The Face That Launched A Thousand Hatchbacks

Day 15 - 2107 Words

2005-11-15T22:42:00.000-05:00

The next day was quite full. We were in danger of falling behind schedule, but we had built in a little extra time in anticipation of that. We left the hotel bright and early and headed down to the Farmers Market, where we got on the Nash Trash tour. We were, just like at the zoo, not the typical audience for this adventure; the Jugg Sisters, who run the tour, were clearly not expecting a crowd of twenty somethings who knew absolutely nothing about country music to take over their big pink bus for the morning. Even so, they were nice and the tour was hilarious. The best part was “Make Up Tips for the Trashy.” There were about four women in our group, one of whom was Bryce. She had obviously been on this tour time and time again. She could recite the Jugg Sisters’ whole routine. She was having a fabulous time. The other girls got a big kick out of the make up tips, while most of the guys stared in confusion. I don’t know why women wear make up anyway. It doesn’t impress men that much, from what I can tell, and it seems like a lot of work. The tour was over in just ninety minutes and we were back at the Farmers Market.

We wandered the Farmers Market for a while before setting off for the Country Music Hall of Fame, where Bryce had planned for us to take a tour that was called the Star For A Day Group Recording package. By this time I thought she was crazy – she had paid our admission for the Nash Trash tour out of pocket and she was paying for this as well. At the rate she was going, she would have spent a few thousand dollars before the day was out. I wondered if she had many friends here in Nashville. At the Hall of Fame, we toured Historic RCA Studio B and then actually recorded a song with all thirty or so of us together. The Tennessee contingent of our group had only added one carful. For a group of people with almost no singing training and no interest in country music, we sounded pretty good. I guess all of our time in garage bands when we were in high school was paying off now.

After the recording session we toured the Hall of Fame itself and the Museum. We finished out with a late lunch at the Wildhorse Saloon, where they played our recording for the whole restaurant to hear. It was a bit overwhelming. Our day of tourism was far from done, however. We went over to the Opry Mills Mall, where we found ourselves more at home than anywhere else in Nashville. After all, there were stores for gamers of both the video and tabletop sort. The mall had both an EB and a Gamestop. This was our kind of place.

Our comfort was not to last for long, though, because after dinner Bryce had arranged for us to all go to the Grand Ole Opry. I was surprised; most of us enjoyed the show. We were more of a death metal crew than a country crew, but sometimes things are entertaining independent of their genre. After the show, we all headed back to the hotel. We had to get an early start in the morning for the Kentucky Lake Resort.

We left first thing the next day. The drive to Kentucky Lake only took a couple of hours. The lake is one of the world’s largest man-made lakes. Despite my knowing it wasn’t natural, it reminded me how beautiful nature could be. Here we met up with Ash, a buff guy who defied all stereotypes of gamers. The resort area was much bigger than just one hotel; it featured forty three different types of lodging and a number of attractions. It was a laid back place, almost the opposite of Nashville in that way. Ash and Bryce got along capitally. She regaled him with tales of our Nashville adventures, taking great delight in describing our facial expressions as we experienced the city through the lens of the Nash Trash tour. He would laugh this strange laugh that seemed to start at the pit of his stomach and then force his whole body to convulse. It was obvious that there was some chemistry between the two of them. I couldn’t help but be a little jealous. Here we were, on this trip, the purpose of which was supposedly for me to win Elaine back from Alexis the pansy, and other people were making their own love connections. It felt wrong, and I was actually a little angry.

Adrian had become my constant companion on the trip. He was always supporting me, acting in a brotherly fashion, encouraging me when things went poorly and managing the growing group of guild members who were tagging along. We picked up another two cars full in Kentucky. By this point there were almost fifty of us.

Our day at Kentucky Lake was spent in a lazy fashion, playing golf and taking boats out on the lake. We split up into smaller groups, though the leaders all seemed to stick together. Ash, Bryce, Adrian, Donnelly, Owen, and myself had lunch at the Moors Restaurant on Kentucky Lake. We spent some time reviewing the itinerary for the rest of the trip.

“So we leave for St. Louis tomorrow?” Bryce asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“And then onwards to Kansas City!” Adrian exclaimed. I guess Kansas City excited him.

I had the whole itinerary written down. Owen read it out: “Omaha, Sioux Falls, Buffalo, Billings, C’ouer d’Alene?”

“Where the hell is C’ouer d’Alene?” Donnelly asked.

“Idaho,” I said.

“And... why are we going there?” Ash asked.

“We are trying to stay on major highways and take the most direct route to Seattle possible,” Adrian explained.

“Right,” Bryce said. “If we got off the beaten path we might do something crazy. Like have fun.” She was sitting very close to Ash. Very close indeed. I wondered if it was weird for her being the only girl. I know if I had been the only guy at a table with five girls I would have felt a little strange.

“We want to get to the con,” I said. “Plus, I can’t just show up the day before Elaine’s wedding and sweep her off her feet. It will be too late then.”

“No,” Ash said. “You definitely could. Just show up, wow her with your perseverance, and voila – she’s yours.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said. One of the most common topics of discussion on gamer forums is why girls don’t like us more. Every once in a while a girl will pop on and post something about how maybe if we treated women with more respect, or if we would pay attention to girl gamers instead of always going after girls with whom we have no common interests, then maybe we would get girlfriends more easily. It seemed to me that Ash probably had never felt this basic gamer dilemma. He was brawny and could definitely pass for your normal, athletic, all-American guy. It was no wonder Bryce was drawn to him. After a couple of days around losers who didn’t bathe very often or know how to speak to a girl in actual words instead of just strange vowel sounds, any woman would jump at the first man who resembled something vaguely normal.

I was beginning to resent Ash, a little. If I had been like him, Elaine probably never would have left me. I felt a little bit like Ash must have been part of the newer gamer contingent, latching on to the past time once it became popular. Even so, he revealed in his conversation that he was among the hardest of the hardcore, having played games on an Atari 2600 and being capable of singing all the various themes from every eight bit game I could name. He could go toe to toe with the best of us. It didn’t actually raise him in my esteem at all. It just made me envy him more.

After lunch we played a few rounds of mini-golf. We headed back to the hotel where Ash had booked us a large group of rooms and settled in for the night. Some of the guys had brought laptops and the hotel had free wireless access, so we played a few rounds of the game before nodding off. Bryce spent the entire night in Ash’s room. I’m not sure if anything happened between them; he did have roommates who might be less than keen on him getting some private time in with a girl with them around. Even so, I came to resent him more and more. He was far too suave to be a gamer.

We got up the next morning bright and early to start the next leg of the trip, which would take us to St. Louis, Missouri. As St. Louis was right between Missouri and Illinois, all of the guild members attending from both states were meeting the caravan there. After enjoying the hotel’s free continental breakfast, we headed out to the cars. I had been riding with Adrian, whose car was much newer than mine. We got out there, loaded our suitcases in the trunk, grabbed the other three members of the Florida contingent who were riding with us, and settled in for the three hour drive to St. Louis.

Adrian turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said as he tried again. Still nothing.

“What’s going on?” one of the guys in the back asked me.

“Car’s not starting.”

“Yeah I’d figured that much out,” he snapped.

