To Be Alone With You

Those first few weeks of college, Josselyn was a whirlwind. It was impossible for me to catch her, to pin her down – and when I did, I felt like I was clipping a young bird’s wings or catching a butterfly to nail to a corkboard. It was like she was blossoming into this final form, a new version of her I’d never known before. Still beautiful as an autumn day, dedicated to a fault, and hopelessly involved in everything she could get her hands in. But this time, I seemed to be on a different page.

I spent a lot of my time going home for band practice and hanging out with people I knew from high school, going to parties at the same houses I went to just months before on the weekends, frequenting the same spots I frequented my entire life. That was the problem with going to college in the town you grew up in – the scenery was so painfully monotonous, and it was killing me.

Classes were killing me. My roommate – a guy from Utah with an absolutely abysmal taste in music and religious affiliation – was killing me. Getting out of bed in the morning was killing me, even when Josselyn had already gotten up to go to class. She spent most nights doing her journalism homework, going to events to report on for the school newspaper and working her brains out to get the grades she got in high school. Instead, I slept in. I went to bed pretty early. I went to classes if I felt like it. I didn’t make new friends. I didn’t do much of anything, except go to band practice.

“I was thinking,” I mused to her one afternoon as she typed furiously at her desk and I pretended to read on her bed. “Maybe this weekend we could go home. Maybe get away from here. I could take you on a date, we could spend the night at your house, something nice for a change.”

“John,” she answered softly yet impatiently, not looking up from her computer. “I have an event for Kappa this weekend, you know that. For our philanthropy, remember? I invited you. And besides, my mom’s house is 6 blocks from here. Going home isn’t exactly ‘getting away.’”

“Maybe we could go somewhere next weekend, then?” I suggested. “Somewhere more exciting? We could go to Los Angeles and visit Casey, spend some time in the city?”

“I’ll have to check my schedule.”

In that moment, I felt Josselyn begin to slip through my fingertips. Anna walked in moments later with news of their initiation, and they proceeded to talk for hours while I pretended to read my excruciatingly boring textbook. It all happened that fast, and at the same time, that slowly.



“I missed you the last few days,” Macy hummed as she took a bite of her garden salad, the spiny leaves poking their tails out of her mouth as she attempted to gracefully chew them. It was another beautiful day in Tempe, hardly a cloud in the sky, the perfect day to eat at Mucho Gusto on the outdoor patio. It was next to impossible for me to turn down lunch at one of the best Mexican restaurants in town, the promise of a shrimp taco with pico de gallo under the Arizona sun too much for me to walk away from.

“Yeah,” I mumbled back, busying myself with my taco in an effort to avoid a more elaborate response. In all honesty, I hadn’t really missed Macy all that much since the last time I saw her. As a matter of fact, I had been trying fairly actively to avoid her as much as possible. I needed time to think.

“I got a haircut,” she added, gesturing to her curly red locks. “What do you think?”

“It looks nice,” I complimented before taking another large bite.

I hadn’t noticed.

Something about me was off ever since I spent the afternoon on the bluff with Josselyn, not saying much of anything. It was a feeling I couldn’t quite place, a mixture of self-loathing and complete and utter discontent. It wasn’t anything she said or did, just something about the way her profile looked as she stared out over the horizon. Like there was something more in her life that she looked forward to, something hopeful. I felt like my something hopeful was out of reach.

“And I went to the library and checked out a book on the Cuban Missile Crisis,” she continued, scraping the bottom of her plate for the bits that topped her salad, not wanting to miss any of them. “The Kennedys are so interesting, don’t you think?”

“Definitely,” I agreed absently as I picked at the peeling calluses on the tips of my fingers. In a desperate attempt to regain some sort of meaning in my life, some sort of normalcy, I became reattached to my guitar. Somehow, I thought that I could rewrite everything that I had done wrong with those strings. While Macy called me over and over wondering where I’d gotten off to, I lost myself in that story I was trying so desperately to write again.

“Like did you know during the crisis, JFK said he would make no new taxes? He’s such a brave man to put his neck on the line like that when the nation was spending all their money on buying missiles during the shortage!”

I looked at her blankly, amazed at how easy it was for her to get the entire story so unbelievably wrong. Not a single part of that statement was true. No doubt, she had good intentions in learning more about history, wanting nothing more than to sound intelligent in conversation. But it took everything in me to bite my tongue and tell her to read a little more closely.

“The only thing I really know about the Kennedys is that they’re cursed,” I offered instead, trying to be as encouraging is possible though it was draining all the respect I maintained for her. “That Zapruder film is insane.”

“There’s so much more to it than that!” she exclaimed excitedly, finishing off the rest of her drink. “I’ll lend you some books when I’m done with them. You’ll think it’s amazing.”

The sense of overwhelming dread brushed over me again. Macy was such a sweet girl, with nothing but good intentions. She was amazingly beautiful, not to mention terribly sexy. There would be hundreds of guys lined up for her if she wasn’t so busy wasting her time on me. If I weren’t so willingly allowing her to waste her time on me.

I picked up the check amid her begging for a quick trip to the Buffalo Exchange on University to pick up some sort of bag for an upcoming trip to San Diego. Begrudgingly, I parked my car in the parking lot, debating waiting in the car while she went inside. But when she got out, she motioned for me to follow along with the sweetest smile, and there was nothing I could do to keep from following her.

