I haven't decided what kind of asshole I was going to be. One thing was already settled though, I was an asshole.
I didn't normally go the groupie route. I'm not even sure what Julie would be classified as. I could try to put this all on her.
See, Cameron, it really wasn't my fault. She was practically begging for me to fuck her. What kind of man would I be not to fulfill such a desperate request?
But that would just make me a cowardly asshole. Maybe I'll try to be a sensitive asshole. Cry a little, sniffle a bit through my sob story of what a good guy I used to be before girl after girl after girl screwed me over and then I decided if anyone was getting screwed it damn sure wasn't going to be me anymore. Or at least not figuratively.
Hmm. Nah, that's too much bullshit, even for me.
I guess I'm stuck with being the stupid asshole. I'm just going to have to tell...the truth.
This wasn't my first time either. Cheating, that is. There were other Julies, but until now I'd never felt compelled to tell on myself.
Julie turned out to be a whole different breed of one-night stands.
She was sitting in the opposite corner of the room, shoveling cereal in her mouth. One foot propped up on the chair she was sitting in and the other was dangling down.
I woke up in a room I didn't remember walking into. This wasn't the first time something like that had happened to me. It had just been awhile. Cameron and I had been together for four years and for four years I'd been nothing but honest and the thought to cheat had never even occurred to me. When I woke up in another woman's bed and found her sitting in the opposite corner of the room, smacking on some cereal, my first thought was, "I wonder what kind of cereal that is."
Before I could sit up or feel guilty about my current lack of guilt over what I'd just done, Julie rose from her chair, walking over to the bed and extended her hand to me with a bright smile.
"I'm Julie and you took my virginity last night."
My eyes widened, my jaw dropped faster than Lindsay Lohan's draws when she remembered to wear them, and my head started to pound as I wondered what kind of R.Kelly/Kobe Bryant situation I'd gotten myself into. And just when I was starting to get a shaky alibi together which I would later have my lawyer work on, she chuckled and said, "Jk, jk. Oh and this is my place. It looks a little different in the light when your head isn't buried in my cleavage."
Running my hand over my close-shaved head, I sighed, never feeling so relieved in my life. When I looked back over at her, I just stared at her for a moment. I had no idea who this girl, this woman was and with that realization my relief was over.
I laughed nervously. "Did I really not even ask for your name?"
My eyes bounced around the tiny room. Lacy panties hanging off a lamp. Clothes strewn across the floor. All the furniture looked second-hand at best. The left side of the room was all windows and a sliding door leading out to a balcony. Sunlight streamed in, warming the side of my face.
I was never very comfortable in messes. Let alone a stranger's mess who I didn't know from Adam. But yet, the longer I sat there and the longer she just smiled at me with her bedhead brown hair looking just as disheveled as the room, I wasn't far from being comfortable.
"You did," she said, her smile ever-present as she let her hand finally drop to her side. She perched herself on the far corner of the bed, sitting cross-legged in an over-sized t-shirt and leg warmers. "but you kept calling me Jamie."
"That's a good name."
Her smile widened as she nodded. "So you said last night. Over and over. And over again."
Her eyes fell over me. Studying me. I let her look for awhile without making it too obvious that I wasn't the most comfortable under her scrutiny. When I sighed, she laughed nervously flitting strands of her brown locks over her shoulder.
"I was staring, wasn't I? I'm sorry, I just..."
"...had the moment you're gonna put on your tombstone."
She smiled again, only slightly this time. "It wasn't that good."
I cracked a smile this time. A tiny one accompanied by a shrug. "It's usually a little better if I'm not seeing three of you."
I rose to my feet, forgetting that little inconvenience that I was not exactly clothed. A wash of red spread up her neck and into her face immediately as she hopped up like something had jumped at her. She was even quicker to turn her back on me. Her hands over her mouth.
I laughed, it was too cute not to laugh at. "Your chance to see me fully nude in the daylight and you blush and turn your back on it?"
"I don't know what kind of girl you think I am, but..."
"Don't worry, I'm hardly in a position to judge you." I said, barely keeping the laughter out of my voice as I gathered up my discarded clothing. "You mind if I take a shower first?"
"Uh, no. No, of course not." She moved even further away from the bed, keeping her back to me and pointed out of the bedroom door. "The bathroom is just down the hall to the right. This place is probably the size of one of your closets, so you won't miss it. There should be clean towels in there already. If not, just yell."
I didn't run out of the room, but I wasn't taking my time getting to the shower either. I didn't care if she looked. I just cared that I was still here and I shouldn't have been. I should've been gone long before she even woke up. I should've crept back into bed beside Cameron by now so when she woke up and rolled over I could've been there pretending that I'd been there the whole time.
Maybe she'd stayed out with her girls and crashed at one of their places. God, I hoped so. It would save me from having to tell on myself so soon.
Just as I was stepping out of the shower, I was confronted with a pair of wide eyes staring up at me.
Julie was sitting on the toilet, lid down. I jumped and caught myself just before I nearly screamed the least manly scream of all.