“I can’t tell from here any better than you can from back there,” I responded.

“Guys. Calm down.” Adrian tried the key in the ignition one more time. By this point a lot of the other cars were already on the road to go. Adrian popped the hood and got out. He looked at the car. “I don’t see anything wrong,” he said.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Call a mechanic I guess?” he said.

“We don’t have time for this,” I complained.

“It doesn’t much matter, though,” he said. “So settle in. We’re so far out, this could be a long wait.”

With the help of the hotel staff and AAA, we were able to get the car towed to a local mechanic. Apparently the car was missing some crucial part. Someone had stolen it or it had fallen out in the night. When Adrian asked the mechanic how long it would take them to get the part in, the mechanic scratched his chin and took a deep breath before giving him the bad news. “About two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” I shouted. “In two weeks Elaine will be on her way down the aisle!” The mechanic looked perplexed.

“He’s trying to stop his ex’s wedding,” one of the other guys explained.

“Oh,” the mechanic nodded with a knowing look.

“It’ll be okay,” Adrian said. “My sister can be here with her van by tomorrow if she’s not busy.”

“She – tomorrow?” I asked. All of the other cars in the caravan had left. We did have a phone tree worked out, so I could call the other drivers and let them know what was going on, but they had all shot out of the parking lot early in the day.

“Let me call her,” he said. “Hey, Isabel. Look, I’m with some guys in Kentucky, and my car broke down. We really need a ride at least as far as St. Louis. Can you help us out?” He was quiet for a few seconds. “Alright. Thanks. I’ll email you directions.” He hung up. “She can leave in a couple of hours,” he told me. “That’s the best she can do. She’ll drive us up to St. Louis but we’ll have to find our own rides from there.”

“This is a disaster,” I said. “We’ll never make it to Seattle in time.”

“Dude,” one of the other guys said, “we built in, like, a whole extra week. It’ll be alright.”

I grunted. “Let’s just get a cab and get back to the hotel,” I said.

The mechanic recommended a taxi service and we headed back, though we did have to pay a pretty penny for the cab ride. We checked back in and Adrian popped his laptop open to send his sister directions.

Day 14 - 524 Words

2005-11-15T10:08:00.000-05:00

Our second day in Montgomery was spent at the zoo as Donnelly had planned. It was a nice time. All of the animals were on fields or in other natural type habitats. There were no cages. It was fun to take over the zoo with a group as large as ours, especially as we were mostly people in our twenties. The zoo employees seemed used to large groups of kids, and to large groups of retired people, but not to people our age. We road the train around the zoo and then did a walking tour as well. We spent some time in the aviary, but by far the part that was most popular with our group was the reptile house. The Montgomery Zoo boasts that it is home to some of the world’s most venomous snakes.
One of the guys in the guild, a guy named Phil, was obsessed with snakes. This was like heaven for him. He read the descriptions of every species aloud. He could spend half an hour just watching one snake sit. By lunch time we were ready to get back on the road, but Phil wanted to watch those snakes forever. As far as I could tell, he didn’t care whether or not we ever got to the convention. I wasn’t really comfortable hinting to him that we needed to get a move on. We had one guy, Owen, though, who was pretty clever.
“You like snakes, Phil?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I heard there’s a really great store in Kansas City that sells exotic snakes.”
You could see the wheels turning in Phil’s head. It was the first time he’d looked away from the snakes since we had walked into the reptile house, actually.
“Really?” Phil asked Owen.
“You bet.”
“Wow. We should go there.”
“Definitely,” Owen agreed.
“When do you think we’ll get there?” Phil asked.
“Well, Kansas City is scheduled for day five, but with the amount of time we’re spending here it could be longer.”
“What are we waiting for?” Phil said. “Let’s get out of here!” I guess he thought the prospect of actually owning an exotic snake was more interesting than just staring at them.
Now that Phil was ready to get moving, we could hit the road once more. Our next stop was Nashville, where one of the two female leaders, a woman named Bryce, had planned for us to experience both ends of the cultural spectrum in one day.
It took us about six hours to get to Nashville, stops included. We met Bryce and her Tennessee crew at the Opryland Hotel, where she had snagged a group rate for the out of town types in the group to stay. After what was becoming a fairly standard meet and greet type of deal, we pretty much took over the hotel’s Cyber Cafe. A lot of the guild members hadn’t been able to join us on the road trip, and we’d promised them a play by play of the whole thing. Some of us had to censor ourselves to keep from complaining about Phil’s snake obsession and the delay it caused us.

Day 12 - 2023 Words

2005-11-12T23:28:00.000-05:00

I took a few deep breaths and then called Cassie.

“Hey, slugger,” she said as she picked up. “Hope you’re life has been improving.”

“Actually not,” I told her.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“So Elaine just called me,” I began.

“Right, I read about that on the boards. What did she want to talk about?”

“She’s getting married.”

“To that... that guy, from Europe?”

“Yeah.”

“The one who isn’t really from Europe?”

“That’s the one.”

“The guy from Michigan or Montana or whatever?”

“Yes, Cassie. You have figured it out. What do you want, a prize?”

“I’m... I’m sorry, I’m just surprised.”

“You’re surprised? Think how I feel.”

“Oh, Miles... I’m sorry.”

“She asked me to go to her wedding.”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes.”

“When is it?”

“July, around the same time as the con.”

“Oh my god. So you can’t go to the con now?”

“No, the wedding is in Seattle, so I could.”

“So now you have to come!” Cassie sounded a bit too gleeful.

“You understand how much my life sucks?”

“I know, I’m sorry. I just really want you to come to the con.”

“I appreciate it. But I might cancel on her.”

“I understand.” I could hear her sigh.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t think I’m the right person to ask for advice on this.” That was the first time Cassie had ever suggested she didn’t know exactly what to do. If she didn’t know what to do, how was I supposed to know what to do?

“Maybe I’ll ask the guys.”

“Yeah, they might have ideas.”

“I think I’ll go do that now.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Miles?”

“Yeah, Cassie?”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. I know I’m far away, I don’t have a lot to offer. Items in game or something, whatever, let me know. I’ll do it.”

“Thank you, Cassie. It means a lot.”

“No problem whatsoever.”

“Alright, bye.”

“Bye.”

I got online and posted at the boards. I summed up my situation: my ex was getting married, she had invited me to her wedding, it was in Seattle around the same time as the con. What should I do?

Again, there were a variety of responses, but only one in particular really held my interest. A forum member going by the username Rigas posted this:

“Why don’t you make it a road trip? There are tons of guys between Tallahassee and Seattle planning to go to the con. Meet up with them and we’ll all come with you up to Seattle for the con, and then we can go kick your ex’s fiance’s ass.”

I told myself this was ridiculous. I’d never met anyone from online before, and a road trip was absolute madness. Plus, I didn’t actually want to go to Elaine’s wedding.

That night I lay awake in bed thinking. What was it that upset me so much about Elaine getting married to this guy? Aside from the obvious, which was just that she was my ex and it was weird. I spent a lot of the night thinking about how life had been with Elaine. Even in the worst of times it was better than all the time I had spent without her. When I was with Elaine, I suddenly became calmer. I wasn’t so socially awkward. I could speak in complete sentences, entirely without stuttering. With Elaine, I was the man I wanted to be. How else could I get that back except by being with her again?

