When I had told Zac that the only choice was to start over, I really didn’t know what I wanted him to do. Had I expected him to chase me up the stairs and to demand that I take him back because of his undying affection for me? Did I want him to take it as an ending, therein leaving both of us single and unhappy? Did I want to take a break? If Ross and Rachel had taught us anything, it was that breaks never work. I didn’t know what I expected, but the sound of the door shutting behind him left me with an empty void inside as I sat there in the hallway, just out of sight from the foot of the stairs.
His lengthy confession had left a strange feeling at the core of me, like I had swallowed something heavy and dense that just wouldn’t digest. It seemed completely unseemly that we were going through this much drama and conflict after only a few months of dating. The dreaded and yet coveted L word hadn’t yet been spoken and yet I felt like a relationship much more serious was on the line. I’d never felt about someone before the way I felt about Zac. He was funny, sweet, clever, and as it so happened, a big fat liar. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get that last part out of my head. His reasons for his behavior had made sense, but the fact of the matter was that I still felt horribly betrayed.
I tried to be excited for my parents when they came home with hundreds of pictures of ancient ruins that I wanted so badly to see in person. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t help but resent them some, because if they had just taken me along on their trip, then the whole fiasco would never have happened and I would have found myself driving back to campus anxiously awaiting seeing Zac instead of dreading seeing him and mourning the loss of my favorite place in the library.
That first week passed by excruciatingly slowly. I busied myself with homework and time spent with Gwen, even though she’d been acting kind of off all week. Braeden hadn’t been coming around as often as usual, but when I asked her about it she said that everything was fine and I was too sick of drama to press the matter further. When she asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner on Friday, just the two of us, I readily accepted knowing that I needed to get out of the apartment. We’d decided that it would be fun to dress nice and go somewhere quasi-fancy.
After I’d been staring at my open closet for a good five minutes, Gwen came and stood beside me and wordlessly pulled the infamous pink sweater from the top shelf.
“No, Gwen! I’m never wearing that sweater again!” I exclaimed. She rolled her eyes at me and shoved it into my arms.
“A piece of clothing can not be cursed, Esme. And it’s your favorite sweater and we’re going out for a fun night, so can you just please wear it and shut up about it?” she asked before turning quickly and leaving. I knew that if I didn’t wear the sweater I’d never hear the end of it, so I put it on and noticed that the only clean pair of pants I had left on my shelf were my khakis. I thought I’d caught up all of my laundry over break, but was cutting it too close to the time Gwen had wanted to leave to worry about it any longer.
When I came out of my bedroom, I heard a polite knock on the front door. Gwen stepped sheepishly out of her bedroom door still dressed in her sweatshirt and jeans.
“Please don’t kill me,” she said.
“Gwen. Who is at the door?” I demanded. She just gave me a big fake smile and retreated backwards into her bedroom before shutting the door and locking it loudly.
“If that’s who I think it is, I’m going to kill you,” I threatened through her door before going to answer the door when the person on the other side knocked louder. There stood Zac, dressed in the exact same outfit he’d been wearing on our first date, brown jacket, navy button-up shirt and all. I looked down at myself and realized that maybe the rest of my pants weren’t dirty, but were actually piled up in a certain soon-to-be deceased roommate’s bedroom.
“Hi Esme. You look beautiful,” he said, quoting himself word for word, “I’m really glad that you said you’d go out with me tonight, for our first date.” I sighed loudly and snatched my coat off the rack beside me. If he and Gwen had gone to all the trouble to plan this, then I knew that I at least had to go along.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, trying not to show any signs of being even remotely impressed.
“I thought that we could go to dinner at my favorite restaurant, ‘Gallo’s’… have you ever been there before?” he asked as if we were near strangers and not estranged lovers.
“Just a couple times. I went there once with this guy I was dating. After that date, I was sure that we had something special. I’m afraid I might have been wrong,” I said honestly and I could see the hurt in his eyes.
“I’m really sorry to hear that. Any guy who would hurt you must be a complete moron,” he said, opening the car door for me.
“Well, he had his moments when he wasn’t completely detestable,” I said, unable to help myself as a smile nagged at the corners of my mouth.
“I’m sure he really regrets whatever he did. He’d be crazy not to.”
“Well, the fact that he was crazy was what I liked best about him. I never knew what he would say or do. He kept me on my toes and he did some pretty clever things to get my attention.” Zac just smiled over at me and we drove the rest of the way in silence.
Once we were seated at the restaurant, we started talking again.
“Well, Miss Esme Lee, I want to know all about you,” he said after helping himself to a breadstick and a glass of wine.
