four Years Ago

It was the spring of my Freshman year in college, two weeks away from finals. I was in my dorm room at the University of Georgia, reading up for a test the next morning in my English Lit class, trying to ignore the phone call from three days earlier that was still playing in an endless loop in my head.

“Are you seeing anybody?”

“No, Kevin, I’m not. You know I’m not.”

“You’re not attracted to anybody, are you? If you are, I wish you’d just come out and tell me right now and be honest about it.”

“God, how many times do I have to say it?”

“Don’t curse at me, Kaitlyn.”

“I wasn’t – fine. Sorry.”

“Well – are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Attracted to anybody else?”

“NO! GOD, how many times do I have to – ”

“I told you, don’t curse – ”

“I wasn’t fucking cursing, Kevin! NOW I’m fucking cursing!”

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

“You don’t even hear me when I DO talk to you!”

“Well, maybe we shouldn’t talk for awhile, then.”

“…Kevin…”

“Maybe we should take a break.”

“Kevin, come on – there’s only two weeks left, and then we’ll both be back home – ”

“I don’t know who you are sometimes. You’re becoming more and more like your roommate – ”

“I’M NOT SHANNA, Kevin! I’m with YOU! I’m in love with YOU!”

“You don’t act like it sometimes.”

“Jesus CHRIST, I might as well go ahead and cheat on you since you PUNISH me like I have anyway!”

Silence.

“…I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Kevin… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean it, it’s just you make me so MAD when you – ”

“Go ahead. Sleep with whoever you want.”

“KEVIN – ”

Click.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the first time we’d had that conversation, almost word for word. In fact, we were approaching double digits.

Kevin was my high school boyfriend in Savannah, Georgia. We’d been dating since 10th grade. He was so nervous when he asked me out the first time that he almost gave up halfway through. But he finally got all the way through it, and I said ‘yes.’ I liked him from the beginning; I grew to love him. He was a shy, sweet guy, very intelligent. We shared the same dreams of being world-class journalists someday. That’s how we met, working on the school newspaper.

We dated five months before he finally kissed me. I lost my virginity to him in 11th grade, more than a year after we started dating. Sex was good with him. I never wanted to tear his clothes off in a half-insane state of passion… but he was attentive and considerate.

But he was also incredibly insecure.

He was that way from the start, but it got worse as time went on. I was a late bloomer – like, a late bloomer. I didn’t get my period until I was 14, and I remained skinny and gangly until I was 16. But all of a sudden in 11th grade, BAM, I kind of came into my own. Curves everywhere. My skin cleared up and I finally got a fashion sense. Boys started noticing me seemingly overnight. I got a lot of attention where I hadn’t before – like, ‘captain of the football team’ attention. I think one of the reasons Kevin finally got the nerve to ask me to have sex was because he was afraid he was going to lose me to somebody more aggressive. He thought that if we ‘sealed the deal,’ I’d stay with him.

It was never about that for me. He was my first love, and I would have stayed with him no matter what. I definitely wouldn’t have cheated on him, ever. When I was twelve, my mom cheated on my dad with a business colleague of hers. Even though my parents ended up staying together, it destroyed my father. My brothers and I got front-row seats to the carnage. I hated my mom for a long time because of it. I eventually forgave her for what she did to my father and our family, but I swore to myself that I would never, ever put anybody through that.

But things got worse when I went to college. I stayed in-state at UGA, while Kevin went to Syracuse University. Syracuse was both of our first choices, but only he got in. I planned to try to transfer for my Sophomore year, but in the meantime, he was in New York, and I was stuck in Athens, Georgia.

The distance made him extremely paranoid. It was partly my fault; early on, I told him about some of the raunchier, alcohol-fueled shenanigans of my roommate, a crazy chick named Shanna Williams from California. About how she went to clubs and parties every night, and usually slept with a new guy every week. About how I would wake up at 2AM hearing the creaking springs in Shanna’s bed, and her whispering drunkenly, “Shhhh, you’ll wake up my roommate.” About the weirdness the morning after, when I had some naked stranger in my room.

“It was sooo awkward – and I didn’t even sleep with him!” I laughed when I told Kevin.

Hoo boy. Wrooooong thing to say.

After the second time, I learned to keep my mouth shut about Shanna’s sexcapades.

It wasn’t like he never saw me. We called or Skyped all the time. We saw each other every four or five weeks. Either he would drive the 15-hour trip down, or occasionally I would go up to stay with him, or we’d rendezvous in the middle at some crappy little hotel in the middle when he couldn’t stand being away from me any longer. Or, if truth be told, when I couldn’t stand the whininess anymore.

And then the break-ups started.

All of them were initiated by him.

I was distraught over the first one. Wrecked. I cried for two days straight. It lasted a week, and then he called and begged me to take him back, said that he couldn’t live without me. I was elated.

Four weeks later we broke up again, then got back together over Christmas break. I wasn’t so elated this time.

Especially when it happened again in February.

Why didn’t I break up with him completely?

Because I was young and stupid.

Because I loved him. Or, if it wasn’t really love, because I still cared for him. A lot.

Because I’d lost my virginity to him.

Because he was the only boy I’d ever been with.

Because in March my application to transfer to Syracuse was accepted. I figured if I’d made it that far, I could hold out for another couple of months.

But every month and a half, another damn breakup. And when we weren’t broken up, it was the endless, whining, insecure phone calls…

It got so bad that every time his ringtone played – ‘Goin’ To The Chapel,’ by the way; he put it on there, NOT me – my whole body would tighten up, and I would think about not answering it.

But I always did.

It’ll get better, I told myself. When we’re together at Syracuse, it’ll be so much better.

There were only two weeks left, and then we would spend all of college together.

During World War II, soldiers had to go off to war and leave their girlfriends and wives behind for years, I reasoned. This is just a test of our love, that’s all.

On the other hand, those girlfriends and wives never had to deal with freaked-out phone calls and Skype sessions obsessing over whether they were cheating or not.

Truth was, I envied my roommate Shanna. She didn’t have a clingy boyfriend. Hell, she didn’t have a boyfriend at all. She slept with whomever she wanted, and she didn’t give a damn what anybody else thought.

Well, actually, she learned to give a damn what I thought. After the fourth late-night hookup, I pitched a fit. So we worked out a compromise: no more overnight stays. One night a week she could bring somebody over, and I would go crash in a sofa chair in the community study room till they were through. But the rest of the time, she had to go to his place or screw him in the bushes or an alley or something. No exceptions.

She kept to her end of the deal. In fact, as I was sitting there trying to concentrate on my boring-ass homework, I realized that she hadn’t brought anybody home in a couple of weeks.

Speak of the Devil, and she shall appear.