And that was what upset me about her getting married. Until this point, I had convinced myself that she was going through a phase. She would get over this Europe thing, realize her mistake, and come back to me. We were meant to be. We were the perfect couple; all our friends had said so.

If Elaine got married, that was it. I could not in good conscience try to split up a marriage. On top of that, marriage was serious business. Hoping she would realize the error of her ways and come back to me was not something I could reasonably do after she had the ring on and the paper in hand. No, if I was going to get Elaine back, it had to be before she took that vow.

So I made my decision. Not only would I go to Seattle, but I would get there two weeks before Elaine’s wedding. The con was one week before her wedding. I would track her down. I would find her, and I would see this Alexis guy for myself. I would prove to her that he was not the man for her. If necessary, I would indeed bring my posse and have them help me kick his ass. Epic battle very well might ensue. Whatever it took, I had to get Elaine back. It was the only way for me to be who I was meant to be.

I made this realization at about four in the morning. Naturally, I got online right away and made a post. I replied to Rigas’s suggestion:

“Alright, guys (and what few girls there are here – hi DarkProphetess!). I have made my decision: I have to stop this wedding. I can’t just sit idly by as the woman of my dreams marries another man. I will get her back, by force if necessary. So, let’s start organizing this thing. I’m planning a road trip from Tallahasse, FL to Seattle, WA. Who’s with me?”

After that I finally fell asleep.

When I woke up late the next morning, I had ten responses. Rigas had suggested that we have one meetup location in each state through which the road trip was passing. Each state could have a coordinator. He had done the research and made a list of the states. He then asked for volunteers to coordinate each state’s meetup. The coordinator could pick where was the best place in the state to meet and then those of us who had already started would meet there.
The next eight responses were people volunteering to be state coordinators. Six of them were men and two were women. The last response was from a volunteer who not only suggested that we have meetups, but that each meetup should be at a tourist location. This way, he said, everyone could get not just a trip to the con but could see a bit of local culture and have something like a vacation in addition to con attendance, as well.

After some more discussion and organization, we had arranged a trip with ten stops between Tallahassee and Seattle. These were:

Montgomery, Alabama
Nashville, Tennessee
Gilbertsville, Kentucky
St. Louis, Missouri
Omaha, Nebraska
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Buffalo, Wyoming
Billings, Montana
and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

Each location had a leader, and the caravan would stop in each location for one full day. It turned out that Rigas, whose real name was Adrian, was in Jacksonville, Florida, so he would help me organize the start of the expedition. The Florida contingent would meet at the Old Capitol building in Tallahassee on the third of July. We would then travel for ten days, arriving in Seattle on the fourteenth. Elaine’s wedding was scheduled for the thirtieth. That would give us just over two weeks to attend the con, which started on the fifteenth, and also stop Elaine’s wedding.

Cassie had volunteered to show the whole crew, which would amount to about a hundred people, all around Seattle and the surrounding area. For some reason, she was not inclined to participate in the “Stop Elaine’s wedding” part of the plan. I thought that was weird, but just chalked it up to her not being interested in kicking the ass of some guy she had never met. It seemed like the guys in the guild were empathized much more in this circumstance. Even so, I was excited to get to meet Cassie and the others, but Cassie most especially. It seemed odd to have been best friends with someone for four years without ever having met her.

I was excited to start this adventure. I had never done something quite this wild before, my trip to Europe notwithstanding. I felt good about it. I was going to meet a lot of friends I’d never really met before. I was going to travel through thirteen states not including my own. If nothing else, by the end of the experience I would have quite a story to tell. With luck, though, I would also have Elaine back in my arms and an army of new friends.

On the second of July, I had everything prepared. I went through my supplies for any last minute changes. I had all the clothes I would ever need, including my “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now” shirt. I had a toothbrush, a large supply of CDs with video game remixes on them, and a few books in case I could finagle someone else into driving for a while. I also had my laptop and my Gameboy.

On the morning of the third of July, I left my apartment, in which many of Elaine’s possessions remained, and drove to the Old Capitol building. Everyone on the road trip had purchased buttons that said “Carpe DM” so we would all be able to find each other. Yes, we were probably the largest crowd of dorks ever to arrange a cross country road trip.

I met up with Adrian/Rigas a bit before everyone else was supposed to get there. He was a little taller and brawnier than I was, and a little older. He could have been my brother. We even looked a little alike. I liked him from the start.

“Adrian?” I asked. I think it might have been the first time in my life I approached anyone and introduced myself without them speaking to me first.

“That’s me,” he said. “You must be Miles.”

“I am indeed. How was your trip?”

“Not bad. A bit of traffic on I-10. You know – the usual holiday traffic.”

“Yeah.” I actually didn’t know. I’d never travelled between Jacksonville and Tallahassee.

“So, are you excited about the trip?” he asked.

“I really am.”

“We’re gonna get your girl back, man!” He punched me on the shoulder. I think he intended to punch me lightly, but he was just bigger enough than I was that it jarred me a little.

“That’s the plan,” I agreed.

“We’ll do it. You’ll see.”

“I hope you’re right.” Around eleven in the morning the other guys started showing up. We toured the museum, had lunch at a nearby sub shop, and set off around one. There were fifteen of us. Three cars full. If we had this kind of turnout everywhere we went, this was going to be an incredible road trip.

We drove for about five hours before we arrived in Montgomery. The leader of the Alabama contingent, a guy named Donnelly who went by the username DieMe, had selected the Hank Williams Museum as our meeting place. I thought it an odd choice, but then, I wasn’t in charge of every item on the road trip agenda. Donnelly had actually called ahead and made reservations for us to have a group tour of the museum. The tour was a little morbid, as it heavily featured the 1952 Cadillac in which Hank Williams rode the day he died. We also spent some time in the Oakwood Cemetery where he was buried and admiring a statue of him in downtown Montgomery.

Donnelly had fortunately planned a somewhat more traditional tourist experience for us as well, involving the Montgomery Zoo, but as it closed at five o’clock in the afternoon we had to wait until the fourth to experience it. In Montgomery we had picked up another two cars’ worth of people. Donnelly was a crazy enough man to invite twenty five strangers over to his house. It was very generous of him, but I couldn’t help but think he was one truly weird guy.

Day 9 - 2017 Words

2005-11-09T23:00:00.000-05:00

Once I was home, all I could do was sleep for about three days. I didn’t go to class. I didn’t leave the house at all, actually. I just stayed in bed. On the third day, the phone rang.

“Hello,” I mumbled.

“What is up my beeznatch?” a voice came blaring out.

“Cassie, I... I’m really not up to chatting right now,” I answered.

“Miles, you disappeared off the face of the earth for two weeks. What do you want me to do, leave you alone?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Too bad. What’s going on? Seriously.”

“You know the trip I planned for spring break?”

“Yeah, the one where you went to Europe and took Elaine on a whirlwind tour and then came home with one less ring in your pocket?”

“That’s the one.” I sighed.

“How’d it go?”

“It was hell,” I told her. “I was going to propose in front of Chartres, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So there I was, ready to pull the ring out, and she dumped me.”

