Truthfully, I’ve always wanted to be a cliché.
Sweep me off my feet! Make me forget everything I knew before I looked into your eyes! Let’s ride off together into our happily ever after.
Sure we had been off and on since we left for college, but when I found out that Drew officially moved on with “I swear there’s nothing between us, we’re just in the same calc study group” girl, it still stung. Not because I thought he was my Prince Charming. I swear I didn’t. But because he’d always been there. It’s nice when someone is there and losing that constant is a bit startling.
I’d been Drew’s girlfriend since my second week of high school. We were each other’s firsts. For everything. He was the only guy I ever danced with at prom, the one who taught me how to play beer pong. I went to all his soccer games. He came to all my track meets. You should have seen the way he flipped his hair before doing donuts out back at his parents’ farm. Just trust me.
We grew up together and I was braver (my mom would say “more reckless”) because I knew he was there with me, my safety net.
When you’re a teenager high on your own hormones with a false sense of immortality, those wild feelings feel like it’s forever. Then, you graduate.
When he left for UCLA, all the way across the country, and I headed up north to Ohio for college, things changed. We’d go weeks without talking and when we finally did, our conversations were clipped and surface level. Time would pass but when we’d come home for the holidays, we were back to being Blanche and Drew for a few nostalgic weeks.
He even came out to visit me at Miami one weekend. Drew couldn’t stop commenting on how nice everyone was in the midwest. He also couldn’t stop pointing out how ridiculous they all looked in their double, even triple, popped collared polos. He wasn’t wrong. We spent that weekend walking through campus holding hands, sharing pitchers at Skipper’s, and making out in my dorm room. Drew told me everything we’d do when I visited him in California.
Now, he is someone else’s boyfriend. It’s both relieving and disarming to be untethered after so long.
My roommate Jasmine wasted no time before she pounced.
Less of the eat-ice-cream-and-cry-with-you friend and more of the borrow-my-tube-top-we’re-going-out friend, I let her dress me like her own life-sized Barbie and we headed to Brick Street. Two vodka and Red Bulls later, the dance floor was ours. Or, that’s what it felt like anyways.
When we were sufficiently sweaty, tired of gross strangers “accidentally” bumping into us, and desperate for actual water, we stumbled out into the night. The winter air hit us, turning our sweat cold and breath to fog. Jazz and I held hands, leaning on each other to relieve the pain caused by our ridiculous heels, as we stumbled across the street to Bagel & Deli. The line wasn’t too bad, we reasoned. Only 15 people ahead of us.
When it was our turn, I did my best polite yell of our order.
“TWO CRUNCH N’ MUNCH BAGELS PLEASE!”
“Nacho or cool ranch Doritos?” a voice asked me over the counter.
Before I could tell him, “nacho, of course,” it was like my limbs, words, and sense of reality disappeared. I couldn’t feel anything but my heart pounding in my chest.
“Are you ok? Which kind of Doritos do you two want?”
Jazz took one look at me and swooped in. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Classic nacho, always.”
“Got it,” he responded, looking warily at me while I continued to gawk.
Jazz whispered, “B, are you ok?”
I shook my head a few times, coming back to the chaotic room with Grateful Dead blaring and students hollering their orders.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I need to eat something.”
I reached up to take our foil wrapped sandwiches and made sure to touch his hand when I did. I wanted time to stop. I didn’t want to let go.
“See you around? My name is Sasha,” he shared before asking for the next person’s order.
“She’s Blanche!” Jazz yelled as she pulled me by the elbow back out into the night.