To Hell With Your New Shit

I sat on the couch in the living room, frozen, tears streaming down my face. I could hear John outside, pounding on the door and yelling my name. A few times I stood up shakily, telling myself to go outside and talk to him, but each time I would collapse back onto the couch in a fit of sobs. Finally John must have retreated, because the silence around me grew. A few minutes later it was broken by the sound of an engine starting and tires squealing down the street.

“He’s gone,” I breathed to myself once the quiet returned. I sighed and dragged myself upstairs, only so I could pull on a comfortable pair of sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt and stumble back downstairs. As I passed my reflection in the mirror above my dresser, I vaguely recognized the shirt as one of the guys’ from years ago. I was too tired and distraught to care whose, but I silently prayed it hadn’t belonged to John.

As soon as I made it back to the living room, I curled onto the couch, flipped the TV on, and stayed there for the next two days.

“Lindsay, are you sure you’re all right?” my mother asked from the kitchen as she poured herself coffee.

“I’m fine,” I assured her, stifling a yawn as I flipped through channels on the television.

“You’ve barely gotten off that couch since Wednesday,” she said as worry flooded her tone. I looked at her as if to say, “So what?” and she responded by telling me that it was now Friday.

“So I felt like being a bum yesterday,” I said, indifferently. “What’s so bad about that?”

“Well it’s just that I thought you were meeting Kennedy the other day,” she reasoned.

“I did meet Kennedy the other day,” I told her, really wishing she would just leave for work already.

“And then what happened?”

“Nothing happened, Mom. Would you just drop it, please?” I glared at her from my eternal spot on the couch that was, to be quite honest, beginning to make my butt pretty sore.

“Well, all right,” she finally said, giving up, “but if you haven’t gotten off that couch and at least showered by the time I get home, I’m making a doctor’s appointment for you, Lindsay Marie.”

“There’s no need, Mom,” I told her, waving it off. She sighed and shrugged her shoulders at me before saying good-bye and heading to work.

I stretched my arms above my head and noticed that my stomach was growling. I pushed myself off of the couch and shuffled lazily into the kitchen to rummage for junk food. Right before I was about to grab a bag of Chips Ahoy, the doorbell rang. Figuring it was my mother, who had most likely locked the door and then realized she had forgotten something, I then made my way to the front door and yanked it open.

“Hey Lindsay!’ Not my mom, but rather, a familiar, auburn-haired boy greeted, stepping over the threshold to wrap me in a hug.

“G – Garrett?” I stammered, surprised to see yet another old friend standing in front of me. “What are you doing here?”

As soon as I questioned him, he held out a plastic bag and urged me to open it. I pulled the handles apart and couldn’t help but laugh at its contents. In the bag were two small cartons of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream – Cherry Garcia for me, Half Baked for Garrett, a bag of BBQ Fritos, and a small selection of some of our favorite zombie movies.

“Kennedy was too much of a wimp to come over here after ditching you at the coffee shop,” Garrett started to explain. “He told me what happened the other day, so I figured I ought to come over and cheer you up.”

I grinned at my friend, knowing safely that I could still call him that, and crushed him in an appreciative hug before pulling him inside.

“Nice shirt, by the way,” he commented with a smirk. I looked down and for the first time in the past couple of days, realized that I was wearing one of Garrett’s old Star Wars shirts that he had eventually discovered didn’t fit him quite right. I smiled back at him and threw our bag of goodies onto the floor in front of the TV.

“Which one?” I asked, indicating towards the four movies he had brought with him.

“All of them, of course,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Which one do you want to watch first?” I smiled and picked one up, throwing it at him to put in the DVD player.

“Night of the Living Dead, Linds? Seriously? I should have known,” he said with a chuckle.

“Hey, that movie is a classic!” I said defensively, holding my hands up. “Besides, you’re the one who brought it over.”

“Only because I know it’s your favorite.”

“Well, excuse me, Mister Killer Klowns From Outer Space,” I retorted. “But some of us happen to like our movies aged… like… like fine wine!”

Both of us burst out laughing at my horrendous retaliation.

“I’m glad you haven’t changed, Linds,” Garrett said. I looked at him, confused, which made him go on to explain. “I mean, I’ll be honest, I was a little scared to come over here. I didn’t know if you wouldn’t want to see me or anything.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, pulling my knees to my chest. “I’m honestly surprised that you and Kennedy still like me, let alone want to spend time with me. I think John’s got the right idea, hating me and all.”

“John doesn’t hate you,” Garrett insisted. “No one hates you, I promise. You hurt us when you left, but I guess… I guess we’re trying to tell you that we don’t want you to leave again, at least not like that.”

I nodded my head, pretending to understand. I almost hated them for being so nice to me. Garrett shot me a reassuring smile as he fell next to me on the couch and wrapped his arm comfortingly around my shoulder before he pressed play on the remote.

