How to Love

On Saturday, Michelle decided to kidnap me. “I need a girls’ day,” she explained over the phone, “filled with shopping, before I go on my girls’ week, filled with drinking. Also, I just went on a five day Keeping Up With the Kardashians binge, and I’ve decided I need new clothes.” I couldn’t argue with this kind of logic, since I usually arrived at the same conclusion everytime I watched that show, and my dad had been driving me semi-crazy all morning since he was in a weird mood. Plus, the funeral home was dead – no pun intended – so I agreed to spend the day with her. She picked me up around one in the afternoon and we headed off towards the mall.

“Ready to spend a stupid amount of money?” Michelle winked at me as we pulled into the parking lot.

I laughed. “I don’t know if I can do that. I spent a lot of money last night, and my mall gift card is completely used up.”

“Relax,” Michelle waved me off. “What’d you tell me you were making a year now? About twenty-thousand?”

“Well, now that I’m full-time and I can actually get paid for all the hours that I work, yes,” I replied. That was one of the benefits of finally being eighteen; I could get a full paycheck without Cousin Cheryl bitching about it. “But it’s only been like a week, so it’s not like that’s kicked in yet.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Michelle shrugged, putting the car in park. I was glad that the car had finally stopped rolling. If I thought that Jake couldn’t drive on the highway, his sister was even worse. Being stuck in the car with her was like being stuck in a speeding death-trap. “You’ll make it back in no time.” I didn’t protest, knowing it was pointless. She opened her car door. “Today, we shop like Kardashians.”

I shook my head, smiling to myself as I hopped out along with her. “Yeah, with all these designer boutiques and everything.”

“You don’t have to wear designer anything to look like a million bucks,” Michelle said. “I’ve tried to explain that concept to my brother a million times, but no, he still insists that a good pair of sunglasses doesn’t cost any less than two hundred dollars. And don’t even get me started on his freaking suits.”

“I’ve gotta defend the suits,” I said. “They look really good on him.”

“They’re basic black suits!” she exclaimed. “They’re not anything special. It’s not like he’s dressing like Scott Disick or anything. He could literally buy the exact same thing for a lot less money if he wasn’t such a label-whore.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s whatever. Anyway, where do you want to go first?”

I told her that I didn’t care, so she led me to a bunch of different stores that I had never heard of. She started thrusting clothes in my hands and throwing me into dressing rooms, begging me to try them on. Everything I put on, she seemed to like and I had to agree with her, though it was stuff I’d never have picked out for myself. However, there were a lot of tight skirts involved, which made me complain a little.

“I have no ass,” I told her, turning and looking at my backside in the mirror. “A skirt like this for me is totally pointless.”

“We could get you those Booty-Pop underwear or whatever,” Michelle joked. “Who cares? It looks great.”

“It doesn’t work with my legs.” I shook my head. “They’re weird.” My legs and butt had always been a bit of an issue to me. I could attribute this to my dad and Alexander. Dad claimed to be a leg guy, so whenever we were all watching TV growing up, he’d comment on some woman’s legs (not in a sexual manner or anything, more in a complimentary way), and I’d realize that mine looked nothing like that and likely never would. The same thing went for Alexander and butts, though his comments were usually more along the lines of, “I’d tap that.”

“See, here’s the thing,” Michelle said, looking a little closer in the mirror with me, “you and I both have the Khloe Kardashian thing going on. We’re not tiny. We are not Kourtney Kardashian. And we were not blessed with Kim Kardashian’s ass.”

“I don’t want an ass like that,” I told her. “I just want something besides the ass that I have.”

“And you are clearly missing my point here,” Michelle said with a small sigh. “What I’m getting at is that we just have to work with our body types and accentuate our curves and make it work. Like Khloe does. She always looks fabulous.”

“I wouldn’t say always,” I hesitated, though I agreed with the point Michelle was making. “I’d say ninety-nine percent of the time. Kourtney always looks cute.”

“If you’re about to tell me that Khloe is not your favorite Kardashian, we cannot be friends anymore,” Michelle frowned.

I laughed. “No, no, she is.”

“Good,” she said. “I know you’re complaining about that skirt, but if you wore it with heels, it would look awesome, and you would look like you have an ass.”

I thanked her for the advice and I continued to weed through the clothes she’s thrown at me earlier. I put back a few things, but kept most of the clothes since they weren’t that expensive, and I had to admit that I looked good in them. We went to look at bathing suits next so that Michelle could get some new ones for her trip, and after that, she dragged me to look at lingerie.

“Come on,” she complained when I initially resisted. “You told me you don’t own any, and you’re eighteen. It’s pathetic. We’re buying you some sexy underwear. What else are you gonna wear under all those cute new clothes?”

“Solid colored bras and underwear?” I suggested, but this made her roll her eyes.

“That’s boring.”

“What do you want me to do, apologize?” I scoffed. “It’s what they have at Wal-Mart, and it works.”

“You’ve also never had anyone that you’d actually want to see your underwear before, though,” Michelle pointed out.

“I’d rather not discuss that with you,” I laughed awkwardly. “It’s kind of weird.”

