Building Friction (Part 34)

I barely was aware of the goings on around me on Monday, as I sipped at coffee and nodded politely to whatever was said to me by the students. They sensed that something was up and decided to keep their distance. At lunch my cell rang repeatedly. Once was from Steph. Once was from Sean. And once was from Matt. I answered none of them.

I couldn't eat, so I leaned against the outside wall to my classroom and smoked. Luckily, I had a room on the far end of campus, one that wasn't visited by the students during their lunch break, so it was relatively peaceful. Conversely, if anything bad ever happened, I would have been screwed. I laughed at the double-edged sword of it as I inhaled another lungful of smoke.

I managed to finish out the day and drive myself home. There was an e-mail from Geoff, three offline IM messages from Sean and another message from Matt on my land line answering machine. I was a wanted woman who wanted none of the attention. I attempted writing for a minute, then retired to my bedroom and curled into a ball on my bed, hugging my knees to my chest. I watched the minutes drift past on my alarm clock, but I did not fall asleep.

When my stomach moved from a rumbling ache into full-blown cramps, I weakly stretched myself out and made my way into the kitchen. I turned on no lights, but moved through the dark, gathering up fixings for a sandwich. I assembled meats and cheeses on my bread, smeared a thin layer of mayo on a second slice of bread and then smashed the whole lot together and took a large bite. The food moved around in my mouth, but I did not register its taste.

My cell had rung off and on as I lay in my bed, and it began to trill at me again. I lifted it up and looked at the glowing display through the dim light. Matt. If only he could just disappear. If only nothing had ever happened between us. Then there wouldn't be anything to explain. Tears welled up in my eyes and the partially chewed bite of sandwich in my mouth started to stick in my throat. I was an awful person. I set the phone back down on the table without answering it, then tossed the remainder of my food in the garbage can and headed back to my bedroom. I resumed the fetal position I had been in and began to rock myself slowly.

It was an hour later when a knock came at the door. Thankful that I hadn't left any lights on, I remained in bed, closing my eyes and willing the visitor away. The knock persisted. There was a brief bout of silence before I heard my cell ringing again from the other room. When it stopped, the knocking began again.

"Please, Chloe. I know you're in there. Will you please talk to me?" Matt's voice was dulled behind the wood of the door. Silence. Then again, "Please, Chloe. Please."

Tears streamed from my eyes, running sideways over my face and wetting the blanket beneath me. I sniffled loudly, trying to keep snot from running freely from my nose. The motion brought too much in and made me cough and sputter. I held a fist to my mouth to try and muffle the noise.

The knocking at the door started again. Three hard raps and then a break. A minute would pass and then the three raps came again. "Chloe?" Matt's voice called. I heard him sigh. It would have had to have been a loud one to make it to my ears. It pained me to know that he thought he was in the wrong, but I couldn't bring myself to rise. "OK. I'm going," I heard him say.

Then there was nothing. I eventually drifted off to sleep out of sheer exhaustion.

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In the morning, it was a repeat of the prior day. I went through the motions while at work, handing out paperwork for the students to work on, showing videos and sitting at my desk, drinking coffee and not speaking unless it was absolutely necessary. At lunch Matt and Steph called again. Again, I did not answer.

While in the middle of the period immediately following lunch, I received a note from the front office, advising me to call Steph. Well, it was her company name, followed by an important Ms. and her last name. I crumpled the note up and threw it into my waste basket.

Rather than drive straight home from work, I headed past the independent movie theater and stopped in to watch a Sundance winner. I couldn't focus on the any of the action on screen, but the air conditioning felt good on the nape of my neck, and I could absentmindedly chew on Red Vines and forget who I was. While I had failed in life, movies had never failed me. They were the perfect wormhole to escape into. A place where 2 hours could transpire and nothing from my reality could touch me.

I stopped by the liquor store on my way home, buying some Bombay Sapphire and a couple more packs of smokes. When I pulled up to my apartment, Geoff was sitting at my front door, exhaling smoke. He stood when he saw me approach. I froze and cocked my head at him.

"I hear you're avoiding everyone," he said.

"Why would it matter to you who I've been avoiding, unless you're upset that I've been avoiding you?" I shifted my weight from foot to foot, standing in place.

