Cause We, Could Be Happy Can't You See, If You'd Only Let Me Be The One To Hold You, And Keep You Here With Me

--"That Thing You Do", The Wonders

When the cashier at the Wendy's drive-thru handed me my change I tried not to act surprised. I tried to act like it was an everyday occurrence for somebody to give the cashier a twenty, only to get back the twenty plus the normal change. I tried to act like I wasn't taking advantage of the situation, but I was.

As Jennifer and I drove away, she shot me a glance of her disapproval.

"What? It's not like I set the kid up. It's his own dumbass fault."

"You didn't exactly give him a chance to catch his mistake either."

I couldn't have won that argument any way I played it. It would have been no use to try at any rate. We both knew what would have happened. I would explain how what I was doing wasn't really wrong since I hadn't set out to purposely mislead the boy. She would counter that intentions are not the barometer of an action's moral value. To which I would respond that moral values are ambiguous, that her moral values may be one place and my moral values may lay far to the West. Then it would get into the whole debate about whether right and wrong are fixed points on the map and pretty much the whole day would be ruined. So I did what I knew would placate her.

I shrugged my shoulders.

She shook her head in playful frustration and we let the matter drop.

Back when she was alive, Jennifer had a horrible habit of hitting the beach whenever both of us had a day off. We would cruise down there relatively late in the morning--maybe ten or eleven--and stay talking till the sun was already going down. We never talked about anything specifically. I think we used to call it shooting the shat since shooting the shit would imply that we mostly discussed what was currently going in our lives. Nope, our talks always ran to what we remembered, what we did, and how it affected us. I don't know--we were both horrible pack rats when it came to memories. The only difference was my memories always veered towards experiences I regretted and hers always skewed towards memories that made her who she was. Cornerstones she used to call them. We were always good at laying out the details thickly and painting a picture of the type of people we had been and the kind of world we had grown up in. Sometimes, if I close my ears really hard, I can still hear her spinning a yarn about her life and laughing in the inexplicable way she always did. It's always at the beach and it's always in that great spooky hour when the sky turned a hue of pumpkin orange and the beach had practically emptied.

That's where we were headed that day. We never hung out all that often. Both of us were far too busy with the business of living to make our jaunts a regularly scheduled event. In fact, it had probably had been four or five months since I had heard from her last. But that's how we always were. One of us would call the other out of the blue and we would pick up like there hadn't been this gaping hole between visits.

"There's something I've got to tell you," she said to me as I turned to look at her from the driver's seat.

"You've been drafted."

"Fine, I shan't tell you then."

I knew what she wanted. She was fishing for me to ask her what her big news was. But I had a habit of not giving her the satisfaction. If there's one thing that's always annoyed me it's when people beat around the bush. That's probably why I'm not a huge fan of small talk, good-byes and hellos, and pleasantries in general. They always divert from the real crux the matter. I'd rather jump right into what needs to be said and save all the fluff for when I'm in a drunker mood.

Five minutes passed as I drove not saying a word. From the corner of my eye I could see her checking to see if I was finally going to ask. I didn't. Finally, she spoke up.

"You can be a real ass sometimes."

I nodded my agreement.

"Steve's asked me to move in with him."

"When? Where?" I tried to ask nonchalantly as if I was told by close friends they're moving away all the time.

"Does it matter?"

"I s'pose not."

The first thing that came running through my head was how this is how Breanne must have felt when Torry told her she was moving away. But the more I contemplated it, the more I realized the situation was suitably different. For one, I hadn't known Jennifer all my life. I had barely known her three or four years at that point. Secondly, I doubt I could consider us very close. Sure, we had a connection, but it wasn't anywhere near as valuable for me to react with anything but mild disappointment. Lastly, for all I knew she could have been moving a couple of blocks away from me.

Yet there was that tone in her voice. That tone spoke of her destination being far away, far enough that felt she had to tell me about it. After all, if she had been moving down the street or even five minutes away, would there have been any valid reason to inform me? Probably not. The very fact she had to precede her news with the statement, "There's something I've got to tell you," indicated the news wasn't good news. Indeed, nothing of real joy ever was introduced by the phrase "There's something I've got to tell you." Again, it falls under my theory about anything of real worth being said sans set-up. When you get the news somebody is getting married it isn't built-up with hours and hours of rigamarole or, at the very least, it shouldn't be. Nope, you should announce it straight-out from the get go. The only news that you should be buffered against is bad news. The only announcement you should have ever to steel yourself for is a sad announcement.