She shrugged me off and started throwing things into my arms again. “For the record, Jake’s favorite color is red.” She winked and then left me to find things for myself, since she figured that she would also need to find herself sexy underwear, as she was sure she would need it for her trip. I walked around the store a little awkwardly and after declining help from the sales people, I decided to try on what Michelle had picked out for me. As had happened with the last boutique, everything she picked out looked great, and it turned out that red was actually a really good color on me. I ended up buying the red satin bra and panties set, a short black satin robe, a black satin teddy and shorts combination, and a less sexy lilac-colored satin robe to laze around in. Michelle stood next to me at the check-out counter and frowned at my choices.

“You realize you need more than one pair of sexy underwear, right?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “What are you gonna do after Jake’s seen the one pair? You’re back to your basic Wal-Mart underwear.”

“I’m not made of money,” I said with an eye roll. “I’ll buy more the next time I get paid. Sorry I can’t spend like you do.”

“Hey, I really don’t spend that much,” she defended. “I only do this every now and then. Most of my money goes to traveling and bills. And shoes. Jake’s the one that spends like an idiot. Why do you think my parents still check his bank statements at twenty-one years old? He doesn’t think twice about throwing money around. I mean, he’s gotten better about it. But two hundred dollars is ridiculous for a pair of freaking sunglasses.”

“Two hundred and fifty,” I corrected, and took my bag off of the counter and stepped off to the side so that Michelle could pay.

“Oh God, now he’s got you doing it,” she groaned while her items were being scanned.

“No.” I shook my head. “I bought them because I felt bad that he was having a crappy day. Plus, I never got him anything for his birthday, and he got me that necklace for mine.”

“It wasn’t that expensive,” Michelle said. “Like I told you, he got it for like eighty percent off.” She grabbed her stuff off of the counter and we headed out. “I’m getting hungry. How about we get lunch and then continue our shopping escapades?”

I agreed and we left the mall to eat at Red Lobster. After we ordered our drinks and food, Michelle asked me how Andrea was doing.

“She’s fine,” I told her. “I saw her earlier this week hanging out with Dayna.”

“Oh, God,” Michelle moaned with an eye roll. “I feel bad for her.”

“Why?” I asked. I had to admit that I had a bad feeling about Andrea’s newfound friendship with Dayna, but Dayna really hadn’t done anything wrong so far, besides clearly hate me for some unknown reason.

“Weren’t you telling me that Andrea just naturally latches on to toxic people?” she asked. I nodded in response. “Well, Dayna’s one of those people.”

“How so?” I questioned, my interest piqued.

“It’s hard to explain,” Michelle sighed. “I’ve known her for about as long as Jake has, and I’ve never liked her. She’s just got a bad attitude and she lies about a lot of stuff. In high school, she used to use Jake in order to meet up with whatever guy she was sleeping with at the time, and then expect him to lie for her when her parents called or whatever. It was stupid. And then she got into the whole drug thing, and I hate to use the expression, but she whores around.” She paused for a second. “Like, she can do whatever she wants with whomever she wants, but she hurts other people in the process and that’s just not okay.” She leaned in and started talking in a lower voice. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but a couple months ago, she had an abortion in the fourth month, and she made her boyfriend at the time pay for it and then she dumped him right after and had Jake take her home.”

I wasn’t sure what to say at all that, so all I muttered was, “Wow.”

“It’s not so much the abortion thing that I care about,” Michelle continued. “I mean, I care about it, and I’m sure she had a hard time with it, but never having had one, I can’t speculate on her feelings, but it’s the whole using people thing. She just doesn’t care who she hurts. I think she might be a sociopath. So I’d just warn Andrea to be careful and all.”

“Oh, she won’t listen.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter how many times I warn her about someone, she just gets herself screwed over. That’s Andrea’s problem, not mine. I can’t concern myself with it. I just don’t understand why Jake would be friends with someone like that, though.”

“They’ve been friends for as long as I can remember,” she said. “He’s really been distancing himself from her lately. I feel like he’s kind of starting to see how much is wrong with her, but I think he feels bad because they’ve been friends for so long. Plus, she was surprisingly there for him when all that crap happened to him after high school.”

“What crap?” I asked. Michelle was a fountain of information on everybody, it seemed like. And this was crap that Jake hadn’t told me about, and I was more than a little desperate to know.

“Oh, he didn’t tell you?” she asked, looking surprised. “Well, like right after he graduated, he started seeing this woman-” Michelle shook her head, cutting herself off. “You know what? Never mind. That’s his thing to tell you about, not mine. It’s none of my business.”

I wished she’d never said anything in the first place, but now I desperately wanted to know about this woman he was seeing when he first got out of high school. Still, I didn’t want to put Michelle in an uncomfortable position by asking her, and I couldn’t say anything about it to Jake since he’d know that Michelle said something. All I could do was wonder at this point. “I think he mentioned something kind of like that before. Or hinted at it, anyway.”

“What’d he say?” Michelle asked. “Do you remember?”