"It doesn't. But yeah, I was sent here. Your friend Steph called Alex at work today and asked him to start poking around with me. I didn't know what to tell him. You didn't answer my e-mail from yesterday, I don't think you even opened it. I actually got worried, believe it or not. Thought I'd come here on my own," Geoff paused to take a last drag from his smoke and then throw it aside. "So, what's going on?"

"Nothing. Just needed a break from everyone," I moved the bag with the gin from my left to my right hand. I couldn't bring myself to look at him.

Geoff nodded. "OK. But you're worrying your friends. You're apparently not allowed to go more than 24 hours without contacting at least one of them."

"I am so sick of that!" I yelled, clenching my fist.

"It's the grave you dug for yourself, remember?" Geoff spoke softly, almost as if he knew he was heading into rocky waters.

"So? So? They don't own me! I should be able to disconnect for a little while! I've got that meeting tomorrow, you know! I need to gather myself. I need to prepare. I need to have my shit together so that I don't look like a fucking ignorant! And sometimes?" I was breathing hard. "Sometimes I just want to be left the fuck alone!"

I pushed past him at that moment, fumbling my keys in the lock. I nearly dropped the bag that was in my hand. Geoff took it from me, and I allowed him to hold it. When I'd managed to work the door open, I snatched it back.

"Hey, Chloe, stop." Geoff grabbed at my elbow, but I yanked it away from him. "You're going to need to learn how to deal with shit a little bit better. Do you seriously have a break down after every time you fuck someone? If that's the case, then I think I'll just leave now and give you one less thing to worry about."

"It's not you, OK? It's me and how fucking stupid I was for not dealing with Matt first. It's me for being so damn impulsive. It's me for not thinking. It's me for..."

"Bothering to fuck me at all?" Geoff stood stiffly and glared at me. His voice sounded dead.

"No. I wanted to. I just should have waited until I told Matt." I sighed.

"You should have told Matt first that you wanted to fuck me?" Geoff was half smirking, but I didn't catch it right away.

"NO! God! Don't you feel in the least bit gross about fucking me after you knew that I'd fucked Matt not even 2 days earlier?" I moved deeper into the apartment, setting down the bottle of booze and throwing my keys on the coffee table. I pulled a glass out of the cabinets and went to crack open the gin.

"Now that you mention it, sure. But at the time, no, it didn't bother me. Does everything have to be so planned with you?" Geoff followed me into the kitchen and got comfortable, fishing around for a glass for himself.

"No. Spontaneity is a good thing as long as no one is going to get hurt. Now I'm a fucking asshole and I'm going to hurt someone and forgive me if I don't like being the bitch that hurts people." I gulped at the gin, drinking down most of the glass before stopping for air.

"Alright, well let me ask you something then, since you think being spontaneous is OK as long as no one gets hurt. What exactly did you think rebuffing me at the hotel was going to do?" Geoff sipped thoughtfully at his glass and looked up at me without raising his head, his eyes deeply lidded.

I stopped pacing. I covered my eyes with my free hand and sighed. "I didn't mean to hurt you either. I don't know what I was thinking."

"Or if you were thinking at all," Geoff grumbled.

"Fine, I'm an asshole, are you happy? Did you want to hear me say that I know that I'm an asshole? That night at the hotel felt so incredibly good, I didn't know what to think. I wasn't supposed to be interested in you and here I was, pinned up and cumming all over you. It was quite the mindfuck, you know?" I started to pour myself more gin, but Geoff grabbed the bottle away from me.

"Slow down with that. Just keep talking," he said. "It was a mindfuck for me as well. Every time that I thought I wanted to strangle you, you would turn out to be OK. The bar, us joking. Sure, you weren't the nicest in the restroom and then you started up with that milquetoast motherfucker. Out of everyone, you know? Some bland guy. Nothing's wrong with him, but nothing's right either."

"Matt's a good guy," I began to defend.

"And yet you couldn't name for me something that you two could talk about," Geoff countered.

"We've talked astrology. We're both into it. We've talked about our families, which is more than I can say for you and I. We've talked movies..." I got only so far before he interrupted me again.

"What kinds of movies does he like?"

"What does it matter?" I asked defensively.

"Chloe, cut the shit. You know it matters. Now tell me, what kinds of movies does he like?" Geoff waved the gin bottle in front of me, as if offering to give it back as a reward for telling him what he wanted to know.