I didn't know what to say. What was there to say? It wasn't like I had any right to ask her to stay. I was her four month friend and not a very good one at that.

We sat like that in my Duster for a very long time, letting the road hypnotize us into a lull. In my head I had started to smile because I had latched onto the silly thought that perhaps I should have instigated a fight about the incorrect change given at Wendy's. It kind of amused me that I had been so worried about ruining our beach excursion that I hadn't let loose with my long-standing opinion. Then she went ahead and dropped what amounted to a bomb on the proceedings soon after. In my head, I made a mental reminder that I should always stick by my guns and speak up about what was actually going on in my head. I should have set out to defend myself. I should have hashed out with her. I should have had the talk, no matter how frustrating and annoying it might have been, with her.

I should have done it because, who knew, it might have been the last argument I would ever have with her.

That's when the thought hit me that maybe she had invited me to the beach for that one last hurrah. Was that what this was? Our last talk? I didn't want it to be but all signs were pointing to yes.

"What's going on in that brain of yours?" she asked.

"Nothing," I replied.

What I wanted to say, what I should have said, was that I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to reconsider but I couldn't think of a plausible reason for her to stay. The most I could come up with was that I would miss her, but that seemed rather weak. It was pathetic actually. Saying you're going to miss someone when they leave in hopes that'll be enough to convince them to stay is tantamount to betting one's last dollar in blackjack in hopes of winning all your losses back. It was a last ditch effort, at best. At worst, it was the small flame of hope for a desperate man and I wasn't a desperate man yet.

I very well couldn't tell her that the only reason I wanted her to stay was that I would miss our talks. Maybe it was the fact that we only had them every few months. Or maybe it was the fact they seemed to span the whole day. Or maybe it was just the fact she was one of the few people who found me interesting for such a sustained period of time. I couldn't tell her to forgo her plans with her boyfriend in the silly tradition of my wanting to shoot the shat with her every now and again. That would have been unfair of me.

I said nothing.


cause it hurts me so just to see you go

We arrived at the beach and proceeded to have a great talk--an amazing talk, in fact. But the one topic we never touched upon was her possible imminent departure. I didn't want to ruin the moment and neither did she. We left it a matter for another time which, hopefully, meant there would be another time. I guess that's how it always was between us, we could talk about almost anything, but there were certain subjects that we knew could taint what was quite a pleasant friendship. With most people I would have been forthright and arrogant and half a million things that I get blamed for time and time again. With her, though, it was always more enriching to preserve the peace. Indeed, I saw her so rarely there wasn't much point to making those brief days I did see her into a living hell.

There we sat by the water talking about everything under the sun except the one topic on both our minds. When it was time to go home we went home without so much as one cross or hurtful word escaping our lips.

----

Breanne sometimes asks me if I ever thought of Jennifer in that way, did I ever see us becoming more of a couple instead of a couple of friends. I tell her what I told Jennifer was alive. The talking, the brief moments of discourse, were what I absolutely loved about my time with her. I loved the process of getting to know her, to understand her, to appreciate her, which is something I don't think I could have done had my only intention been to get to sleep with her. Even when we first started going out, before we mutually decided to be friends, I saw our connection for what it was--something that was special because of its limitations and because of its brevity. At that particular time with that particular woman it would have been a mistake to prop our relationship into something more substantial. The talking, the laughing, the knowing glances, where what was good about the two of us. Anything else would have ruined everything.

But do you think the two of you could have been happy together, Breanne asks.

The way I look at it, I think if we had ever gone chasing that fallacy it would have ended in tears for someone. I honestly believe being happy together, or at least trying to be happy together, would have made us miserable.

Nah. I was happy with what a got--some great memories of some great conversations with some great gal. She ended up not moving in with Steve, but she did end up leaving for good eventually. And, yes, I was sad for some time, but when I do get sad I try to take a page out of Jennifer's book. I try not to look back at my time with her with regret.

I try to look back upon each and every one of those afternoons as a cornerstone, as a memory that has shaped who I am today.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers