I'll Be Here

end of my bed and watch me read and I would play a game in my head to see how long she could wait for me to break the silence.  I’d continue to read and she’d watch me and sometimes she’d say something mundane just so that she could hear words fill the thinness of the air.  Sometimes she would walk out of my room without saying a thing and I would hear her gasp in the hallway outside of my room.  And I would want to go to her, but I never did. 
    Then her cancer was cured and life moved forward and nothing was the same but we were both too busy to dwell.  Or maybe I’d made things too difficult and my mom had given up on me.  Whatever the reasons, by the time Adam’s party came along, she’d quit asking me so many questions. 
    I hadn’t planned on that being the big night but then Melanie Kwarcinski had shown up to the party.  She was home for break and she was still the same as she’d been in high school only better.  Melanie was social chairman of her sorority.  She was majoring in Biomedical Engineering.  She’d spent a semester abroad in Paris and a few weeks in Madrid.  She wore an expensive scarf loosely tied around her neck.
    Dustin hadn’t done anything wrong.  Not exactly. 
    He had talked to her.  He listened to her story about going to the Eifel Tower when the elevators were down and hiking all the way to the top.  He offered to fill up her beer when he went to get more for himself. 
    And when I saw Melanie smile her perfect smile all I could think about was that this girl had gone out with my boyfriend for about five minutes but she’d been the one to have sex with him.  She could say things like: “Oh, do you see that guy over there?  Yeah, Dustin.  We had sex.” 
    And I couldn’t. 
    It killed me. 
    After a few cups full of liquid courage I’d asked Taylor of all people for a condom because I knew that she carried them in her purse “just in case.” 
    I remember the way my hands shook when I led Dustin to the upstairs bedroom and how his eyes had widened when he realized what was happening.  I remember that he fumbled with the condom.  I remember that we laughed together.  I remember that it hurt a little but not as much as I’d worried it would.  I remember that afterward I lay my head on his chest and I wanted him to say something perfect and romantic but instead he asked me if I wanted to go back to the party.
    ***
    I fall into a routine over the next few days.
                It starts out on Monday afternoon as I walk from my car up the path to the house.  My phone titters.  I look at the name of the sender twice before I read the text and respond.
     
                Alex: Hey there
                Me:  Hey yourself
                Alex: How’s your week so far?
                Me: Slightly better than crappy
                Alex: lol.  I think we can do better than that…
                Somehow that easy line of conversation turns into two hours of texting and the only reason it stops is because Alex is late for a study group.  I smile so much at dinner that Jake asks me if I’m feeling all right.  That only makes me smile more.
                The next day Alex sends me a picture of his roommate passed out buck naked on the floor.  The caption reads: Apparently, Joey had a rough night.
    Luckily Joey is facedown.
                I respond with a photo of Ferdinand wearing the hat that Diana had bought me on our ski trip last winter.  The red pompon that embellishes the top is nearly as big as his entire head and the whole thing slouches down over his eyes and to his whiskers. 
                And it goes like that for days.  Eventually we move to the computer where we can expand our vocabulary without worrying about our texting thumbs falling off. 
    Alex tells me about his classes and his three dorm-mates.  Their room is considered a quad—two guys to a bedroom and a shared bathroom and living space that Alex laments is really not much more than a glorified closet. 
    There’s Monroe—a junior who collects rocks and all things related to geology for fun; and Joey, who pledged a fraternity last fall and keeps a notebook in his desk drawer detailing the number of pushups and sit-ups he does each morning.  Alex is convinced that Joey must have a cotton allergy because he never wears a shirt.  I laugh but he insists that he’s not joking.  Adam, he tells