“I was born and raised in Crystal Lake. The suburbs are all I’ve ever known, so I kind of want to live somewhere else some day. I’d really like to move to the city after graduation to go to grad school to be a psychologist. I’m an only child. My parents are ridiculous. My dad was born in London and moved here twenty-five years ago to teach at Northwestern, where he met my mom. I had the second highest GPA in my high school graduating class. I played the flute in band and was active in student and class government. What about you?” I asked, giving him a second chance to do this right.
“I have two brothers, Taylor and Isaac and my parents are Ken and Gloria. My dad is sports columnist and he and I have always been really close since I played football from fourth grade until last year when I seriously tore my ACL in a game. I was kind of a typical stupid jock for a really long time. I dated a lot of cheerleaders and did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done. I got a drinking ticket once and that was kind of when I started to realize that I was living a life I wasn’t really happy with. After my injury last year, I got burned by a stupid girl for the last time and finally realized that what I wanted was something that I had a really hard time finding. Sure, the pretty and stupid girls liked me plenty because I was popular and a good quarterback, but what I wanted, or rather, what I needed was a smart girl who I could actually talk to and get along with. And, if she happened to be pretty, too, then that would just be icing on the cake. I started going to the library more because I realized that when I got good grades, it made me happy, and then I saw you, Esme, sitting there across from me. You were everything I was looking for. You looked sweet and nice. You cared about your studies, so I knew that you weren’t one of the vacant girls I had been with in the past, and you were so beautiful every day that you made it almost impossible for me to breathe. I knew that I had to ask you out on a date, and I’m so glad that you came over to ask me for pencil lead. If you hadn’t, I’m not sure I ever would have worked up the nerve to ask you out on a date,” he said. I couldn’t help myself and I smiled and nodded at him through the tears that had started to fall somewhere in the middle of his confession.
“God, why couldn’t you have just said that the first time?” I asked, hiccupping as I tried to stop crying, “I would have liked you just as much, Zac. I really would have.”
“Yeah, I know you would have. It was just that the longer it took me to tell you, the more I knew it would hurt you and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“Did you really think that you could get away with it for forever? That I would never find out everything?”
“No, of course not. I started to get scared, because the thought of losing you was so scary I could hardly stand it. It’s always just been so easy with us, Esme. You don’t find something like this all the time. Some people never do, and I was so scared of losing it. The second you fell onto my table I knew that you were the one I wanted to be with, but I didn’t know if I was the one that you would want. I didn’t know if you were the kind of girl who would date a past womanizer and jerk. By the end of our first date I knew you were, that you would believe me that I’d changed and like me despite my past, but I just couldn’t get up the guts to do it.” I sat there and looked at him carefully and knew that this was exactly what I had been hoping for. He had done exactly as I had asked and started us over, down to the choice of restaurant and apparel. It wouldn’t fix everything and it couldn’t take back everything that had happened, but it was the best we could do.
“Thank you,” I said softly, staring down into my glass of wine and swirling its contents gently.
“For what?” he asked.
“For tonight.”
“I know that this doesn’t take it all back. I know that, but I just wanted to do something to show you how serious I am about us, because I really am.”
“I am, too. And I can’t promise that I’m ever going to get over this, but I’m not giving up on us just yet,” I smiled. He reached across the small table and covered my hand in his.
“Music to my ears,” he replied cheesily before leaning across the table to press a kiss to my cheek.
“Oh god, you’re such a dork, I take it all back,” I laughed.
“Too late. You’re stuck with me now,” he grinned and on that note, we continued on with our dinner falling slowly back into our old routine.
“Should we go bowling?” he asked me once we were back in his car, “You know, really repeat the evening?”
“You know, I don’t think I’m in the mood to go bowling,” I said.
“A walk?”
“Nah…”
“You want to go out for a drink?”
“Nope,” I said simply, loving how dense he could be at times.
“Well then, what are you in the mood to do?”
“I think you should just take me home,” I said, secretly loving the look of disappointment on his face.
“Oh, okay,” he said, putting the car in drive and heading back towards campus. We got there about ten minutes later and he pulled up and turned off the car before we made our trek up to my floor.
“Well, here we are,” I stated, taking my keys out of my purse and letting them dangle from my finger.
“Then I guess this is goodbye. Thank you for a wonderful first date, Esme,” he smiled, leaning in to kiss my cheek but I caught him by surprise and met his mouth with my own in a crushing and almost desperate kiss.
“You’re not going anywhere, mister,” I said, kissing him again before unlocking the door.
“Esme Addison Lee, you brazen woman. It’s only our first date!” he said in mock protest.
“Lucky for you, I occasionally put out on the first date,” I smiled before opening the door. It felt good to let him back in because it was right where he belonged.