Not-So-Best-Laid Plans

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One thing I cannot deal with, and of course it’s not the only thing, is a crying person. Actually, tears I can probably take. It’s the sobbing, howling, screeching of a wounded animal that I can’t handle. Especially when the wounded animal lives in the same house. Especially when we share the same wall.

“Why, why, why,” my sister was crying into her pillow. As soon as I sat next to her, she transferred her blotchy face to my knee and gripped me so tightly that I couldn’t feel my toes. I could practically feel the snot soaking into my favorite jeans. I fastidiously lifted her wet pillow and threw it on the floor with a plop.

“Is it James?” I asked her, tentatively rubbing her back in soothing circles. Her teeth dug into me as she nodded with a particularly violent sob.

I suppose it was understandable. Not that I understood, being as I’ve never had very intense emotions, but Lida and James had been going out for almost two years. He was a complete shit-for-brains but she always seemed pretty happy with him, so I put up with his vacant expression and stupid questions, mostly by ignoring him. Now, however, I was free to abuse him all I wanted.

“What did he do, Liddy?” I let my eyes lose focus on her hideous wallpaper.

“He told me he didn’t fucking love me anymore. What the shit is that? You don’t just fall out of love! I didn’t tell him to say he loved me! If you don’t think you love someone, don’t fucking say it. Fucking Indian giver.” She jolted up, nearly snapping my chin in the process, and glared at me. I haven’t mentioned that she’s somewhat of a potty-mouth.

“Is it someone else?” I asked tentatively, wishing her crazed eyes were directed elsewhere.

“How should I know?” With a huff, Liddy threw herself back against her headboard and slumped down. Her fit had vanished rather quickly. Her personality is such that no matter what she’s feeling, anger always overtakes. That only happens to me when I’m driving. I’m a tailgating fiend. “I don’t know who else would want him.”

I studied her, wondering what tack was best to take. Her long brown hair was knotted and half-falling out of her bun, and her green eyes were disturbingly offset by their reddened state. Liddy jammed her hands in the pockets of her loose brown pants, letting her chin drop on her wrinkled blue t-shirt. She wasn’t a fashion queen, which made her relationship with James-the-metrosexual-in-denial odd. He was a tall, blond, polo-wearing drunkard, and Liddy had been completely straight-edge despite the fact that everyone, even my old high school friends, thought she was a pothead.

She and I aren’t actually that different. Neither of us are boy-crazy, and since she’s only nine months older than me, we may be in different grades but we relate really well. Her coloring is a lot darker than mine, but looks is our only major divergence. We borrow each other’s clothes all the time (the pants she was wearing were mine), and get good grades. She doesn’t act like an older sister.

Which was why I took comforting her seriously, even though I didn’t know what the hell to say.

“Well,” I hedged, “maybe he’s an idiot?”

Liddy rolled her eyes. “I always knew that. I just didn’t know he was emotionally stunted, too. I don’t need genius, as long as it doesn’t get too stupid. But that…he…UGH!” She threw her hands up violently and then let them fall behind her head. Poking out her bottom lip, she regarded me with a pout. “I thought I was doing him a favor.”

“That’s a good basis for a relationship.”

“Oh shut up. I liked him alright. He kissed really well.”

“That’s a good basis for a relationship.”

She scooped the pillow off the floor one-handed and threw it at me. It was a little soggy. But she laughed, too, if a little weakly.

“Get me someone to make him jealous,” she whined, not serious at all. She’s not to type to play games with guys. If she really wanted a guy, she could ask any one of her guy friends to help her get back at James. They treated her, and to a lesser extent me, like their little sister.

Nevertheless, I tapped my chin thoughtfully, and the thought entered my head. She rolled her eyes at me.

“Actually, let’s just focus on you. I’m going to live vicariously through you and throw all my broken dreams into getting you a guy. Or just getting you laid. Honestly, Esmé, you’re going to shrivel up if you don’t put your loins to good use.”

“Oh my God, never say something like that ever again!” I cried, clapping my hands to my ears.

James wasn’t her first, but I wasn’t about to use her as a role model when it came to sexual promiscuity. Yeah, I was a virgin, but that’s not exactly uncommon, even if we are in college. Drunken making out, sure.

“I’m going to find you a guy,” I told her definitively. “We are focusing on you.”

Now she sat up and gave me a slow, evil grin. “Uh huh. Sure. If, say, a 6 foot sexy beast man shows up in your bed in the middle of the night, I had absolutely nothing to do with it,” she said, waving her hands. We live in the same house so I wouldn’t put it past her. I gave her a warning glare.

“No. I will kill you. Pure and simple. There will be death that night.”

I figured the only way to get her attention off of me and my lack of love troubles would be to find her another dude as quickly as possible. Not easy but not impossible. Our college is mid-sized, so we know about half the people here, and know by sight most of the others. A good hunting ground.

