After my history class, I began the trek home, my messenger bag slung casually across my body and my iPod playing U2 full blast. At that time, I was convinced of the utter perfection of “With or Without You,” and that was the track that was coursing through my ears when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to find the unmistakable smirk of Braeden, Gwen’s boyfriend.
“Are you heading home?” he asked.
“To my home, yes.”
“Well you know… I basically live there.”
“Yeah, well until you pay part of the rent and utilities, it’s not really yours,” I said with a smile. He just shrugged and pulled one of my ear buds out of its place before putting it into his own ear.
“So, what are we listening to?” he asked. I sighed, but smiled despite myself as he grinned back at me. He was incredibly charming if he was anything.
“U2. Now shut up, this is my favorite song.” He threw up his hands in mock defense and we walked the rest of the way in silence.
Ten minutes later, we were entering Gwen and I’s apartment. We found her seated at the kitchen table, scribbling in the margins of her Abnormal Psych text.
“Aww. It’s my two favorite people!” she said, closing her book and receiving a kiss from Braeden.
“That’d be us,” I said, grabbing a Diet Pepsi out of the fridge before sitting down across from her.
“So, how’d the little scheme go today?” she asked. Shit. I thought I could get out of this conversation for at least a few minutes.
“Um… you know. Pretty well…” I had never been particulary good at lying. Gwen shook her head and gave Braeden a look.
“What happened? Did you vomit on him?”
“Vomit is rarely attractive,” Braeden cut in. I glared at him before answering Gwen.
“There was no vomit… I just wasn’t very smooth.”
“Well it’s not like you fell on him or anything, right?”
I just looked at her like a deer staring into headlights. Her eyes opened wide.
“Esme! Tell me you didn’t fall on him!” she laughed, “All you had to do was go and ask him for pencil lead!”
“I didn’t fall on him… I fell into his table, like, caught myself on it.”
“Oh Esme… what are we going to do with you?” she laughed, smiling at me sincerely. I sighed and covered my face in my hands.
“Take me out to pasture and kill me, I hope.”
“Oh don’t be so dramatic, I’m sure it wasn’t so bad. What happened, exactly?”
“Well, at first it was fine. I pretended to act surprised that I had no lead in my pencil and then I got up and started to walk towards him. If it wasn’t for these damned stupid clown shoes, I wouldn’t have tripped over the outlet and wouldn’t have gone careening towards his desk. He was probably petrified.”
“Did he act petrified?”
“No. He was actually really nice about it.”
“Then there you go. Stop being such a drama queen, Esme. I’m just proud of you that you actually made an effort to meet him.” I smiled at her and we all sat there in silence for a few seconds.
“You two really planned all of this?” Braeden asked. Gwen and I nodded.
“Yeah, see… while Esme has no problem being a loud and obnoxious presence around us, she tends to get a little shy around guys she finds attractive,” Gwen explained.
“You’re not shy around me,” he said.
“And I’ve told you time and time again that I think you’re completely fugly with few positive attributes.” To that we all laughed, and the focus was taken away from my botched attempt at last.
* * *Later that evening, I was sitting in my bedroom with a stack of flashcards trying to memorize terms for my Childhood Psych test that was only a few days away. There was a soft knock on my door and then it pushed open, revealing a pajama-clad Gwen.
“Hey. I just wanted to say sorry for giving you crap earlier. I know that it took a lot of guts for you to go over to Zac period, and it sounds like it went okay.”
“It’s fine, Gwen. I knew you were kidding.”
“Yeah… I know, but I still shouldn’t have said some of the things I did. I hope that this opens some doors so you feel more comfortable talking to him in the future.”
“Me too. I think it will. At least we can joke about my clumsiness, right?”
“Right. Goodnight.”
“Night.”
After that, I had to put down my notecards for a moment. It had been so incredibly un-Gwen for her to come in and apologize for something like that. She had always been frank with me, and her comments this afternoon hadn’t been particulary unreasonable or out of the ordinary, but they had upset me a little. I wasn’t as comfortable with the other sex off the bat as she was and always had been. That was something that was very hard for her to understand. She didn’t get why I couldn’t just go strike up a conversation with a guy I thought was cute, and I didn’t understand how she could without making an ass out of herself like I always did. That afternoon had been a prime example, but Gwen had made a good point. Once I got to a certain level of comfort and familiarity with a guy, then I could start being the extrovert I was on a regular basis. The fear of rejection was crippling, mainly because I’d been rejected twice in the past two years. The two relationships I’d had in college had been ended by the guy, not by me. I hadn’t been able to understand what I’d done wrong, so I’d turned to finding faults in myself and used them for the focus of my self-blame.
As I picked my cards back up, I took a deep breath and told myself that I’d try harder to be more confident, at least with Zac. I just had to wait for the next time we were both in the library.