April 2011
My first “I love you” was from Jordan Revy sophomore year of high school. It was late on April 7th when I snuck out past my 10:00 p.m. curfew to drive Jordan home from Nelly Laurenson’s birthday party. He hopped into the passenger side of dad’s beat up VW with stale beer on his breath and another girl’s lip gloss sparkling on his lips against the illumination of my dashboard radio ever so slightly. I thought we were together. Then again, I guess we never actually talked about exclusivity during our late-night text exchanges. So, I sat in embarrassed silence as I rounded Jordan’s corner and into his pebbled driveway. He said a quick, “thanks for the ride,” before he leaned over to flick my headlights off. I couldn’t look at him. That lip gloss gleamed like a big bright billboard sign beaming, “IDIOT!”
Jordan unbuckled his seat belt, caressing his right hand on the inside of my left thigh. I didn’t shave my legs that day and goosebumps made my tiny hairs stick straight up growing taller with my every breath. His left hand did its very best to stabilize his swaying body as he sat up ready to leave the car. With two quick squeezes of my left thigh, he slurred the three words that I’d waited 195 months and 7 days to hear float out of a boy’s mouth just for me. “I love you.” He followed with an, “I owe you one, kid,” and I watched giddily as he stumbled over some tulips up to his big red porch door.
I didn’t know that he didn’t actually love me. For God’s sake, I was sixteen.
Now, I realize it was the kind-of “I love you” that had nothing to do with true love but was rather a statement of thankful relief. One that was said in a friendly and flirtatious way only to make sure I would still like him the next time he wanted me. One that was said to ensure I would stay an available option for whenever he needed my help or my convenience or my lips. Back then, I didn’t understand that real love couldn’t stand on a foundation of increased heart rates and French kissing. But when he uttered them, I forgot all about that lip gloss. At least I forgot momentarily, until I checked my rearview mirror just to see some of its shine had rubbed off onto my fresh cherry red lips. Naively, I still told myself that this was the start of something, maybe even forever. Whoever she was didn’t matter because he chose me that night. He said he loved me.
Dad waited up at the kitchen island when I got home for no other reason but to ground me and rudely disregard any level-headed understanding that this was the biggest night of my life. Stuck in my bedroom for the rest of that weekend, I danced to Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” on repeat, believing my 45-hour grounding period was essentially the same as Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden love affair. Every once in a while, I peered outside just to make sure the window taps from trees blowing weren’t actually pebbles that Jordan tossed up in a romantic attempt to talk to me while I was locked away in my less than lovely castle.
Monday morning, I woke up early to curl my hair and make sure I could get to school with plenty of time to see Jordan before class. Around 7:56 a.m., four minutes before the final bell, Jordan approached the other end of my table in the cafeteria with a bouquet of pink roses and asked Nelly Laurenson to be his date to the Spring Fling on Friday.
Nelly wore sparkly lip gloss to the dance. Dad pulled up in his beat-up VW to take me home early. I asked him to, and I cried while I jealously watched Jordan and Nelly leave the dance alone in Mr. Laurenson’s fancy new Cadillac.
On the way home, dad pulled into our local McDonald’s lot for the “all guys are jerks” talk and two vanilla cones. I let him hold me as my ice cream melted down my hands and tears fell softly onto my dress. Dad knew that no scraped knee, no sports team cut, no mean friend could provoke these type of tears, but we didn’t talk about Jordan or Nelly or the lip gloss or those three words. That night was the first time I cried with my heart instead of my head. I never ignored curfew again in high school.
***
August 2013
Dad dropped me off at Northwestern University on August 23rd. I moved into Kemper Hall, a coed building on campus. After what felt like hundreds of awkward encounters between dad and these new college boys in the elevator, outside of his beat-up VW, and down the hall where he jokingly told them not to even think about coming near Kemper 709, my new room, he left with a quick hug and yet another “remember, all guys are jerks.” This time, I rolled my eyes. I was older, I didn’t want to hear it. At least, I didn’t want to have to hear it.
A few short weeks after move-in, a handful of the 7th floor Kemper girls and guys tailgated the Northwestern versus Michigan State game. As far as our eyes could see, kegs, red solo cups, bonfires, and purple-dressed kids prepared to drunkenly watch the game with double vision. It was a 3:00 p.m. game, and we headed into Ryan Field as a freshman girl sang the National Anthem off-key.
For almost four hours, I cheered my heart out for a team that I really couldn’t care less about. Dad had tried to help me comprehend football for years, and while I was never patient enough to understand the terminology or even the concept, it turned out that those two things didn’t matter when attending a game after a few beers.
Tommy Brooks warmed me up with his sweatshirt during half time and piggy-backed me home with celebration pizza at sunset after Northwestern’s win—ending score 29 - 20. I never noticed him much before that game because Tommy Brooks was Kemper 702, way on the other side of the hall.