Not really. I’m not good at spotting game.

Except the big game is pretty obvious. Durgin Shift, the star quarterback on an okay team. James is the hyena to his lion. Different enough planes of existence that Durgin doesn’t even notice his. James was only a few inches taller than Liddy (she’s got an inch on my 5’8”), but Durgin, according to his profile on the school webpage, was a good 6’2”, with dark brown, almost black hair. A good place to start.

The problem was that another thing Liddy and I share is a not entirely-outgoing or confident nature. Liddy is a bit more self-assured than I am, but not even she would approach Durgin. She walks like she’s six feet tall and I walk like a hobo. Still, the fact that I was doing this for her and wasn’t interested myself gave me a little boost, so when he sat three seats away from me in Calculus, I shot him a grin. He only raised an eyebrow at me and faced the front.

Well fine. Granted we’d been in the same class for almost a semester and I tended to avoid eye-contact, but I’d hazard to say he’s not used to paying any heed to nerds. I am something of a nerd. I don’t have glasses, which is not required thank you very much, but I don’t pay much attention to making myself seem prettier than I am. I’m looking for romance as much as (or maybe a little less than) anyone else, but I pretty much believe that my one true love is going to like me for me. Call me crazy.

Liddy does. She’s all for teaching me how to use makeup to my best advantage (i.e. shading my face to make my nose seem smaller, shading my eyes to make them seem bigger, using mascara so that people see I actually do have eyelashes, plucking my eyebrows to the point where they’re almost invisible—not that she does all of this either, she just really wants me to get rid of that troubling V word).

Before class could start, I got up from my seat, climbed over the two people and the empty seat between me and Durgin, and paused, composing my face before he looked up at me.

“May I borrow a ball-point pen?” I asked. My face wasn’t heating up like a furnace, and I counted that as a good sign. He also wasn’t looking at me like I was an insect, which was also good, even though he was a little confused, and shot a glance at the people next to him, both of whom looked friendlier and more likely to lend me something.

He slowly reached into his bag and held a pen out to me. I took it firmly and smiled brightly. “Why thank you.” I pivoted, managing to keep my balance, and climbed back over the rather amused students in my way.

It was only once I sat down that my face got hot, but I hid that by propping up my left elbow and dropping my face into my hand for support. Someone cleared their throat and then the professor finally came in.

After an hour of his droning and me being far too aware of the football player in my row, I caught up with him at the doorway and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Here. Thanks.”

“Yeah sure. You can return the favor sometime.”

“Oh, do you need pens? I have plenty,” I said. Durgin half-smiled and cocked an eyebrow again.

“Do you now?”

“I mean…not with me,” I corrected myself slowly, screwing up my face so he would think I was an adorable weirdo. “I do possess many pens. Today was just a freak accident. Luck of the draw. Um…my alarm, you know. And I lost my toothbrush. I was all a-frazzle.” I realized I was babbling in earnest and ‘ahem’d’. “Toodles.”

But I didn’t want to be the one to fling myself around again, so I waited for him to mumble something and walk off. Except he didn’t. Durgin only stood there, kind of leaning in as if not sure which direction he should go, an impression compounded by the fact that he was smirking at me in befuddlement. So I plunged headlong into my plot.

“Do you know my sister?”

“I don’t know you,” he pointed out. I did blush this time.

“I’m Esmé. Well, Esmerelda, but that’s stupid, so just Esmé. But my sister is Lida. Lida Thronton. I think you’re in her Global Lit class?”

“It’s a big class,” he offered after a pause that was an eternity too long.

“Well, um, now you know.” I bobbed my head. “Anywho, I must jet off, so…see you Wednesday or whenever.” I didn’t want him to think I was implying anything with that stupidly tacked on ‘whenever,’ which I hadn’t meant to say, so I did indeed jet off, and didn’t look back.

It had started out promising and then I made a fool of myself, like always. Much better just to not make eye contact. Life was so much simpler that way. Quiet and smart was my niche, not babbly and foolish. I was trying to be more affable to get this guy to fall for my sister, but I wasn’t doing it very well.

So I was amazed when Wednesday morning rolled around and he was sitting not three, but two seats away from me. This time when I grinned at him, he smiled back. I decided not to pull the pen move again, but I still tapped him on the shoulder as we were leaving.

“So do you know who my sister is yet?”

“Naw, I forgot to pay attention to role,” he said with a shrug, although he did look sorry. Even though I was trying not to sound too pushy, I said, “Well, she looks like me. But see you Friday!”

