Stay the Night

I woke up the next morning feeling out of sorts. Something felt off, and I wasn’t sure what it was. I looked around the room, nothing seemed misplace or gone. Elwood was sleeping in a his bed, the light slipped past the cracks of my blinds. I reached over to my phone, to see the text message from Jon was still the first page.That was sweet of him. A pit began to grow in my stomach. All of this scared the crap out of me, these new feelings were foreign to me. I really just wanted my mom in that moment. She had always been able to find the best in every situation. I brought up my mothers number on my phone, just staring at the picture of us. After a few minutes I finally pressed send, and put the phone to my ear.
“Hey honey,” her sweet voice flowed through.
My stomach started to settle, “Hi mom, how are you?”
“I’m fine, just on my way to work. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lied, “just thought I’d call and see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine, but, I don’t really have time to talk right now...”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I should’ve known better to call right now.
“No reason to be sorry,” her voice so comforting, “Bill and I are going to a Bulls game tonight. Why don’t we meet for dinner before hand?”
I thought threw my plans, I had nothing. “Yeah, I’d really like that.”
“Okay, I’ll make some reservations and text you later.”
“Okay, sounds good,” looking forward to seeing my mother.
We said our goodbyes and I slipped back into my bed. My nerves where starting to settle with the idea of seeing my mom later. All these feelings were new to me, and I just needed my mom to coach me threw them. I’m sure she would be so excited, since I had always been to secretive about my relationships with her. It was a result of her relationship with my father that I didn’t trust men. She had forgiven him, but, I just couldn’t seem to get past all the anger and hurt I felt. Then again she was a saint when it came to just accepting things in life. If someone cut her off in traffic she just chalked it up that they really needed to get somewhere.
I had to drag Elwood out of bed for a good morning run. The cold, harsh Midwestern wind cut threw my body as I tried to drown my thoughts out in the rhythm of my breaths. By the time we returned home it was about 9 am, still too early for a Saturday. I decided I would take it easy and park myself on the couch for a few hours. After a few minutes of mindless Facebook searching I had the brilliant idea of googling Jon. There were so many articles and pictures of him. I looked threw all the links, nothing seemed to be new to me. I had read most of these sports articles before I had met him, so there wasn’t anything new there. I decided typing in something different, since this was starting to get embarrassing. I clicked on the search engine, and the option of “Jonathan Toews girlfriend” popped up. Should I or shouldn’t I? Why not? I had already come this far. I clicked it, and anxiously waited for the sites to load. The first was a message board filled with all different athletes and their rumor significant others. There were many different pictures under Jon’s name. Each girl was gorgeous in their own way, some were in a very obvious way. It was fine, like anyone, he has known other girls in his life. As I scrolled I almost missed my picture from the news paper, with a few comments of its own.
“New girl spotted with Toews, was with him all night,” one wrote. How did they know I was with him all night?
“Saw her at the game, she was on the jumbo TRON. I think she’s really pretty.” Another wrote. Well, that’s sweet. You’re pretty, too!
“She was with him at the bar after, she wouldn’t talk to any of the other WAGS. I hear they think she’s a bitch. He could do so much better, I don’t know what he was thinking.” Said one. Rude! They don’t think I’m a bitch, I don’t think. How could he do better? They didn’t even know me.
The comments kept going like that on for about a page. These girls, some guys, were making up stories about me. Others judge whether I was “good enough” for him. Wasn’t that up to him? I wasn’t sure how to take all these comments. I grabbed my phone from the table and decided to text someone that could give me advice, Amanda Bickell.
>Don’t judge me, I just found a message board about me. Some people are mean!
I sat back in the couch, I quickly clicked off the page not wanting to read any more of these judgements. I’m sure these people posted never thinking I would read it. Normal I wouldn’t, but it wasn’t fair of some strangers to just assume things about me. They didn’t even know my name. The message from Amanda broke me from my thoughts.
>>You just committed cardinal sin number three.
>Do they write these things about you?
>>Yes, but I’m well liked compared to others I know. Those girls can be so mean, though. They just assume things about me and my marriage cause of a few interviews or tweets.
Right as I was about to respond to Amanda, Rachel came waltzing threw the door. She seemed so chipper, but I knew it was probably from all the coffee she had so she could stay awake in the lab. “Hey, your up!”
“How was the lab?” I turned to look at her.
She rolled her eyes, “Undergrads are a pain in the ass. How fucking hard is it to glue two slides together. Like a cat could figure that out.”
“I’m sorry,” I shrugged my shoulders, “I did something bad.”
Her face dramatically dropped, “What? What happened?”
“It’s that bad, but, I googled Jon.”
“Oh, that’s not bad at all,” she plopped down besides me, “I google all the guys I date. Its a fairly common practice now.”
“You googling some guy you met at a bar is a lot different then me googling an athlete.”
“Maybe that’s true,” she scoffed, “what did you find?”
I pulled up the message board I had just been looking at. She laughed at every one. Rachel found it so comical that she stole my laptop to look at the other sites that had come up in the search engine. I groaned. I thought of what Amanda sent me, cardinal sin number three. What was one and two?
“Her roots are so bad, don’t you think he could meet someone that at least kept her hair up?” Rachel said in a mocking voice.
“My roots aren’t bad. Are they?” I cried.
Rachel just laughed and read another, “She’s probably just dating him for his money. He attracts all the gold diggers.”
“What?” I screamed, pulling the laptop from her hands.
“Oh my God,” she squealed, “we should post rumors about you.”
“No,” I screamed.
She stood up and walked into the kitchen, “No fun.”
I found myself curled up in ball when Rachel walked back into the room. The pit in my stomach was back. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid me for ever googling. Stupid google. “Cailynn, what are you doing?”
“I’m hoping I sink into the couch,” I muttered.
Her voice jumped an octive, “You really do like him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve known you for five years,” her eyes softened, “I have never seen you react in anyway like this about anyone else. Honestly, for a while there I was wondering if you were really a guy.”
I moaned, “I miss old me.”
I laid on the couch for another 2 hours, not moving. The pit I had dug in my stomach began to expand. No more internet, I vowed. My phone sat on the coffee table vibrating, but I made no motion to answer it. It felt comforting to just lay there, I didn’t want to enter the world any time soon. Rachel exhaled, “Are you going to answer it? It’s Jon,”
I shook my head no. She instead grabbed the phone and answered it herself. “Hello, Cailynn’s phone... Oh hey Jon... Yeah, would you like to talk to her? Okay one minute.”
Rachel pressed the phone against my ear, “Hello?”
“Hey, Jon,” I muttered. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, you?” Rachel scoffed at my answer.
“I’m good, just heading home from the airport. I was wondering if you wanted to go get dinner with me tonight?”
I took a moment to answer, “I have plans to meet up with my mother tonight, we can do something after or try another night...” Rachel hit me with a pillow, obviously she didn’t like what I was saying. I rolled my eyes, “Or you can come with me. It’s a free meal.”
It took him, what felt like forever to respond. It’s too soon for the mother dinner. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
“Oh,” I was surprised, “I’ll text you which restaurant and we can meet there.”
“How about I pick you up?”
“Uh, sure. If you want to,” I sounded like an idiot.
He chuckled, “I’m picking up my new car and I want to drive it some.”
“Can I drive it?” I joked.
“We’ll see how good you are,” I could hear his smile.
“Fine then,” finally sitting up, “I’ll see you later, I guess.”
“I look forward to it,” and he hung up.