In the elevator up, we Lady and The Tramp’ed a slice of pepperoni until our laughs successfully shook the piece out of our mouths and onto the floor. Tommy dropped the pizza box with it and pushed me up against the cold metal wall. He linked his greasy right hand with my left above my head and pulled my lips closer to his as he grabbed the belt loop of my jeans with his other hand’s middle and index fingers. The elevator dinged at floor seven, and with a quick spin of my left arm, he danced me down the hallway to Kemper 702. I followed excitedly behind, secretly swallowing the last bit of pizza that I’d hid in the deep right of my mouth when he kissed me on the ride up. I swished saliva around my mouth like mouthwash, hoping to get rid of some of the savory sausage flavor. Talk about a mood killer.
He jammed his key card into the door, unlocking it quickly and plopped me onto his bed like he probably did to the sack of laundry sitting next to me. Kicking off his dirtied Converse, he reached down to grab the socks off his feet. Tommy Brooks threw one across the room and scrunched the other up to put on his outside door handle, signifying that unspoken but also worldwide known “Do Not Disturb” secret code.
My vision was blurry and his room was dark, but I sobered up to the vision of him stripping down from his pants, stained white tee, and navy plaid boxer shorts faster than I had the chance to accurately assess if I wanted to lose my virginity to him—Tommy Brooks, Kemper 702, pepperoni pizza lover, Bud Lite drinker, sweatshirt lender. That’s really all I knew, and he knew even less about me—Kelsey Maroni, Kemper 709, easily cold, loud cheerer.
“Your turn.” Tommy stood at the edge of his bed, one hand on his semi-flaccid penis and the other holding onto a gold condom. It wasn’t the first one I’d ever seen, but this time it was different. It felt like less of an option. He expected it. And I’m still not quite sure why. His was nothing to write home about. Not that I would ever write home about a boy’s penis, but you know what I mean.
“Wow, yeah. Right down to business?” I laughed uncomfortably. “I thought maybe we could take things slower.” Of course, a pizza and his hoodie didn’t necessarily make Tommy Brooks Mr. Prince Charming, but that was pretty chivalrous, right? He paid extra for the pepperoni too.
“Slower?” Tommy Brooks scoffed in my face. “What are you, Kacey? A virgin?”
“Do I look like a virgin?” I asked. “And the name’s Kelsey, little dick.” I jumped out of his twin bed, looked down at his tiny thing one more time, and walked away pulling my ponytail holder loose. At the door, I glared back at him running my fingers through my hair, hoping to appear sexy, like less of a virgin.
I didn’t know it was so bad to be a virgin anyway. I thought guys liked virgins. I also didn’t know what warranted the loss of someone’s virginity, but up until that moment, I spent all day drunkenly trying to equate Tommy Brooks’ elementary favors to that of Prince Charming’s city-wide search for the special owner of that lost glass slipper.
Unfortunately, for Tommy Brooks, his oh-so-gallant actions lost all implications of chivalry when he decided to give the word “cocky” a new and more literal meaning by pulling out that gold Magnum condom from his bedside drawer. I’ve read enough Cosmo and watched more than the necessary amount of rom-coms to know that guys can definitely be “growers not showers,” but even in the dark, I could see that thing would have to bathe in a tub of Miracle-Gro not to be falling out of that lubed up balloon. And then, he had the audacity to expect me to want it.
While still wearing his sweatshirt, I decided Tommy Brooks’ generosity for me could never outweigh the generous thoughts he had for himself. And just like his condom, I decided no glass slipper coming from Tommy Brooks’ was going to fit me right. So, I kept my Nike sneakers on, marched away holding onto my virginity for a little longer, and began to wonder if all guys were really jerks.
I started towards the elevator, planning to head outside for a walk to clear my mind when dad called.
The elevator doors opened up, and there it was, still sitting there. The pizza box, with three untouched pepperoni pieces. I sat on the floor, picked up a slice from the box, answered my phone, and told dad everything. Perhaps it was more than a dad should’ve known. I didn’t mention the condom or how small it was, but he probably could’ve guessed right on both of those if he wanted.
“Tommy Brooks is dead to me,” Dad joked, and we laughed together. Although, he was also entirely serious, and we both knew it.
“All guys are jerks, Kels. Don’t forget it. You could do so much better.”
***
September 2018
I rolled over in bed to the sound of my phone ringing at 2:07 a.m. on a random Wednesday morning. Mistaking it for my morning alarm, I thoughtlessly snoozed, or rather declined it the first time around. Less than thirty seconds later, it sounded again, but this time I realized and answered.
“Hello, is this Kelsey?” A man’s voice rumbled sternly in my ear.
“This is she. Who, who is this?” I moaned to the man on the other end, simultaneously realizing that I was alone. Charlie never came home.