“She did what?”

“Dumped. Me. For someone else.”

“A French guy?”

“No! An American. From Milwaukee or somewhere.”

“How did she meet him?”

“I don’t know, during her research?”

“Miles, I am so sorry. She waited until your last day there, right?”

“No,” I said. “I hadn’t been off the plane ten hours before she dumped me.”

“She is a devil woman. Or, um, she is your one true love and she will come to her senses. Whichever one you want me to say.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Did she at least throw you a sympathy bone?”

“Cassie! I can’t believe you just asked me that!”

“You’re a guy, right? Isn’t that all that really matters?” I could hear her stifling a giggle.

“Cassie, are you trying to make me feel better?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not working.”

“Look, Miles, I’m sorry. If I were there I would paint your toenails and bake brownies with you, and we could watch ‘First Wives Club’ and plot your revenge. Or your reunion, depending on if you want to be Goldie Hawn or Bette Midler. I get to be Diane Keaton.”

“Somehow I doubt any of that would make me feel better either.”

“I don’t know what to do for you, man. I have no comfort. You’ve got to help me out and let me know what you want, at least. Do you want me to insult her? Praise her? Help you overanalyze why she did it?”

“I want you to leave me the hell alone, Cassandra,” I spat into the phone.

“Done,” she said, and hung up.

I went back to bed.

After another two days of moping, in which I did manage to drag myself to class, I decided I was ready to deal with other people again. I also decided I had been a total jerk to Cassie, who had been there for me for almost four years now, and who deserved to be treated much better than that.

So I called her.

“Hello?” It was actually comforting to hear her voice.

“Hey, Cassie. It’s Miles.”

“Caller ID, goofball. I knew it was you.”

“I always forget that. Anyway, I wanted to apologize. I was really rude to you the other day, and you were just trying to help.”

“Not a problem. I understand. Life sucks.”

“It sure does.”

“Miles, you’ve not been online recently. Isn’t your character languishing?”

“Cassie, I topped out at level 60 ages ago.”

“Details, details. Did you hear about the con?”

“Con?”

“Oh my god, you didn’t hear about it?”

“Um... no?”

“Well, you know how [Game Studio] is located here in Seattle, right?” Cassie was a student at the University of Washington.

“Yeah.”

“They’re hosting a con, to show new games and to provide players of their current games with an opportunity to meet up.”

“Cool,” I said. I didn’t really feel up to a trip to Seattle. After all, we’d seen how successful my trip to Europe had been.

“You should come.”

“I don’t think I can afford to.”

“Please. You can carpool. You can stay with me. Whatever. You’re just looking for excuses to be unhappy, now.”

“Cassie I’m not up for travel right now.”

“It’s not until July!”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Mmhmm.” Cassie was obviously feeling triumphant.

“No promises.”

“Whatever. You know you can’t resist my charm.”

Was Cassie – nah. She would never flirt with me. We were friends.

“All the guys from our guild are going to come,” Cassie said. She really was the only girl in the whole guild. “You have to.”

“Maybe so.”

“That means no. You hate me.”

I was getting exasperated with this. “I don’t know. I said I would think about it.”

“That means yes!”

“Cassie...”

“I know, I know. I will leave you be. But be warned... if you don’t come to the con, destruction will rain down upon you, and your lastborn child will burn the city to the ground!”

“You are so full of it!”

“Yes, yes, I am.”

“I have to go. I have to catch up on all the work I haven’t done for the past week because I’ve been too miserable to get out of bed.”

“See? It would do you good to get out here to the Pacific Northwest. Get what’s her name off your mind.”

“Elaine.”

“I know her name. I was trying to be funny.”

“Oh.”

“Go, go. You have to go. I’ll talk to you later, Miles.”

“Later.”

After I got off the phone with Cassie I did not, in fact, do any work. Instead, I went to the gaming forums online and read up on this con about which she had told me. It was happening in Seattle, like she said, at the end of the second week of July. I checked airfare to Seattle. After my grand European tour, there was no way I could afford to go. Still, it would be cool to meet the guys and to meet Cassie. Maybe I could find a way. Maybe if I got a job, and found a last minute airfare sale. I would think about it, just like I had said I would.

The game community had been heavily involved in advising me throughout my relationship with Elaine. They’d helped me get up the guts to ask her out in the first place; they had encouraged me to move in with her. They comforted me when she decided to go to Europe and supported me when I decided to propose to her. It only seemed right that I should go to them now, when I was feeling my lowest.

That night I wrote a lengthy post to the forums detailing what had happened when I went over to Europe. I received a range of responses, all some variation on one of the things Cassie had said. A lot of the guys declared it her loss; some told me they’d help me get her back. Others offered to go find this Alexis guy and take him down. The camaraderie I felt from this greatly improved my mood, and pushed me a long way towards deciding to go to the con.

The week before I graduated, I got an email from Elaine. She asked if she could call me. She really wanted to stay close friends, and there were a lot of things she wanted to tell me. Would I let her know when was a good time for her to call?

As always, I went to the forum for advice, and as always, I got a variety of responses. Some people said I should ignore her. Others told me to let her call; maybe she was feeling me out about getting back together. Still others advised me to tread carefully. In the end, I decided that any contact with her, even if it wan’t romantic, was better than no contact with her, so I told her she could call me Thursday night after my last exam.

As soon as my exam was over Thursday I went home and sat by the phone. I tried to do other things while I waited for it to ring. There was a book I’d been reading. I couldn’t pay attention to it. I played solitaire on my computer. I couldn’t even focus on that. I just kept waiting.

When the phone rang, I jumped about a foot in the air. “Hello?” I said, my voice shaking.

“Hi, Miles. It’s Elaine! How are you?”

“I’m great,” I lied. “Just finished my last exam of my college career. Freeeeeeeeeee!!!” I could hear Elaine laughing. God, I loved that sound. It was possibly my favorite sound in the world. Well, second favorite.

“That’s great.”

“How are you?” I asked. Please say you’re miserable, I thought.

“Oh, I’m doing really well.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, things are going well for me.”

“That’s nice,” I said. Please don’t tell me the details, I silently prayed.

“I actually got a fellowship for graduate school,” she told me.

“Wow. Congratulations. I know how much you wanted to go to graduate school.” I was proud of myself. I was holding this conversation in an extremely civil manner. I had not cursed or cried or vomited on the phone. This conversation was definitely a success, kind of.

“Yeah, it’s to the University of Washington, in Seattle.”

“Excellent. I have a friend who goes there. Or I guess is about to graduate from there.”

“Cassie, right?”

“Yeah. Cassie.”

“So, yeah. That’s what I’m going to be doing, for the next few years.”

“Neat.” I was beginning to feel less good about this conversation. The whole thing was very awkward, really. Before I could stop myself I asked, “So how are things with... what’s his name again?” I remembered his name. Alexis. I hated that guy. I hated him with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, and various other cliches.

“Oh, wow,” she said, sounding suddenly gleeful. “Things are great. We’re really well suited to each other, you know? He’s so... mature. I feel like we’re really equals.” This is what you get for agreeing to be friends, I told myself. You get to hear all of your flaws. Clearly you weren’t mature enough for her.