Laughing as she watched me clutch my chest, she said, "Sorry, I didn't mean..."
"...to be sitting on the toilet while I showered?" I frowned, a small smile at the corners of my lips. "Accidents do happen."
"I came in..." She said, her eyes focused on mine. "cause I remembered the clean hand towels were in here, but not the ones for drying yourself. So I brought one and then as I was leaving, you started singing...so, I just sat down. I wasn't planning on still being here when you were done."
I didn't embarrass easily. But there was something about knowing she'd heard me singing in the shower that caused the heat to raise up my neck and into my face. I could sing in front of thousands of people, but there was something private about singing in the shower, especially when the songs you'd chosen to sing ranged from the classic "Mmmbop" to Ready For The World's "Oh Sheila" to Billy Ray's "Achy Breaky Heart."
And besides, this wasn't really a sing in the shower kind of time anyways. It was just an old habit of mine and it always seemed to help start the day off at least a smidget away from the fuckeduppedness that it may have started off as.
Now she was studying me with her head cocked slightly to the side, the tiniest hint of a smile in her eyes as her mouth remained in a straight line. This could have easily have been awkward, what with me still naked and in the shower, my body now air-drying, but I guess somewhere along the way she'd forgotten these little facts and only became aware of them once I shivered.
As if she suddenly remembered that she was still standing there and I was still dripping wet, she shoved the towel into my hand and rushed out.
I couldn't help but laugh as I dried off and changed into my clothes. When I walked out, she was in the living/family room, looking in the direction of the little 12-inch TV, but the TV was off.
"Do you normally watch TV without turning it on?"
She was studying me again for a moment as if I was the most simple and perplexing person she'd ever met. "What if I was crazy?"
Raising an eyebrow, I said, "Is that your way of telling me that backing away slowly to the door would be a good idea, right about now?"
"I was just thinking. You came home with me, but what if I was crazy?"
"What if I was crazy? You took me home."
"Touché." She smiled.
I smiled back. "I don't usually do this."
"You're handling it like you do."
"That's because I have this really annoying ability to be good at everything."
"Hmm. Well, humility must not be a part of that."
I opened and closed my mouth, just watching her with a smile lingering. "Why did you do it?"
"Are you gonna tell me why you did?"
"I'd have to be able to tell myself first."
She nodded, licking her lips. "There's something weird about celebrities. I didn't think I'd be one of those kind of people. Those kind of girls. The girls who get all gooey because some guy with fame attached to his ass paid them a compliment. You were so lame, but I ate it up."
"Lame? That's a little harsh, don't you think?"
"That was me being nice." She grinned a slow grin. "You're not even one of the celebrities I'd be dying to meet. As soon as I saw you and my brain started working properly again, I immediately thought of my BFF. She's in love with you."
"So people really do say BFF casually in conversations."
"She's gonna hate me for this."
"Then don't tell her." I shrugged. "Would make my life a lot easier."
"She's the only one I'd tell. I don't broadcast my sex life." She frowned at me, like I'd implied something so ridiculous. "So you don't have to worry about that."
"Not to doubt the strength of your word, but I'm gonna have to believe that when I don't see this in the next tabloid."
"I wouldn't do that to Cameron. I actually like her."
Before I could open my mouth, she added, "And I realize that doing you isn't exactly the most logical way to show that I like Cameron. But it was one night. One drunken night. It meant nothing."
I nodded, recording that clichéd excuse in back of my mind in case I'd need it for later use.
"I just wanted to make sure we're clear."
"Crystal."
Patting my pockets to make sure I had everything with me that I'd walked in the door with, I glanced into a nearby mirror hanging on the wall to make sure I didn't walk out the door with anything on me that I hadn't walked in with.
"But if we do see each other again," She started, just as my hand gripped the doorknob. "It doesn't have to be awkward. I mean, it won't be, will it?"
I sighed, the thought of seeing her again made me weary and strangely light-headed at the same time. "Are we gonna see each other again?"
She just shrugged at first, small smile tugging at the corners of her thin lips. "It's a small world."
It's amazing how small the world can get when you're not paying attention.
Flash bulbs in a semi-circle in front of the Ivy's window sent bursts of light aimed at my table for two.
Cameron was running her mouth, as usual. I was usually much better at pretending to pay attention, but even looking around the room, sighing, checking the time didn't perturb her.
I had decided on being the honest asshole. And honestly, I had no idea how to even start this conversation. Or even how to turn this monologue into a conversation.
"...so I was thinking that since you're gonna be going into rehearsal mode for your upcoming tour soon that we should try to spend as much time together now as we can..."
"I cheated."
Her mouth hesitated for about half a second, a trip in the steady stroll of her words, before she had them march on determinedly. Cameron had always been quite good at ignoring things, pretending she hadn't heard or seen things until she wasn't able to ignore them anymore.
"I know there's not a lot of time, but I'd really love to just get away somewhere. Just get lost for a few days even."
"Last night. I can't remember for sure, but I think I initiated it."
"You know, if you don't want to do that, we could just lose the world entirely. And hole up indoors on the local tip for awhile."