Though once inside, I wished I had. Right in the corner stood Josselyn and Kennedy, goofing around with hats from a floor-to-ceiling rack. Josselyn was wearing an unbelievably dorky fedora, making a pouty face at Kennedy before they both fell into a fit of laughter. I immediately turned on my heel to go back to the car, prepared to grab Macy’s arm to drag her out with me, but it was already too late.

“Kennedy!” Macy called out, bouncing through the store in the most painfully carefree manner. Both Josselyn and Kennedy’s heads snapped around to see me, their faces stricken at the sight of my lanky frame in the doorway, looking just as stricken as they did.

With a defeated sigh, I made my way through the store to them. There was nothing I could do to avoid them now. Macy was clueless of anything going on between us, of the history between Josselyn and I, of the bitter disrespect of Kennedy Brock. I gave them the best smile I could muster, glancing between each person with careful calculation.

“Hey John,” Josselyn greeted docilely, returning the smile I gave her. “What are you looking for today?”

“You two know each other?” Macy interjected brightly. “What a small world! How so?”

Josselyn glanced over to Macy, a look of confusion and amusement playing up on her lips. “I knew John a long time ago,” she replied carefully, unsure of the wording she should proceed with. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.”

My stomach contracted entirely at the thought of Macy and Josselyn becoming acquainted, the half-processed remnants of my lunch threatening to make a return appearance. Macy couldn’t know the details about my past with Josselyn – hell, I didn’t even know the details of my past with Josselyn – and Josselyn couldn’t know the details about my present with Macy – again, details I didn’t even understand despite my involvement in them. I had been living my life letting them remain mutually exclusive, and now the Venn Diagram seemed to be overlapping right before my eyes.

“This is Macy,” I introduced before the diminutive redhead next to me could open her mouth. She glanced to me with hopeful eyes, shimmering and bright and entirely naïve.

“My friend.”

And just like that, all the air was released from her sails like a slash had gone right through them, right through her heart. I hadn’t meant for it to come out that way, or maybe I really had and I just didn’t know that I had the guts. When I thought of how things would end with Macy, I didn’t picture it like that at all. I didn’t know what it would be like, but I didn’t ever imagine it in a Buffalo Exchange with an audience of Josselyn and Kennedy prepared to watch my relationship with Macy crumble right in front of our eyes.

Something about Josselyn being there made it clear. Something about Josselyn’s watchful eye made it inevitable. With Josselyn there, it was very plain: I needed to be done with Macy. I needed to let her go. The exact opposite of how I refused to let Josselyn go when I knew I was no good for her. Macy deserved better than the relationship I was giving her.

Tears filled Macy’s huge, beautiful eyes, a quiver forming in her bottom lip. “I’m sorry, I just realized I left my phone in the car,” I mumbled awkwardly in an effort to escape. “I’m uh, gonna go get it. I’m waiting for a call. I’ll see you in the car, Mace?”

Without waiting for a response, I turned on my heel and booked it out of the store, to my car, and into the front seat. I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel, hot from sitting in the sun all day, and took a deep breath. Macy would without a doubt be right behind me, and then I would have to explain myself. I needed to devise a plan to explain myself.

But before I could prepare that speech, Macy appeared in the passenger seat entirely empty handed and even more so empty hearted. I had never seen her look so dull, entirely lifeless at the doing of my own hands. I wished right then that I could take it back, simply for the fact of seeing the sweet girl smile. I never meant to hurt her – no matter what I did, I was going to hurt her. If I kept leading her on, I was going to hurt her. If I let her free, I was going to hurt her.

“Just take me home,” she managed to say in her quietest voice.

We drove home in silence, the sounds of her jagged breath the only noise in the car. I held her hand in the driveway for a minute, trying to silently apologize for everything I’d done to her. For working with words for a living, they failed me all too often when I didn’t have an eraser in my hand.

“This just isn’t working for me Mace,” I muttered. “I’m in a bad place right now, a really bad place. And I’ve been using you to forget about all those problems. You deserve someone who wants to put you first, who isn’t going to use you to run away. You deserve someone who wants to run home to you at the end of the day.”

“But John-O – "

“You know it’s true,” I insisted, and her full lips instantly snapped shut. She nodded along slowly, swallowing a heavy burst of tears. It killed me to see her sad at my own words, it killed me to hurt her – it really did.

“I want you to forget about me Macy, okay?” I continued, squeezing her hand. “Donate my stuff to the Goodwill. Go to San Diego and have a good time with your girlfriends. I don’t want to hold you back anymore when there’s no good ending waiting for us. You deserve to be happy, and I can’t give you happiness.”

She stared at her feet, small and bound tightly into a pair of strappy sandals she’d convinced me to buy her. Again, her lip quivered like it bared the weight of the world, a small, stolen tear trickling down her cheek. She took a shaky breath before looking at me one last time with her beautiful eyes, peering brokenly from behind the curtain of red rings.

“I can’t say I didn’t see it coming,” she muttered, wiping the tear away with the back of her hand. Then, bravely, she smiled at me.

“I hope she makes you happy, John.”

And just like that, Macy slipped out of my car door and out of my life. I watched as her perfect little hips swayed on the way to the door and it was almost enough for me to call out and beg her to come back. But her words left me perplexed – who is this ‘she’ Macy was talking about? – to the point where all I could do was press my head to my hands. Just like that, Macy was gone. And Josselyn Stevens may have been to blame.