“Right. What does he do? I’ve forgotten.”

“He’s a philosopher.” Yup. A real breadwinner she had there. Guaranteed to provide equally in the relationship. The medievalist and the philosopher. At least I knew they were guaranteed to be poor all their lives.

“Riiiiiiight.”

“Actually, he – “ she giggled. “He proposed to me yesterday.”

It took all the strength in the world for me not to vomit and then hang up, in that order. “He – he did?”

“Yes, it was the most amazing thing. We went to Chartres, and he proposed to me in front of the main facade. I said yes right away, of course.” That was too much. I couldn’t stand it. I could not take this anymore. I had to get off of the phone.

“Elaine, I have a lot of work to do. Can we talk another time?”

“Yeah, Miles, but I just wanted to call to tell you that I really want you to come to the wedding. It’s in July, in Seattle, because I have to start my schoolwork there in just a few weeks.”

July. Seattle. Hm.

“Won’t you please come?” she asked.

Did she not know what she was asking me to do? She had stuck a sword through my heart and then twisted it around, then pulled it back out, then pierced me again, and then laughed as I bled to death. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

“Of... of course,” I found myself saying. I was an insane man.

“Oh, I’m so glad. It really means a lot to me to have you there.”

“It... will... mean... a lot... to me... to be there,” I managed to force out. “But I really have to go now, Elaine.”

“All right. Goodbye, Miles! I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah, okay.” I slammed the phone down. My heart was pounding at a rate of a million miles an hour.

Day 8 - 1675 Words

2005-11-08T21:56:00.000-05:00

[Warning: Things get a little steamy! Not really, though. Actually not at all, much to our main character's dismay.]

Elaine took me to the hotel, where I did indeed shower and change clothes while she read a book. Things were going far from my original plan, but I told myself that this always happened. I always had a world of imagination wherein I was the hero of a story and dramatic things happened exactly the way I wanted them to. This was no different than usual, so I shouldn’t be discouraged. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to hop into the shower with someone who had just gotten off a transatlantic flight, and really – I couldn’t expect Elaine to read my mind. If I’d wanted her to shower with me, I should have just said so.

When I was cleaned up Elaine asked, “Where to?”

“I’m actually really tired,” I said. “I could use a nap.” You would think with thirteen hours on an airplane I would have had time to sleep, but you would be wrong.

“Sure,” she said, and went back to her book.

After I woke up, I asked Elaine what time it was. “Middle of the afternoon,” she said.

“Do you want to go to Chartres?” I asked.

“I’d love to take you to Chartres,” she said. So off we went. Elaine’s research fellowship included a six-month lease on a car, which made travel so easy. It was nice not to have to worry about catching trains on time. After we parked and started walking toward the cathedral, I caught Elaine’s left hand in my right. I reached into my pocket and checked for the ring box. I had snuck it there as I was changing, when Elaine wasn’t looking.

“Miles,” Elaine began, “we need to talk.”

I stopped walking.

“We what?” I felt my heart clench in my chest. I tried to tell myself to breathe, but my lungs weren’t listening. I felt as though I were going to pass out.

“Let’s keep walking,” she said. She squeezed my hand. It’s okay, I told myself. Everything is going to be fine. “Miles, I love you very much – “

“I love you, too,” I said.

“ – but... God, this is so hard to say.” Spit it out already, I thought. “Miles, I’ve...”

“You’ve...?”

“I’ve met someone else, here in Paris.” Sure, she had met a lot of people. She didn’t mean what I thought she meant. No way. It was impossible.

“Really?” I swallowed. I swore I could feel a goiter the size of a cantaloupe in my throat.

“I... I love you, Miles, but I’m not in love with you. Not anymore.”

“Well, you know, after you’re with a person for a while, infatuation fades –“ I said, grasping at straws.

“Miles, I’m not coming back to Tallahassee.” At that moment, the world ended. The sky fell; a meteor landed on me. At the same time, the ground opened up and swallowed me into the bowels of the earth.

Or at least, that’s what I thought would happen. Instead, other people kept walking by us, ignoring us or glancing at the crazy American tourists. “You – what? Why?”

“Miles. I met a man here, in Paris, while I was doing my research. I didn’t want to fall in love with him, I tried not to, but you just can’t control your feelings. I am really sorry.”

“You couldn’t have told me this before I spent thousands of dollars to fly out here, booked the finest hotels in France, and bought you a ring that cost more than all the cars I’ve ever had put together?” I shouted.

Actually, that’s not what happened. Instead, I blinked, and said, “Oh.”

“His name is Alexis,” she told me. “He’s not French, actually. He’s from Montana.”

There were people in Montana? Attractive male people who went around stealing poor Floridians’ women away from them? I had thought Montana was a wasteland.

“I... see,” I said. I flipped the ring box open in my left pants pocket and snapped it shut. “Well, do you want me to – I mean, I guess I’ll change my flight – it will probably be a day before I can leave.”

“No, Miles,” Elaine said. “You don’t understand. I don’t want you to leave. I’m so happy to see you.”

I was so confused.

“I really have missed you,” she told me. “You’re my best friend in the world, and I don’t want to lose that.”

“I...” I had to clamp my mouth shut, or I would have thrown up on her.

“I want to go on the tour of Europe with you, the one you planned. I think we’ll have fun.”

I gulped. “Yeah. Fun,” I sighed.

“Please, Miles. I really care about you.” I found this very hard to believe. She obviously didn’t care about my financial wellbeing, at the very least.

“Oh... okay,” I agreed. I’d spent all that money, and I wasn’t going to get it back. I might as well get what I could out of the experience. Besides, after a week traveling Europe with me, maybe Elaine would realize how wrong she was and declare her undying love for me and leave that Alexis shmuck behind. “Can we, though, um, go back to the hotel?” I asked. “I really need to sit down.”

“Sure,” Elaine said. “Anything you want.”

What I want is you, I thought.

The week that was supposed to be heaven turned out to be a very placid hell. We spent every night in some ritzy hotel or another. I always let Elaine have the bed, and I slept on the couch. I wouldn’t tell her, but I was very resentful. If I had known we wouldn’t be sharing a bed I would have booked hostels. Hell, if I’d known we wouldn’t be sharing a bed I probably wouldn’t have come to Europe at all.

There were times during the week when I could pretend things weren’t any different than before Elaine left. She would put her arm through mine, and we would walk through plazas or marketplaces filled with people hawking their wares in languages I didn’t understand, and I would pretend everything was fine. The weather was gorgeous the whole time we were there. I decided it had done this just to spite me. We ate at the finest restaurants. We drank the most exquisite wines. Everything was perfect except for the fact that everything was wrong. I tried all week to balance my desire to get Elaine back with my understanding that if I pushed her too far, all was lost.

At the end of the week, nothing had changed. Elaine was still with Alexis, whoever that might be. I began to think she had invented him just to get away with me. Telling me she didn’t want me anymore wouldn’t be good enough, she had decided; she needed to have someone else to blame. The drive to the airport was silent. When we got to the terminal, Elaine got out and helped me with my bags. Then she hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to grab her and kiss her or punch her so hard she fell over. It didn’t matter much. I did neither.
What I did do was look into her eyes and whisper, very quietly, “Why?”