"The first night he came over, we watched a couple of 80's flicks," I said, trying to snatch at the bottle in the process. He pulled it out of my reach.

"Which ones?" he asked.

"Karate Kid and Footloose," I said, stepping in closer and this time getting the bottle from him.

"Awe, Chloe!" Geoff's tone was disapproving. "Karate Kid?? Watching a kid paint a house for two hours is not entertainment!"

"The movies are irrelevant at this point, aren't they?" I poured more gin in my glass and then reluctantly handed the bottle back to Geoff.

"Movies are NEVER irrelevant, and I hate you for even suggesting that there might be a time when they would be. I know I'm a movie snob, I've come to terms with that, but you saying shit like that takes you down a notch in my book." Geoff drank from the bottle rather than pour more into his glass, obviously delighting in my scornful look of disapproval at the gesture.

"Fine. I made a bad decision with Matt because he has a thing for a crappy karate movie. I was blind to reason after seeing William Zabka's floppy hairstyle. My ruin came at the hands of a cut-rate inspirational sports story. It couldn't possibly have had anything to do with me not knowing what I wanted and just taking what was there." I pushed past Geoff and opened the freezer. There was a bottle of Jaeger chilling. I pulled it out and unscrewed the cap rapidly, hoping to get in a few gulps before Geoff wrestled that away from me as well.

He just stood silently. "I can't believe you just said that," he replied in a hushed tone.

"That I know that I don't know what I want so I just take what available to me?" I questioned.

"No. You just called The Karate Kid a sports flick. What did I ever see in you?" Geoff's face appeared serious.

I stared at him, mouth open. "Fine. Don't be serious."

"I AM serious. First you tell me that movies are irrelevant. Now you're trying to make snap judgments on what constitutes as sports. I might as well leave right now." Geoff put the Bombay on the counter and started for the door.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I spat. "You're not making any sense!"

"Well, I thought I'd speak your language for once since you haven't been making sense since I stepped in the front door. Come on, Chloe. Do you really just sit around all the time, looking for opportunities to feel sorry for yourself?" Geoff ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek and shot me a look daring me to answer.

"I don't think it's feeling sorry for myself that I care about not hurting someone's feelings," I shot back.

"Oh, someone's feelings are going to get hurt. Most likely Matt's. Then yours for hurting his. The perhaps mine if you don't start handling the situation a little better. You really make me worry that I had you pegged all wrong." He moved a couple steps closer to me.

"You've made a lot of assumptions about me from the very beginning. You read my writing and think you know who I am or how I should act. Then you meet me and write that autobiography a little more in depth in your head. Thing is, how the hell can you say that you know who I am or what I should be like if I'm still struggling to figure that out myself?" I moved slightly closer to him as well.

"People love to think that they're complicated," Geoff responded. He was toe to toe with me now, and picked up a lock of my hair, twisting it between his fingers. "But everyone boils down to the same basic scenarios. You're no different."

"Well, what scenario do I fit into?" I asked, my eyes studying his face.

"You're the least damaged, believe it or not. You've got a self-awareness that almost wrecks the big picture, but for the most part you're a girl who isn't willing to fit into a cut and paste world. You do your own thing, but also conform to the necessary things around you in your life. You play by your own rules, but you still manage to play the over-all game." Geoff was tilting his face down toward mine. "I have hope for you. I know that you'll stop trying to be a cheerleader. You won't cave to being a player. You'll eventually realize that if you can get a grip on all of your pathetic, unnecessary insecurities, you can be the coach. You can call the game. Play by play. You'll have to deal with some of your plays not always working out, though."

He leaned down and kissed me. He tasted like gin and cigarettes. His lips were soft and I felt his hand go to the small of my back as if there was an indentation made for it there. When he pulled back, he pulled me to him. My face in his chest, I sighed.

"I don't want to hurt anybody. Not Matt. Not me. Not you." I mumbled.

"You're going to have to. And then you're going to have to deal with the fallout. You can do it, Chloe. Stop being a little bitch about it." His voice rumbled in his chest, purring against the side of my face.

"Fine. I'll talk to him tomorrow. After my meeting." I sighed. My chest felt heavy.

Geoff kissed the top of my head. "Good girl," he patronized.

"Fuck off," I countered.

"That's my girl," he cooed, holding me tightly.