For the next few hours, we plowed through three of our favorite movies, emptied our cartons of ice cream and the bag of Fritos, and caught up on the past three years.

“Can I tell you a secret, Gare?” I asked before plopping another movie into the DVD player, looking at Garrett hopefully.

“Sure, of course,” he agreed, looking concerned as he scooted closer to me on the couch once I sat back down.

“When I left for school, I was scared,” I admitted, slowly letting myself share everything that I had kept inside for the past three years. I wasn’t sure why I had chosen to tell all of my secrets to Garrett, but I let myself decide that it was because he didn’t pry. It was because all he wanted to do was be goofy and make me feel better. It was because he made me feel like things could be normal again.

“Scared?” he asked, confused. “What would you possibly be scared of?”

“That you guys, especially John, would forget me. I think that by leaving, I was trying to protect myself from any pain that would cause me, you know? Like, at least I could live with it if I was the one to cause myself the pain of being away from everyone. But if it had been you, or John, or anyone else, who ended up tearing us apart, I would be devastated.”

I felt hot tears brim over the edges of my eyes and cling to my eyelashes. Garrett frowned at me and pulled me into a hug.

“No offense, Lindsay,” he said with a slight chuckle, “but that’s really stupid.”

“I know!” I cried. “I know, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t realize that I could hurt anyone like they could hurt me. I guess I always thought I never meant as much to anyone as they meant to me. But now I see John, and when he’s not being bitter or angry towards me, or even when he is, actually, I just hurt for having hurt him. Garrett, I hate it. Seeing John this upset, especially because of something stupid that I did, hurts me more than he could ever hurt me.”

“Lindsay,” Garrett said quietly, looking seriously at me. “Are you trying to say something else?”

In that moment, I knew that he knew. There was no point in not telling him now.

“I love him,” I whispered through tears. “I really, really love him, Gare. I think I’m in love with him. I think I have been forever.”

Garrett just smiled softly, like he had known all along, which I’m sure he did.

“Have you told him that you love him?” He asked.

“N – No…” I mumbled. “But that’s not it.” Garrett looked up at me curiously.

“What more could there be?” He asked with a nervous laugh. “You’re not like, secretly married to some sleaze bag back in New York, are you?”

Through my sobs and hiccups, I laughed gently at his remark and shook my head.

“No,” I said quietly. “The night – the night before I left… John – he – he told me he loved me.”

“But you didn’t tell him?” he asked, shocked. I shook my head once more. “Why not!?”

“Because I uhm, I kissed him, instead,” I said quietly, a blush creeping at my cheeks. “And then uhm, and then…” I trailed off, embarrassed. I could tell Garrett practically anything, but not this. Not out loud, at least.

“And then what?” Garrett asked curiously. I looked at him and bit my lip nervously.

“AndthenIhadsexwithhim,” I sputtered in half a breath, hoping he caught what I had said so I wouldn’t have to repeat myself. My cheeks, I could feel, were probably the color of a tomato.

“You did what with - ” he started to ask, but then his eyes widened and his mouth formed the word “Oh” as he finally caught on.

I looked down at my hands, ashamed. I wasn’t ashamed about what I told Garrett, just ashamed of myself for keeping it a secret so long.

“Well, shit,” Garrett sighed, leaning back into the couch. I looked up at him nervously, hoping to God that he wasn’t secretly judging me. “So that’s why he was particularly pissy when you left.”

“God, Garrett,” I groaned, “he probably thinks that I left because I regretted it, or that I thought it was a mistake.”

“Well, was it a mistake?” Garrett asked seriously, taking me slightly aback.

“What?” I asked incredulously. “No, no of course it wasn’t. I was just so afraid that he would think that about me.”

“Listen, if John told you he loved you, he definitely didn’t think it was a mistake and I’m sure that the only thing he regrets is letting you leave,” Garrett assured me. “And trust me, if he didn’t still love you, he wouldn’t still be such a wreck.”

I nodded my head and wiped the tears from beneath my eyes as Garrett folded me into yet another hug.

“You need to tell him, Linds,” Garrett told me quietly. I pulled back from his hug and shook my head, horrified.

“I can’t!” I exclaimed. “I don’t think I can ever face him after I’ve been so horrible.”

“Lindsay,” Garret sighed, placing his hands firmly on my shoulders and looking directly into my eyes. “I won’t let you, or John, suffer like this. You’re both my best friends, and you need to sort this out. You have to talk to him.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” I told him, thinking in the back of my head that I actually wouldn’t. “Can we watch more innocent people get eaten by zombies now?”

“Nope!” Garrett replied, checking the time as he stood up, pulling me up off the couch with him. “You’re coming with me.”