Humilated

“You need to leave this room!”

I shook my head. I really needed some sleep. I didn’t tell Lucy about staying up all night writing to them. I was too embarrassed. Besides, there were some things that you shared with your bestie, but not everything.

“No, I’m comfortable,” I lied. I couldn’t get up and walk. I couldn’t find the ice to even try and heal myself down there. I couldn’t tell her the real reason that I was lying down. Rambo was nearly broken and out of action for the foreseeable future.

She shook her head. “Seriously, this is not healthy. Out!” She commanded as she held the door open. I was dressed, and, if the truth be known, there wasn’t much difference between my staying in the dorm clothes and going out at all. Lucy asked me when I first moved in if everyone where I lived dressed the same. If all they wore were black T-shirts and matching jeans, which was what most of my closet consisted of, apart from the times that I went shopping with Lucy. Lucy’s shopping rules with me were no buying black, and no buying jeans.

Back in high school, the few people that wanted to be friends with me only did it because of Nan. She was a famous retired actress, and she loved the attention, even if she retired many years ago. 

I slouched and then walked to the door with a heavy head. She wasn’t exactly forcing me, but I felt as if I was being pushed to do something that I didn’t want to do. I could have spoken up and told her she wasn’t right, but who was I kidding?

Me.

“OK, OK. Let me just grab my purse,” I said, trying to think of another way to get out of her insisting on me leaving the dorm.

She laughed as she grabbed my arm. “Nice try. I know all your moves. You need to do better than pull that face to get out of me insisting that you need to get out of this room.”

I stopped pouting as I left the dorm and then moved to the hallway, waiting for her to lock the door. She did, and then we moved arm-in-arm through the hall. She was the popular one, and I was the stranger on her arm as she called out a few names as they passed and high fived her. 

“I’ve never understood why you hang out with me when you’re so popular.”

“No negative talk. We’re going to get some ice-cream and chill. I could introduce you; I could have done it a long time ago, but you didn’t want me to, remember?”

I avoided the topic, so I asked her, “Danny’s?”

She laughed. “Wouldn’t dream of anywhere else to go.”

Danny’s was the local ice-cream shop, and all students loved to go there. The ice cream was fresh and made in-house, which seemed to be a dying breed these days. It reminded me of home and mom’s hot cocoa she would make and the locals coming in for a hot sip with her pies. My mom was old-fashioned that way. She ran the bed-and-breakfast with help from Nan, who claimed that her major role in the B&B was marketing. Mom made sure to focus on attention to detail, such as apple pies being made from scratch; she made sure that the apples were home-grown and organic. I admired her because she did everything to perfection, and I never understood how she had the time or how she did it all the time. 

“You going to walk in silence? Or say something to me?”

I shook my head, as I stopped thinking about back home. “Sorry, I was in a daze. So many things running through my mind right now.”

“Thinking about the emails you sent last night?”

I sighed. “Not exactly. It was a complete mess. I was so nervous that I drank a little too much to pluck up the courage to write to them, and then when I did, I sent one to the wrong email address, which got returned. Not sure how I wrote the email down wrong. The other one that was sent had sexual innuendoes, and the other, well, I did a copy and paste of the other email with the name, and an entire load of symbols.”

I confessed and told her the truth, something that I wasn’t planning on doing, but I had no one else to talk to apart from Lucy. And sometimes it just felt good to talk.

She laughed as she stopped in her tracks, and then bent down and rose again. “You didn’t?”

I nodded my head as confirmation. 

“Why do you get yourself in such a mess?”

“When you think of something and it feels like a good idea, then after you’re like, why the heck did I do that? Well, that’s what happened.”

She sighed. “You need a triple scoop of chocolate ice cream.”

I shook my head in disagreement. “No, quadruple!”

We laughed as we picked up the pace, and, in a few strides, we arrived at Danny’s. We did a quick scan of the place as we arrived, and then our smiles turned into a frown as we saw Amanda sitting in the corner, with her boyfriend. They were the King and Queen of campus. It was crazy, because I thought all this type of bullying would stop back in high school, but some people never grew up. 

“Look what the cat dragged in?” Amanda flicked her long blond hair as she stood up, as if she was flicking away dust. She had the face of an angel, the perfect height of five-ten, and a body that was shaped like an hourglass, but I heard her boobs were fake, her nose had been corrected and she spent most of her summers on the doctor’s table having some kind of plastic surgery. Yeah, her parents had money, her dad did anyway, and she loved to flaunt it. It was only natural that she was with the captain of the baseball team; they were like two peas in a pod, rich and arrogant. 

Lucy turned away to ignore Amanda, as her comments were directed at her. It surprised me, because I never knew that they knew each other. 

“The whore’s here. Let’s go Pete!”

“What did you say?” I asked her.

“Drop it,” Lucy said as I stood facing Amanda. 

“Listen to your friend. She knows that I’m right. Sleeping with three guys is just pure nasty. I’m surprised that she can sit down, let alone walk!”

Then, before she said another word, I was about to defend my friend, but I noticed Lucy crying. 

Lucy smiled at me as she said, “Look, not everyone thinks that having a harem is as wonderful as you do.”

I silently nodded because this was a side of Lucy that I’d never seen before. I thought of her as always being confident and nothing and no one getting her down. It was then that I realized underneath it all, she was hiding her genuine feelings. She was like me in so many ways, and for the first time I admired her even more than I did ever before. 

“Two, quadruple-scooped chocolates with all the trimmings for me and my bestie!”