"Did you hear what I said?"
"I think that's a better idea, don't you?"
"Cam! Listen to me for a goddamn second. I'm trying to tell you..."
She winced at my tone. The sure-fire way to get her to pay attention was to make a scene, she was all about keeping up appearances, even if it was all crumbling in her hand like sand she was trying to push together without any cohesive element. She glanced around the room, looking to see if anyone close enough to overhear the conversation had done just that.
When she felt that the proverbial coast was relatively clear, she learned in towards me and whispered, "This is because of the...marriage talk, right?"
"What?" I frowned, completely thrown off by her turn in the conversation. "No."
"Yes, it is. Ever since we went to my cousin's wedding and I casually mentioned how I can't wait to get married and have kids, you've been weird. We've been off. I wasn't saying we had to do that now. Or tomorrow. Or even next year."
I'm twenty-six years old, the thought of marriage didn't send me running to the hills like it would have when I was eighteen and commitment was a dirty word. What it did do was put us on pause, made me mull over where was this relationship going? Before then I'd just been going with the flow. Four years later and it was looking like her flow was going to take us down the aisle and I would be lying if a big part of me didn't start thinking of ways to dam that path up.
But just the mere idea of marriage didn't scare me anymore. But this for the rest of my life? The same boring conversations about her friends or whoever who were doing the most mundane things. The same arguments over simple things like, why was I so anal about all the clothes being put away but I couldn't clean a damn dish? Or even about the way I put the toilet paper on the holder.
Sad to say, but the best part of our relationship had always been the sex and now even that was fucked up. It was all so mechanical now. We'd gotten to the old married couple stage of penciling in sex and then rescheduling, so now our routine was to plan for sex and then re-plan for a later date that rarely seemed to come.
Is that how I wanted to spend the rest of my life? Even if that's how my eventual marriage turned out as, I at least wanted to go into it riding on the high of the throes of passion under the delusion that it would always be just this fun and exciting.
I wanted, no needed that person I was giving my freedom up to, to be someone that when I was away from her, she was the one I tried to remember conversations or the random things I'd heard just so I could tell her about it. It didn't have to be all screaming orgasms and spontaneity, but it damn sure had be to someone I could do boring ass, mundane things with, but with her it all didn't feel so boring or so mundane.
"That's not what this is about."
"Of course it is." She rolled her eyes, like she already had it all figured out. "As soon as a woman mentions weddings or wee-ones, it's a problem. It's always a problem. But I already told you, if I never get married that's fine too."
"Obviously though it's not fine since you can't wait to get married."
"I can wait. I've been waiting! I've been waiting four goddamned years."
I didn't know what to say that. Until this moment, staring into her white dress-eager eyes, I'd never realized just how badly she wanted to get married. She'd always been so carefree about that. Her cousin's wedding last month wasn't the first time we'd went to a wedding. It wasn't even the first time that she'd talked about marriage and kids, but she'd never talked about it so longingly and so pointedly like those were things I'd purposedly denied her.
If we broke up over this, I could never tell my mother that this was why. She would revel in her I told ya speech like a pig in mud. "So...you do want to get married."
"No." She frowned at me, shaking her head, like everything she'd said and done had been perfectly clear and I was just being slow.
"Right." I nodded.
For once, she didn't feel the need to follow that up with another comment or a segue into another story about shoes or whatever she was always going on about. For once, she just let there be silence. And that's when I realized just how awkward silence was with her. Four years and we still had awkward silence.
I pushed the food around in my plate for a moment. I hadn't eaten much of it. She'd ordered it for me. I hated when she did stuff like that, little things that to her meant nothing but to me felt like she was emasculating me on the sly. She did stuff like that when we would hang out with her married couple friends. Little actions or comments that let me know that the age difference she so adamantly claimed didn't matter to her, did matter even if it was just a little.
I let my eyes bounce around the room for a bit, before I forced them back to her. "I cheated on you."
She was avoiding my eyes and focusing on her napkin. Folding. Unfolding. Folding.
"And I'm not ready for marriage or kids. I'm not ready, but I didn't do it because of that. I just..." I sighed, because I really wish I could say why I did it. I had never cheated on her before. Never. And I've cheated on a lot girls over the years, but for some reason the thought had never occurred to me to do it to Cameron. "You're great. We're great. Things, life, the world is great. Or it's supposed to be. All those things are supposed to be. Ideally. And you're pretty enough, you're smart enough, you're funny enough. So don't make this about you. It's really simple, I'm an asshole. But I'm trying to be better at it, if that makes any sense."
She kept fiddling with her napkin, kept not looking at me, kept biting her lip. And then she released her lip in a long sigh, put the napkin to the side and finally looked me in the eye. For a solid moment, she just stared at me. And everything fell into a surreal haze.
"Say something. Please."
A surreal haze that I was dying to get out of.
She still wasn't saying anything. She was still just staring at me. And then she shook her head, a tiny smile playing on her lips as if she might laugh this all away. And then she said, "So the quickie vacation is out?"