“Hi Kelsey, I am a member of the Chicago Police Department, and I am calling from the corner of Belmont and Kedzie. There has been an accident, and your cell number was available under the ‘In Case of Emergency’ on an iPhone 7 found at the scene.”
“Is it Charlie? Why? When? Where is he? Is he okay? What happened?” My voice croaked.
I didn’t know how to ask everything I wanted the answers to. I turned the phone on speaker and threw on the first pair of sweatpants I could find, accidentally sticking both my right and left leg into the same hole three times.
“Ma’am, we are not exactly sure about your relation to this person or even who was involved yet, but everyone involved has been taken in ambulances to emergency at Rush University Medical Center. Are you okay to get yourself there now? We can send an officer to pick you up if not.”
“I-I’m fine. I’m heading over now.” I slid into the water stained UGG slippers that sat next to my bed and ran outside. I started running left towards Nelson Avenue, forgetting where Charlie and I parked my car after our trip to the liquor store yesterday.
I knew it was Charlie.
I don’t even remember driving there, but before I knew it, I arrived and dropped my car with the hospital valet. When I entered the building, I approached a tired woman sitting at the front desk underneath a red neon “EMERGENCY” sign.
“Is there a Charlie, sorry, Charles Booker here?” I huffed these words out in tears.
“Ma’am, ma’am calm down. Here are some tissues. Let me check.” Her fingers quickly typed in the name, and I got the answer that I knew but never wanted to receive. “Yes, ma’am Charles Booker was taken into the ICU for surgery just 17 minutes ago. Are you family?”
“I’m, uh, I’m am um, I’m his girlfriend. But, but there’s no, I mean he has no family here. He, Charlie, Charles I mean, just moved here. His family is from Philadelphia. He doesn’t have family here. I’m hi-his girlfriend. We’ve been dating for two years, but his family, he has none here.”
“Okay ma’am, why don’t you take a seat right over there,” she pointed towards a room of people sitting solitarily in chairs all with tissues against their noses or elbows on their knees and hands on their heads.
“And you’ll tell me if..when, I mean when I can see him?” She pitifully soft-smiled nodding her head up and down. She knew more than me. Her smile said it all.
I sat down at 2:31 a.m. and waited there, tapping my heels on the floor for an hour and fourteen minutes until a blonde nurse approached me at 3:45 a.m.
“Hi miss. How are you?” What a dumb question. I looked up at her, frantically shaking my head, not wasting any time by opening my own mouth.
“You’re here for Charles Booker? He just got out of surgery. You can see him now.”
I followed the blonde nurse left, then right, left again, and finally straight into a hallway with a single door blockaded by four or five police officers. They let me enter, and two of them followed me inside.
“Charlie?” I whimpered, dropping to the floor. It seemed the hospital had him hooked up to every wire they could find—oxygen running through his nose in a tube, an IV poked into his left arm, and a green line zig-zagged up and down on a patient monitor.
“Ma’am, can we have a word with you outside for a moment?” One of the officers asked as he put his hand on my shoulder. I remembered his voice from the phone call that woke me up that morning.
In the hallway, I was surrounded by three more officers, a doctor, and two nurses.
“Charles Booker was in a car accident tonight at the corner between Kedzie and Belmont at approximately 1:58 a.m. He ran a red-light ma’am, injuring a mom and son in the process. Those two are in stable condition now, but Charles’ tests read his blood alcohol content level at .39. A person is considered legally intoxicated with a BAC of .08 ma’am. He is lucky to be breathing. As for now, stay with him if you’d like, but we are going to have to ask Charles a number of questions when he is awake. Have you notified any other friends or family members?”
“I called his parents, but they didn’t answer. Can anyone else try them? I don-don’t know if I can, you know. I just can’t right now.” I showed the younger blonde nurse my phone with Mr. Booker’s number displayed on the screen. Neither of us said a word, but she wrote it down.
I walked into the hallway with every intention of calling dad to tell him he was right. I wanted to call him. Well, I didn’t want to have to tell him he was right. He didn’t want to hear those words either. For almost two whole years, I wished dad was wrong about Charlie. Dad sat me down about three months after we’d started dating.
“You know, Kels. Alcoholism is a disease.” He said to me when I brought Charlie home to celebrate Christmas with our family. I was comfortable with Charlie. I thought my family would love him. I thought he’d be good that day.
“I’m just saying, for the past two hours, I’ve kept my mouth shut and watched Charlie swallow just about everything above a 40 proof.” Dad was right, but I got defensive that day.
“Dad, weren’t you nervous the first time you met mom’s family for a holiday? You don’t get to judge him. Not now. Not ever. I’m a big girl, believe it or not, and I can handle my own problems—one of which is NOT Charlie.”
