though she tried to get rid of me so quickly after we woke up that morning, neither of us knew we would not see each other again.
That is until I walked in the library. And headed over to talk to Christy and Amy. And opened my big mouth. Until then, I had no problem leaving things the way they were. I don’t think she did either.
“Well, I’m going to go ahead and find Pear. He owes me some cash.”
“Type another paper for him?”
“Yeah. Ten pages. Forty bucks. He was desperate as usual.”
“That ought to come in handy.”
“Damn straight. Well, you have a good trip. And good luck in law school, you know?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“All right. I guess I’ll see you.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
We hugged. A hug I hoped would lead to a kiss or some kind of pithy comment about how we would keep in touch or what I meant to her in the grand scheme of things. But I felt in an instant that this was the same hug she gave to every guy that she was saying goodbye to. This was a friend’s hug. As I stepped back, I realized that I could deal with that. Christy and I were friends before we kissed and we managed to stay friendly over the past year. I could handle the whole friend thing.
But then she said it. What the hell possessed her? Where does something like that come from?
You say that to someone you intend on never seeing again. You say that to someone who you don’t want to see turn out successful.
“Have a nice life.”
I reeled. I walked away in silence, wanting to shake my head in amazement, but knowing that sort of thing would only give her the satisfaction.
Then I knew she said the right thing. I didn’t have to worry about living up to that kiss. I was going to have a nice life.