“It’s not you,” she said. She seemed to be all about cliches recently. “It’s me.”

“But why?” I asked again.

“I’ve changed since I’ve been here, Miles. You couldn’t expect me to go away for six months, to France no less, and come back exactly the same.” Actually, I could, I thought. That was kind of one of the conditions of me letting you go in the first place, I wanted to say. Then I realized she would have gone no matter what I said. Letting her go without a fight was just delaying the inevitable. Elaine had to choose between Paris and me, and Paris had won. “You’re a sweetheart, Miles. You are wonderful and I spent the happiest three and a half years of my life with you. But I am not that person anymore. Alexis knows me as I am now, and he loves me, as I am now. Not a memory he’s held in his mind for four months, but me.”

Whose fault is that? I refrained from shouting. I didn’t tell you to go away! But I did. I had. I told her I wanted her to go. I encouraged her. Because I wanted her to be happy. Well, here she stood before me – and she seemed pretty happy. Pitying me, but happy, in general. Hadn’t I got what I wanted? I looked away, then down at my watch. “I have to go or I’ll miss my flight,” I said.

“Miles, I want... I want to be friends. With you. Please?”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, and then turned to go to my gate. I steeled my will. I did not look back. I wanted to beg her, but I would not do it.

I didn’t sleep at all on the flight home. I hadn’t really slept all week. I mostly had just laid on the couch of each hotel suite, wondering what I could have done differently. Thinking there must be something. I had done something wrong, and if I could find a way to fix it, Elaine would come back to me. On the flight, I kept replaying the whole week in my head, looking for signs Elaine was changing her mind. She had held my hand. She kissed me on the cheek. She hugged me. She wouldn’t have done those things if she wanted nothing to do with me.

But she wants to be friends, I told myself. That’s why she did all those things. She wouldn’t share a bed with you.

I offered her the bed. I didn’t bother asking if I could join her.

She went into the bathroom to change clothes. Every single day.

This is the dialogue I had with myself on the flight from Paris back to Tallahassee.

Day 7 - 477 Words

2005-11-08T08:45:00.000-05:00

My plane left the Friday before Spring Break. Just like Elaine had done, I flew into Charles de Gaulle International Airport direct from Tallahassee Regional. Again, because of security measures, Elaine couldn’t meet me at my gate. She had to wait for me to deal with my baggage and go through customs and such. When I was finally through with all the hoopla an international flight requires, I started looking for her.

“Miles!” I heard her shout. My eyes scanned the crowd. Where was she? “Miles, over here!” And then I saw her. She had lost weight, a thing I would have told you was impossible before she left, she was so slender. More than that, though, she had cut her hair. What had been a waist-length cascade of dirty blonde hair was now a bob that just brushed her chin. I was shocked. I hadn’t seen her in almost four months. Now she stood before me, completely changed. I didn’t care. She was still Elaine and more than anything else I wanted to take her straight to the fancy hotel I had booked and not come out for the rest of the week. I knew that was entirely impractical, though, so instead I ran over to her and hugged her. When I tried to kiss her she pulled away a little and just kissed me on the cheek.

“You look... Amazing,” I told her.

“Thank you. It’s good to see you,” she said. That’s oddly formal, I thought. She won’t kiss me and now she talks like we don’t know each other. What is going on? I decided she was just being strange because we were in public. Once I got her back to the hotel, she would be as affectionate as ever. After all, it was bound to be awkward, seeing me after four months apart. Still, an inner voice nagged, shouldn’t she be as happy to see you as you are to see her? The voice sounded like Cassandra. “You probably want to shower after that flight, don’t you?” Elaine asked.

“Yes, a shower sounds very good,” I said, hoping she would catch my suggestive tone.

“Well, let’s get you to the hotel. You can get cleaned up and then we can start your whirlwind tour.”

She hadn’t seemed to pick up on it at all. “Great,” I agreed. This reunion was not at all going how I had imagined it would. In my imagination, I got off the plane and Elaine flung herself into my arms. She covered me with kisses, so much so that I had to pull her off of me just to be able to walk. I carried her across the threshold of the hotel suite I’d reserved, and we spent a week sitting in a whirlpool jacuzzi and eating breakfast in bed.

Definitely not how things were actually going.

Day 6 - 1381 Words

2005-11-06T21:57:00.000-05:00

“Cassie,” I said, “Elaine is going to Europe for the spring.”

“That’s great!” she responded.

“No, it’s not.”

“Why not?”

“She’s going to be away for six months. SIX MONTHS.”

“Ooh. I hadn’t thought of that. And in Europe. Where they have Europeans.”

“God, I’m so scared.”

“Miles, why don’t you call me? Or I can call you?”

I called her. “Hey,” she answered after two rings. “You’re going to be fine, Miles.”

“Cassie, I don’t know how I can live without her.”

“Miles she’s not going away forever. It’s six months. You lived without her for eighteen years, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then surely you can stand six months more without her.”

“Cassie, have you ever been in love? Like, really, crazy, couldn’t think about anything else in love?”

“No, I... I guess not.”

“Then you can’t possibly understand how I’m feeling.”

“Oh.” She didn’t say anything for almost a whole minute. “I’m... sorry you think that,” she said, almost whispering.

“I... Cassie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to – surely you’ve been in love before?”

“In high school, like, my freshman year.”

“And when it ended?”

“We never actually, um, dated. He was gay.”

“Oh.” Now it was my turn to be silent.

“Nobody ever really liked me,” she said. “I mean, I had friends or whatever, but no guys ever really... liked me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I told her. “Cassie you are clever and sweet. There must have been someone who liked you. He was probably just too scared to say anything.”

“Are you saying I’m intimidating?” Cassie took on a playful tone. I guess the conversation had gotten too serious for her. She never seemed comfortable with serious discussions for too long.

“I’m not... Why can’t you ever be serious?”

“I’m serious! I want to know why you think someone would like me but not do anything about it.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “If it were me, I would do something about it.”

“Please,” she said. “It took you two months to get up the nerve to ask Elaine out for a study date.”

“But I did it,” I said.

“Would you have done it without my help?” she asked.

“Probably not.”

“See? That’s the kind of girl I am. One of the guys. I’m the girl who understands. I’m not the girl you take on dates. I’m the girl you ask for help getting dates. I’m the girl you invite to your LAN party. I’m the girl you call if you want advice on your audio equipment. I’m not the girl you kiss. I’m not the girl you think about night and day. I sit in the corner and I make wisecracks and then I disappear into the shadows.”

“That is not so,” I told her.

“You don’t even know me, Miles. I’m a disembodied voice to you, or a bunch of binary code.”
“Cassie, you are my best friend. I kid you not.”

“Thanks.” She breathed a heavy sigh. “How is it that you call me for comfort, and then end up working so hard to comfort me?”

“I like you,” I said. “I want you to be happy.”

“Well, everyone should have a dream,” she said. “Back to you, though. Do you want Elaine to go to Europe?”

“No.”

“So why don’t you tell her that?”

“She seems so excited about it. I don’t want to make her unhappy.”

“She’ll be unhappy when she finds out you lied to her.”