“Kels, I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to make him your solution. You couldn’t save mom from this. Neither could I. Don’t overcompensate for the past we couldn’t control. That person right there,” he pointed his finger slightly up at Charlie who was stumbling over across the room, “that, is not your mother. And trying to fix him will not fix her whether you want to hear it or not. You deserve better. You deserve more. That boy is a careless jerk. He won’t listen. He won’t try to change. He is going to break you. I’ve been broken by this sort of thing. You have too. And we both know it’s not easy to fix yourself.”
I didn’t listen to dad then, and I didn’t want to have to tell him that he was right now.
I turned around back into Charlie’s room and waited there. Throughout the rest of the night, nurses and doctors moved in and out, checking his vitals and switching his IV bag. Around 4:30 a.m., the familiar blonde nurse brought me a blanket. I cozied up, although still burning with embarrassment and anger. It wasn’t all Charlie’s fault. Alcoholism is a disease, right? I was angry at myself too.
I couldn’t sleep. Charlie’s primary doctor—I don’t remember his name—came in around 7:15 a.m. This time, he wasn’t checking his vitals. A nurse followed him in and stood at the edge of Charlie’s bed. They waited for me to take my head out from my hands to look at them, but the sun was shining bright, and I didn’t want them to see my red bloodshot eyes in the light.
I felt their presence. I’d gotten used to each different person’s footsteps. I knew it was the blonde nurse. Then, a policeman entered too. This hadn’t happened yet.
“Kelsey, I don’t know how to tell you this, but last night when Charlie hit the mother and her son, we were able to get them quickly into stable condition. Unfortunately, the little boy in the stroller, Mateo, did not make it. Our best pediatric nurses carefully monitored Mateo all night, but he flatlined about an hour ago due to some internal bleeding. There was a rather large hemorrhage hidden underneath Mateo’s ninth and tenth ribs. Our scans did not initially pick up on it. There was nothing we could do.”
I fell weak on my knees, wanting to leave but not knowing how to escape. Right then, around 7:23 a.m., Charlie woke up. Dazed, confused, and still drunk he stammered out unfinished phrases questioning what was going on there.
“Where am… why’s there a polic--, Kels? What happened?” Charlie looked at me with his puppy dog eyes, asking forgiveness in the form of confusion.
“You killed a little boy. You drank your way to murder and killed a little boy.” I didn’t have any strength left. I didn’t yell. I didn’t cry to him. I found an ounce of courage and transformed it into two words.
“Goodbye Charles.” Calling him by his full name felt odd, but I was ready to make him a stranger.
The valet brought my car around front, and I began driving but only for a minute. Pulling over towards the side of the road, I called dad. Although, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to say if he picked up. He picked up after one ring.
The phone call ended after an hour and 37 minutes, and I was ready to head home, pack my clothing, and move out like dad said I should.
The whole time I was on the phone, Charlie mispelled nonstop text messages begging me to come back. He told me his parents wanted to talk to me. They got an immediate flight out to him and arrived right around 9:00 a.m. according to him. I guess the blonde nurse got a hold of Mr. Booker earlier that morning. I didn’t respond to Charlie. He was no longer my problem.
I parked around the corner from the apartment I shared with Charlie, walked with my head down facing the ground, kicking pebbles and sticks out of my way. Depressed. Stupid. Helpless. Pulling my key out of my pocket, I looked up.
“Dad?’ Before my knees had the chance to fall again, he held me up and clenched tightly with the same arms that embraced me after the Spring Fling. The same arms that waved goodbye after sharing some boy advice on my first day of college. The same hand that held up the cell after Tommy Brooks.
“Oh baby. You didn’t deserve this. A careless jerk. You are going to be okay. I know it.” He hated that he couldn’t protect me from any of them then and he couldn’t now.
We sat on my front steps for hours that warm September day. Together, dad and I made plans for me to move back in with him for the time being. We made plans to forget about the trauma caused by two years of toxic evenings full of Captain Morgan, Jim Beam, Jose Cuervo, Johnnie Walker, and whatever other jerk Charlie decided to bring home on any given night. We made plans to write down what I wanted to find in a man, like my mom did decades ago before she met dad.
Later that same afternoon, my dad boxed up my life and moved me back home before sunset.
The next morning, I woke up to apartment listings circled in the Tribune, fresh pancakes on a plate, a single fresh peony in a vase near the window, and a note on the fridge.
“I’m off to visit mom. Will be home shortly. Let’s get started on these tree ribbons when I’m home.”
After reading his note, I knew where the rest of those fresh peonies must have gone. Today would have been mom and dad’s 40th wedding anniversary.
And those ribbons were for Mateo. Dad already planned to tie them around tree trunks as a symbol of unfortunate loss in the neighborhood. Years ago, mom’s were red and tied into big bows.
Not all guys are jerks.
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