“I found the perfect guy for you,” Lida announced as she barged into my room. I frowned at her over my laptop and proceeded to sink further down in the numerous pillows on my bed. “Don’t start drooling all at once. I only had to proposition four guys to find this one, the least you could do is—“

“What?!” I demanded, shoving my computer off and preparing to leap at her. “I told you I don’t—“

It was her turn to interrupt. She waved me off. “Esmé, it’s not that bad. It’s not like I went up and said ‘Wanna bang my sister?’ I simply asked if they knew who you were, and this one guy, his name is Chet, and he totally knows who you are.”

If she was waiting for me to go into a frenzy of happiness, she was going to be disappointed. I only glared at her. Undaunted, she threw herself onto my bed and hugged my knees.

“He’s really, really tall, and he’s really, really cute. He asked if you were dating Mike, which means he’s interested.”

“That’s not interest. That’s association. He thinks ‘Esmé’ and then he thinks ‘Mike’s girlfriend,’ because we all hang out a lot. In his mind he probably thinks of me as ‘Esmé, Mike’s girlfriend’ almost like most people think of me as ‘Esmé, Liddy’s sister’.”

“Don’t be a Sour Skittle. I know the looks guys have when they’re talking about girls, and this was an interested look.”

I rolled my eyes heavenward and fell back on my bed, kicking her grip off. “I don’t want to meet Chet.”

“You just think that because you have yet to see him shirtless.”

“Omigod, you’re totally right. Abs make all the difference,” I gushed sarcastically. I was tempted to tell her about my plans for her and Durgin, but I decided to leave her in the dark. In all likelihood it would never happen.

“I’m hardcore thinking of dangling that little man by his ankles and shaking all this math crap out of his head,” Durgin muttered to me the next day. He’d completely skipped over a day spent in the chair one over, and had sat right next to me.

“All you’d get from that is loose change and some TI batteries, I’m sure,” I replied. It was nice, him choosing to sit next to me and talk to me. When any of my other guy friends where in my classes, they tended to sit next to their girls or each other. I was a last resort.

“And his glasses.”

“I hate those glasses,” I said vehemently. Durgin coughed to hide a laugh and I smiled too.

“So I finally found out who your sister is,” he said as he took notes from the projector. I was surprised he was an attentive student. I’d probably ignored him as much as he ignored me during the semester.

“Oh yeah?”

“She does look a lot like you. Not goofy, though.”

I frowned but concentrated on my notes, and from the corner of my eye I saw him look at me as the silence drug on. “I don’t mean goofy-looking. You just seem…goofier.”

I gave him a pitying look and he seemed pretty relieved. “I am not goofy. Or quirky. Or odd! Lida is. I think you’d get along really well with her.”

His face smoothed completely and I got the feeling he knew exactly what I was doing.

“Oh really,” he said, and I think he injected a bit more boredom than necessary into those two words. I felt bad, like I was giving him the idea that I was only talking to him to set them up. Obviously that was true, but now I kind of wanted to be his friend, even if my clumsy set-up didn’t work out.

“Or not,” I added to make things right. Why was I assuring him? He was being friendly, but it wasn’t like we were on our way to being best friends.

“If she is a lot like you, I’m sure we’d get along.” He was saying it just to say it. Now he was assuring me.

He wasn’t there on Monday, and on Wednesday I was feeling a little anxious as I headed to class. I didn’t get flustered around him like I usually did with attractive guys, and now I wasn’t concerned with my plan so much as the fact that I was starting to get a bit of a crush on him. And we could speak normally together. Granted it had only been that one day.

But he was in class. I smiled entirely too happily when I saw him, but he gave me a full smile in response and sat down next to me again with a sigh.

“Did I miss much?”

“Just everything that you need to make sense of mathematics for the rest of your life.”

“Oh good.” He rubbed his hand over his face and scooted his butt out so that he was lower than me. “Football’s getting pretty crazy. I might miss too much of this class.” Durgin actually seemed worried.

“There’s no such thing as missing too much of this class. I am actually behind on class-skippage,” I confessed. “Need a pen?” I held one out to him, although I don’t know why.

“No.” He took it anyway and it made me feel inordinately tickled. “Do you go to the games?”

I cleared my throat surreptitiously. “Um…”

“That would be a no.” He smirked. “You should come. You don’t know how much school spirit you really have until you come to one of our games. It’s crazy. We lose and they love us.”

“Everybody loves a lovable loser,” I said sagely. The professor clicked on the projector as the rest of the class trickled in, but I was still looking at him. He gave me a sidelong glance and then tugged a random lock of my hair.

“That they do.”

I wanted that to mean what I thought it did. My throat was suddenly too tight, so it was a while before I could speak to him again. I furrowed my brow and pretended to be absorbed in math.

As the class ended, he rose and loomed over me and handed me back my pen. “This Sunday it’s an afternoon game. You don’t have to tailgate, but you should at least come. I mean, it’s free. I’ll be crushed if you don’t. Am I not worth nothing to you?”