“No, it’s going to be okay. We’ll talk and I’ll go visit her and it will all be fine.”

“You’re going to go visit her? Can you afford to do that? Isn’t a trip to Europe wicked expensive?”

“Yeah, but I’ve got some savings.”

“Aha. Well, I wish you the best, sir. But I’m telling you – the best thing you could possibly do would be to tell her how you feel. Maybe qualify it by saying you don’t want her to base her decision upon it, but if you pretend you’re all hunky-dory about this thing, you’ll regret it later.”

“Thanks for the advice, O Great Sage.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“I know.”

“You’re not going to be honest with her at all, are you?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Well, then I can be of no further assistance to you in this matter.”

“I wasn’t looking for advice. Just reassurance.”

“Did you get it?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Great. Well as late as it is here I know it is what, like, four in the morning there?”

“It surely is.”

“Why are you talking to me? Go to bed!”

“Night, Cassie.”

“Bye, Miles.”

Elaine’s parents came down to Tallahassee for her graduation, and then we went with them to their house in South Dakota for the holidays. It was a nice time with her family. They wanted to spend a lot of time with her before she left for Europe, which was understandable. I wondered if they had any of the same fears I did about her traveling. They probably did. The one fear I expect they didn’t have, though, was that they would dump her for some swarthy European family.

Elaine flew out of Tallahassee Regional Airport on January 2nd. I saw her off at the entrance to the terminal, but due to security I wasn’t able to go any further than Ground Transport. Early in the morning on the third she called me. “I’m here,” she said. “Paris is amazing.”

“Great.” I was barely awake.

“How are classes?”

“They don’t start for another week, remember?”

“Oh, right. I forgot.”

“Elaine, I’m really sorry, but I’m half asleep. Can we talk later?”

“Of course, sweetie. I’ll call you tomorrow when it’s daytime there.”

“Thanks, babe.”

“Love you. Bye.”

“You too.”

For the first month, we emailed each other about three times a day and we talked on the phone once a week. All of a sudden I spent a lot more time talking to Cassie. I was really lonely, and for some reason spending time with my friends from school didn’t seem to help much. Cassie made it a bit easier. She would always lend me perspective when I was feeling sorry for myself. “It could be worse,” she’d say. “It could be raining.”

“That wouldn’t be much worse,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Someone could decapitate you.”

“That would kind of suck,” I’d admit.

In the second month, the emails from Elaine cut back to twice a day, and she only called me every couple of weeks. When I told her I missed her, she’d say, “I miss you too, hon. I’ve just been really busy.” She always sounded incredibly happy, though, and I couldn’t fault her for that. She was doing exactly what she wanted to be doing. I think I might have been a little jealous; I would have liked to be out in the world working. I was sick of school.

By month three, Elaine emailed me once a day and usually didn’t say much of substance. She only called me twice in the whole month, and when I called her I usually couldn’t get through. Every once in a while she would send me a long email about all of the wonderful things she’d been studying. Spring break was in April, so in March I planned my trip to visit her. I told her I was going to surprise her with an amazing European tour. We would stay in all the best hotels, visit the most amazing places in the world, experience the height of European culture. “Sounds fun,” was her response. I felt a bit discouraged.

As part of the preparations for my trip to Europe, I went to a unique jewelry gallery, one I knew Elaine especially loved. They always had pieces like nowhere else. I looked at their selection of rings and finally selected for Elaine a white gold claddagh with an emerald heart and diamond crown. I began to formulate a plan for proposing to her. Part of the tour I had scheduled was a trip to Chartres. I was sure she would have visited it already; it would have been impossible for her to do her work without doing so. Even so, I thought in front of the cathedral’s main facade would be the perfect place to propose.

Day 5 - 1342 Words

2005-11-06T20:42:00.000-05:00

The next time I talked to Cassie she seemed much happier. She was back to her normal self, teasing me about my complete lack of knowledge about how to behave with women, while at the same time reassuring me that I was going to be fine. It was really great to have a friend like her. I was sure I’d have a chance to meet her sometime, and I knew we would have a lot of fun.

The next week Elaine and I made another date, only this time I picked where we went. I took her to a really fancy place and the theatre. She seemed suitably impressed. I started calling her my girlfriend after our third or fourth date. We had a lot of fun, but we were a normal couple. We had fights over stupid things like the amount of time I spent online or the fact that she never wanted to go with me to anime club events. That was where I was making most of my new friends, and she didn’t seem interested. Even so, most of the time we spent together was incredible. By our senior year, we had decided to get an off-campus apartment together. We’d also discussed our plans for after graduation.

Elaine had come in with a lot of credits from taking advanced courses in high school. She also had taken a heavy courseload our first three years. She was going to graduate in December and then work in town or at the university while I finished my degree in the spring semester. After that, I would find a job and we would go together whereever that job might be. As long as there was a university, Elaine could find work, and if she couldn’t do that, she thought she’d be able to teach high school. Even if the state wouldn’t take her, private schools might.

The fall semester went really well; it took us some time to adjust to living with each other, but once we had, it was nice. I loved knowing that I would see her every day, and that even if I didn’t get to see her during the day, by the end of the night we would both be at home together. Even though we had been together almost three years, I was still in awe of her and still regularly wondered how a loser like me could end up with a goddess. She was human, I guess, but anything about her that bothered me seemed to melt away in those times when things were really good.

A week before her graduation, Elaine called my cell phone while I was on campus. “Did you have plans for tonight?” she asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Good,” she said, “because we’re going out to dinner. Meet me at [Restaurant Name] at seven.”
“Okay.” I wondered if there was some significance to the fact that she’d chosen the place where we went for our first date. Then I got scared. Had she said “We need to talk”? No, she didn’t. It was okay. Things were fine. Right? Of course right. This was a celebratory dinner, surely.
After class and hitting the library to study for exams, I went to the restaurant. Elaine was already inside waiting for me. She had an opened envelope in her hands.

“What’s going on?” I asked her.

“I have great news.”

“What’s that?”

“Do you remember that research fellowship I applied for in September?”

“No.”

“Yes, you do! It was for studying medieval architecture in Paris.”

“No.” I really had no idea what she was talking about.

“You do too!” I was bewildered.

“Oh, that one.” I still had no clue what she meant but could see I wasn’t going to get anywhere by insisting she’d never told me about this.

“Well, I got it!” She grinned. “Isn’t that great?”

“You got what, now?”

“The fellowship. I’m going to Paris for the spring semester. It’ll look great on my grad school applications.”

“You’re applying to grad school?”

“Honey, we talked about all of this.”

“When?”

“At the beginning of the school year. Remember, I said I was going to apply to grad school and then if I didn’t get in, I could teach?” I must have had selective hearing or something. I only remembered the part about teaching.

“And me, am I supposed to get a job wherever you end up going to grad school?”

“Let’s not worry about it now. I want this to be a nice dinner. Please?” She batted her eyelashes at me. That killed me, and she knew it.

“Sure,” I said. I knew when I was beaten. She had powers, magical female powers, and I was helpless. Resistance was futile. “So tell me about this fellowship.”