“We were lying in bed together one night, and-”

She smirked and cut me off, raising her eyebrows suggestively. “Oo-la-la.”

I rolled my eyes with a laugh. “It wasn’t like that. But he was asking me about past boyfriends, so I asked him about past girlfriends, and he shied away from the subject.”

“Not surprising,” Michelle said. “It wasn’t a good situation.”

“What kind of not good situation was it?” I hedged, hoping that she’d slip up a little.

“Nice try,” she chuckled. “Just trust me, it sucked for everyone involved.”

“He said he’d tell me about it,” I said. “He also said it wasn’t a big deal anymore, though.”

“Maybe not anymore, but it was a big thing at the time,” she commented. “Like I said, that’s just something that he has to tell you about.”

With that, the food came and I let the subject drop. Obviously, I wasn’t about to get any more information out of Michelle and it wasn’t going to do anyone any good to keep pestering her about it. We changed to more neutral topics, like her vacation plans and our variations in classes and majors. When we were finished with lunch, we went back to the mall for a little while longer to buy shoes and then stopped off on the way home to grab some frozen yogurt. She hugged me good-bye in the funeral home parking lot, and then I carried my bags upstairs.

Dad’s eyes widened when he saw me come up the stairs. “Is there anything you didn’t buy?” His eyes narrowed when he got a closer look at the bags. “Why do you have a Victoria’s Secret bag?”

“I like their yoga pants,” I lied.

“Yeah, because you need more pairs of those.” Dad rolled his eyes, accepting the excuse. “Did you have fun?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it was nice to have a girl’s day with someone besides Liz.” I didn’t mention that I’d been throwing my money around like a Kardashian and had burned through a lot of the money he’d given me for my birthday. “I’m gonna go hang this stuff up.”

I carried the bags to my room and tossed them on the bed, going through them one by one and cutting the tags off. I got hangers for all of the clothes, and after attaching them to the hangers, laid them back on my bed and started taking all of the clothes out of my closet. With so many new outfits, I decided to reorganize my closet and get rid of some of the stuff I didn’t wear anymore. In the middle of my reorganizing (everything clothing type, color, length of pants/skirts, and sleeve length), my phone started going off. My eyes flashed to the caller ID and read that it was Jake, so I picked up.

“Hey,” I greeted. “How’re you?”

“I’m good,” he said. “What’ve you been up to today?”

“I spent the afternoon with your sister,” I answered. “We went shopping. She dragged me to Victoria’s Secret.”

“Oh.” This seemed to spark his interest. “Buy anything good there?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see,” I replied coyly. “What about you?”

“I don’t shop at Victoria’s Secret,” he cracked, making me laugh.

“Ass. I meant, what did you do today?”

“I took my grandma to the salon so she could get her hair and nails done,” he answered. “We were there pretty much the whole day, and they had like fifteen hundred copies of Cosmo there, so that was about all I had to read.”

“Was it at least educational?” I asked him. I’d spent most of my adolescence studying Cosmopolitan magazine and reading up on what I perceived as valuable information, and still regularly read it.

“Very,” he said. “I now know a lot of different techniques for giving a blowjob.”

I laughed again, shaking my head. “Well, thank God for that.”

“I know, right?” he chuckled. “Honestly, I got so bored there that I started bugging the women who worked there and asked them if I could sweep up hair.”

“I used to do that, too, when I’d go with my mom,” I told him. “Although, I was five.”

“Well, some of us grow out of it, and some of us don’t, I guess,” Jake said. “What’re you up to tonight?”

“I’m finishing cleaning out my closet and then my dad and I are supposed to grab dinner together,” I replied. “Plus, I’ve got a date.”

“A date,” he repeated. “Funny, I don’t recall asking you to do anything tonight yet.”

“It’s less of a date, and more like a love affair with my Netflix account,” I corrected myself, smiling. “I have to watch Michael Douglas cheat on his wife with Glenn Close.”

“Ah, Fatal Attraction,” Jake sighed, and then made a sound like he was shuddering. “I’m still a little mentally scarred from her boiling that rabbit.”

“Right? I didn’t think she was going to boil it,” I said. “Alexander told me she snapped its neck and left it in the little girl’s bed.”

“I think he’s getting parts of The Godfather mixed in with some other movie,” Jake said. “Anyway, if you don’t feel like hanging out tonight, maybe we could do something Monday. I’m supposed to take my grandma to church tomorrow morning and then help her with some stuff around the house.”

“Well, with Monday being the first day of spring break, we’ll just call those tentative plans,” I replied, reminding him of my random yearly spring break illness. “I can’t make any promises.”

“Okay,” he said easily. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow then.”

“Talk to you tomorrow,” I confirmed, saying good-bye and hanging up.

I set my phone back down on my bedside table and continued hanging my clothes up, straightening my shoes while I was at it. I thought about my lunch with Michelle and my phone call with Jake. He was the nicest guy I’d ever met, but knowing what he’d told me about being such an asshole back in the day, I wondered exactly what kind of trouble he’d had after high school. And so the entire time I was cleaning out my closet, I was desperate to know what kind of secrets Jake was hiding in his.