I nodded dumbly and watched him go. Would he really care if a girl went to his game if he didn’t feel…something about her?

As I walked back to my house, I tugged on the lock of hair I thought he touched. Plain, light brown and a little wavy. I had green eyes like my sister, but she’d always been prettier. She was just more comfortable with herself. And me? I was comfortable with him.

I made Liddy go with me to the game. She was my closest friend, and it was partially because I had decided not to set her up with him that I admitted that that had been my plan and that I’d started to like him instead.

“Only you, Esmé.”

Wearing our school colors of maroon and silver, we made our way down the bleachers and sat for fifteen minutes in the blazing heat until the players came out on the field. I watched for the guy I’d known for a grand total of four days, and my heart pounded when I saw him come out. I felt so out of place here, but watching him run was thrilling, for some reason. Maybe this was more than a small crush. Maybe it was a really fucking huge one.

Lida nudged me knowingly.

“You look like you’d like to get a touch down on him.”

That was so lame it succeeded in calming me down. I punched her in the shoulder. “Don’t be a loser.”

She proceeded to chant “Oh ho ho,” during the entire first quarter until I mussed up her hair. “The things I let you get away with,” she grumbled, hunching over sullenly.

The game was over and lost by 7:30, and it was darker and cooler, so that I wouldn’t have minded waiting around for him, but had no idea what the protocol was, or if I was being a lovesick teenager and being awkward where I wasn’t wanted.

Liddy, ever the compromiser, decided we would stay after fifteen minutes, not quite outside the locker room, and then leave. I decided we would leave right then. She agreed with a sigh, but that irritating sound was covered by a “Oi!”

I spun and once again smiled incredibly wide when I saw Durgin jogging towards me from the inside. He slowed when he saw my sister. “Hey,” he said to her, but he was giving me a look that instantly lightened when Liddy said “So, I’m just gonna run off, eh?”

“What are you, Canadian?”

She tweaked my nose and backed away from the exit towards the emptying parking lot. “Hey, I’ve forgiven you for the hair thing, don’t make me tell him all the things I can tell him about you.”

I gave him a sickly smile and he slung an arm around my shoulders. “You came!”

“Why…yes, yes I did.”

“Great game, huh?”

I jerked my head to stare at him only to see him smirking down at me, completely relaxed.

“You lost!” I blurted. He winced exaggeratedly.

“Well geez, make me cry, why don’t you?”

I full-on blushed this time and felt him laugh and swing me into him so he could dig his chin into my head in a lazy-man’s version of the noogie. “Oh God, what the hell, man?” I cried. I shoved at his chest but couldn’t budge him.

“It’s a lost cause. Big burly men have tried and failed. I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”

I tilted my head up to meet his eyes. “Shows what you know.”

Those eyes were laughing and they were very blue. “So, that was your sister.”

The way he said it was very strange, like he was prompting me to say something but wasn’t actually asking a question.

“Yes. Yes it was,” I said encouragingly, like I was talking to a child. His eyes were still laughing at they narrowed.

“And she left.”

”That was that getting smaller thing. It happens when people move a long distance away,” I agreed. Durgin sighed heavily and rolled his eyes.

“You wanted me to meet her?”

The prompting tone again. I knew exactly what he was doing, now, and a grin came to my face all at once. “Yeah, well, that was last week. Now you’ve met her. It doesn’t seem quite so important.”

“Wow. So, a week is all it takes to make you forget things, huh? ‘Cause it seemed really important to you. That and the fact that you’ve never looked at me before last Monday…” He let it trail off, and I had really wanted to know what he was going to say.

“Hey, it only takes me a week to figure out things, too.”

“Yeah? Me too.” He took a lock of my hair, maybe even the same lock, and twirled it around his finger. “Fess up.”

Blushing even harder, I moved my eyes from his. “I don’t want to seduce you for her anymore.”

Durgin burst out laughing at that before grabbing at me and planting a big, wet kiss right on my mouth. I was a little stunned. That was not at all what I had pictured happening. “Oh, seduce me, please,” he deadpanned.

“I…do I seem like a seductress to you?” I demanded, trying to bat away his hand because I was embarrassed by that very unromantic kiss.

“Whatever you are,” he said, catching my hands so that I couldn’t hit him. “I want you.”

“I’m a nerd…ish,” I squeaked. Still smiling like a fool, he leaned closer.

“Well, then I think you and I would add up better than a Riemann Sum.” This time when he laid his lips over mine, it was longer and it involved a lot of tongue.

“That’s so lame,” I told him before he pushed me against the wall and let go of my hands so he could touch me.

“Your mom is lame.”

A/N: So, tried to go for the realistic here, even if it is the old cliché of nerd and football player. Tell me whatcha think!