Yet something about Jess had set her off.
“We’ve all gained weight since college,” Shannon muttered. “We’re not twenty-one anymore.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?”
“What? Why would I do anything? I’m only saying it’s unnerving and really weird timing!”
“Suuure. Start documenting evidence for that restraining order now.”
“What’s gotten into you? Is that guy you’re seeing making your hair stand on end again? I told you to dump him.”
That was enough to shift the conversation.Good, because I can’t stand this any longer.Shannon hadn’t expected such a vitriolic response to Jess’s resurgence.A stalker? Really?That was rich, considering Shannon was often the one bumping into her or… well…
Trying to kill her?
***
Memory #4
Something was wrong with my bike. It hadn’t been right all day, but when I was already late for my first class on the other side of campus, I didn’t have a lot of time to figure out what was making me veer to the left every time I tried to turn right.
I should have taken the time after class to fix it. By the time I was jetting off to have lunch with Kelsey and getting ready for a dorm council meeting, I had no excuse besides being a negligent fool.
I don’t know what I was thinking about when I took that corner by the student fountain at top speed. It was something I had done a million times before. If anyone got in my way, I rang my bell and expertly rode around them. I knew I was risking it every time I acted like a fool, but I was twenty! Let’s thank God that I wasn’t driving a car back then.
The bike veered to the left when I wanted to make a sharp right turn. Hug the wall, you know? It was the best way to avoid pedestrians coming around the corner. Instead, I mowed one over like the dumbass I was.
“Ahh!”
I’ll never forget that scream of fright. Jess hadn’t seen me coming, and I had no idea that the blur of red and black was her until my bike clipped her arm and sent her down to the pavement.
I don’t think she knew it was me, either. I honestly could have kept going. Hit and run her ass, you know? God knew it was tempting when I had so much to do.
But I like to think I was a semi-decent person back then. Maybe not Kelsey levels of seeking justice, but if I hit someone with my bike, I stopped and checked on them.
“Holy shit!” I almost fell off my bike when I came to a sudden stop. “You okay?”
The thing I feel the worst about isn’t that I hit her – and there was blood. It was that I vaguely recognized her, but couldn’t remember her name for the life of me. I saw her long brown hair and remembered something about my underwear being in her hands.
Not the best thing to think about when you’ve hit someone with your bike.
She swore I hadn’t hurt her, though I had cut a gash in her arm. She clearly needed to go to the campus clinic and get it looked at. It was on the other side of campus. The opposite direction of where I needed to go to meet Kelsey for lunch.
“Fuck it,” I thought. I had hurt someone. I needed to take care of it, because Jess was obviously in shock if she thought it didn’t hurt.
Back then, I didn’t know why she sounded so peppy as I escorted her to the clinic. For fuck’s sake, there was blood coming out of her arm! A guy stopped to give us his handkerchief when he saw Jess’s blood. It was nice of him, but I was in such a hurry to get to the clinic that I slammed my hands on her shoulders and shoved her forward.
She laughed. Can you believe it?
Now I know why. She was in love with me. Even back then, when I barely remembered her name or that we lived in the same dorm, she was in love with me after only a few short encounters.
I wish I could say the same about her, but she was just another girl. Pretty, but forgettable. Nice, but I had met nicer. We had nothing in common. I didn’t even know we were both sophomores until much later.
I dumped her at the clinic as soon as the nurses took over. She waved at me with her good hand and profusely thanked me. My ass couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Not only because I had places to go, but because I was so embarrassed.
Later, I realized she had a scar on her arm. Not a big one, but I knew how she got it. Every time I saw that scar, I felt a new layer of guilt.
She still has the scar. I saw it at the supermarket, when she rolled up her sleeves to grab something from the depths of the freezer. I also saw her butt in those pants.
