Tags
alcoholic, basketball, confused, diary, engaged, love, rejection, relationship, sad, side, sober
I need to figure out how to change everything from “diary entry” to “memoir”…
I think I’m always the side chick. I can’t tell if I fear commitment, or if people fear committing to me. Maybe I don’t want to know. I enjoy the ambiguity. Maybe it’s the control I enjoy – holding someone’s relationship in the palm of my hand; the exact area of their hand that they refuse to hold my heart in. I’m always their number two. I’m the one whose number gets blocked when they go on dinner dates, but I am also the one who’s told to stop moaning when the girlfriend calls.
Come back into my bed, but only on Monday nights; come sit at my bar top, but only when my lady has night classes; come be at my beck and call, but only when I’m not at someone else’s beck and call! It’s all fun and games until I fall for him. Admiring the guy with the pretty blue eyes and the big dimples that has soon-to-be fiancé is easy when it’s from afar, and it’s a secret so well-kept from everyone. Once my lips touched his, everything became complicated again.
When he invited me to an NBA game a while back, I scoffed at it and told everyone what a bad idea that would be, and joked about my death-by-girlfriend. Then I went to the game anyway.
Me. Him. His fiance. My best friend. The worst night of my entire life. Seeing her beautiful smile as she laughs at his jokes, and staring so deeply into those blue eyes that I so much adore – I envy her. I envy her, so I take as many shots as my body can handle. Maybe I took more than my body could handle.
Stumbling through the aisles, I run down the stairs to use the restroom. Catching my breath at the bottom, I feel tears welling up in my entire body. I feel so weak, so I push through the crowds of people, cut the entire line in the bathroom, and try not cry as I slide the small lock on the backside of the bathroom stall door. Five or six deep, urine-stench-filled breaths and I leave the bathroom with my beautiful façade still intact.
Weaving around the cliques of Sacramento Kings fans and Los Angeles Lakers fans, I get to a small beer stand and order two coors lights – only two because they would only allow for me to purchase two. My mind is racing, and all I want to do is stop it in its tracks. Stuffing my change into my pocket and grabbing my beers, I find the section of our seats, and make my way back up the steps. As I scan the crowd above me, I lock my eyes with those beautiful blue ones, and my stomach ties into a hundred knots. Butterflies. I put my head down and try not to smile as I think back to our first kiss.
The final buzzer sounds a short forty-five minutes later, but I’m not sitting in my seat to hear it. Drunkenly trekking up the stairs with my two beers, I know I need to leave. Not out of fear of being too publicly intoxicated, but out of fear that my bathroom Lamaze-style breathing didn’t calm my nerves enough.