Elaine’s enthusiasm made it hard for me to be mad at her for not telling me about this plan. Besides which, I wasn’t always the best listener. Maybe she really had told me about it and I’d just missed it somehow. She was going to leave for Paris in January and study there until June. In June she would come back and decide about grad school while I worked at the university. I had all but been guaranteed a job at the planetarium. I could go visit her during my spring break and she would take the whole week off to spend with me. I’d never been to Europe before, so this part of the plan did appeal to me. Even so, I would rather have had her home with me than get to go to Europe. I couldn’t tell her that, though. She was so excited and it meant so much to her. I could stand to spend a semester on my own.

About a week later I asked her about the trip. “So have you gotten all the details worked out yet?”

“No,” she told me. “I haven’t sent in my acceptance of the fellowship.”

“What? Why not?”

“I know it upset you. I don’t want to go if it’s going to upset you.”

I walked up behind her and put my arms around her. “Elaine,” I said, “I want you to go.” That was kind of a lie, but she didn’t need to know that.

“Really?” She turned around and looked up at me.

“Really.” No, not really, I thought. But we all make sacrifices for love, right? I knew how happy this would make her. That was more important than my desire to have her with me so much of the time, or my unspoken fears about how we might grow apart while she was abroad for six months.

“We can get phone cards,” she said. “We can talk every week. And I’ll have email, we can email a lot. Several times a day if you want. I know you like email.”

“And I can come visit you over spring break.”

“Yes! We can tour Europe! It will be so –" she started to tickle my side – “much –" she tickled me again – “fun!”

That night, after Elaine had gone to bed, I got up and went online. I couldn’t sleep. I was so anxious about her going away. A million things could go wrong. Her plane could crash. She could be on the receiving end of a terrorist attack. She might catch some disease for which she’d built up no immunity. I was nervous and I needed someone to calm me down, so I turned to Cassie. She was online when I logged on and I sent her an instant message.

“Hey,” I said.

“Long time no see,” she said. It was true; when Cassie and I had first become friends we would talk several times a day. We would have marathon discussions where we emailed each other back and forth while doing our homework. I called her a few times a week, or she called me. Since I had started dating Elaine, and even more so since Elaine and I moved in together, I didn’t talk to Cassie as much.

Days 3 and 4 - 1727 Words

2005-11-04T22:18:00.000-05:00

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hi, Elaine. This is Miles.”

“Hi, Miles. How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. So I was wondering. Tomorrow is the midterm.”

“Yeah. Are you ready? I am so not ready.”

“I... I’m feeling alright about it. Look, Elaine, I was thinking...”

“It’s making me crazy. This is one of my major requirements, you know.”

“Uh huh. Anyway. Getting it out of the way will be good, right? Like, a big deal. I know you have class right afterwards but I thought maybe we could go out to dinner to celebrate finishing it, you know?” I’d set up a careful plan with Cassie for this one, too, though we’d done it all by email. I hadn’t really had time to talk on the phone with studying, and I was floundering a bit less after my and Elaine’s successful yet awkward study date.

Silence.

“Are you asking me out on a date?”

“I... Whichever answer will get you to say yes, you’d love to go out to dinner.”

“We can go on a date. Where did you have in mind?”

“I thought I’d let you choose where we went. My treat, of course.”

“Of course.” She laughed. “Why don’t I surprise you? Meet me at my dorm tomorrow at six, and then I’ll tell you where I’d like to go.”

“Okay,” I said. “See you then?”

“It’s a date,” she said. After I hung up I sighed probably the biggest sigh I had ever sighed.

I sent a quick email to Cassie to tell her of my success and then got back to studying. Soon I heard the Imperial March from Star Wars, which was my email notification sound.

“Retard,” Cassie had said. “Now you won’t know what you should wear.”

“Does it matter?” I typed back. Then to hit the books again.

“Of course it matters,” she responded. “If she wants to go someplace fancy and you wear normal clothes, you’re underdressed. If you dress for a night out on the town and then she asks to go to a pizza joint you’re far overdressed. You just signed your own death warrant, pal.”

“Studying. I’ll worry about it tomorrow,” was my reply.

And worry I did. I’m not much for appearances; I always figure if my clothes aren’t stained and don’t smell it’s good enough. Cassie sent me a long tirade informing me of how wrong I was, complete with suggestions for what to wear so I’d be ready for any occasion. She suggested khakis and a polo shirt. I owned neither of those things. I settled for jeans and a solid colored t-shirt. It was the best I had short of a suit, and I was not going to wear a suit.

I got to Elaine’s dorm at quarter to six. I was afraid something terrible would happen to me on the way there so I gave myself twice as much time as I needed to get there. I wasn’t sure whether I should call her now, or wait until six. Some other girls who lived in the dorm walked by. They offered to let me in. I thought about taking them up on it and surprising her but I decided that was kind of creepy for a first date. So I waited until five til and then called up.

“Hello!” She sounded like she knew it was me.

“Hi Elaine, it’s Miles. I’m down here, so whenever you’re ready –“

“Okay, I’ll be right out!”

“No rush.” I didn’t want to inconvenience her. I would’ve bent over backwards for her, really, and I’m not very flexible so it would’ve been difficult.

She was downstairs inside of a minute. She looked amazing. She was wearing a short black dress that clung to her body without looking trashy and high heels that made her legs look even more amazing than they normally did. It occurred to me that this was the first time I’d actually seen her legs. She always wore long pants or flowy skirts to class. I hope my jaw didn’t drop, but I think it must have. “Sorry I’m early,” I said after I recovered.

“Not a problem!”

“So... where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise!” She grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards the campus’s main drag. We walked a few blocks and then she ducked into an alley and dragged me down a narrow staircase. I thought the place was kind of sketchy, but then we arrived at the doorway to a restaurant. The sign said “Restaurant Name.” All around the door were white Christmas lights. “Come on,” Elaine said as she pushed the door open.

I had never seen a place like this. It could have been a library, there were so many books. Couches were in the corners and cafe tables in the center. There seemed to be a thousand nooks and crannies where you could go read in absolute peace. The lights were dim enough to be relaxing but bright enough for reading. There was a bar with espresso machines behind it. Soft jazz wafted out of the speakers and seemed to hover in the air. Atmospheric was the buzzword.

“Wow,” I said. “This place... amazing. It’s a bookstore?”

“Used books.” Elaine sniffed deeply. “Oh, I love the smell of old books.” I almost proposed to her right there. Then I thought the better of it. Maybe I should get through the whole date before doing something that crazy. “Let’s order,” she said. She led me over to the counter and handed me a menu. “You order up here and then they bring you your food,” she told me. We ordered and then sat down to eat. Our conversation rambled, but by the end of dinner I knew more than ever that Elaine was, in fact, the perfect woman. I had already known that her major was in medieval history; I had not known that her hobbies involved reading fantasy novels, playing computer games, and visiting museums. We compared our glasses prescriptions and we talked about people who had broken our hearts in middle and high school. Cassie had told me to ask her a lot of questions because people like to talk about themselves and are more interested in people willing to listen to them talk about themselves, and it wasn’t hard, because I really did find her fascinating.

It turned out Elaine had really been wanting to see this TV series that had been cancelled before its time that I happened to have on DVD. I thought about inviting her back to my room to watch it after dinner but then I decided she might think I was being too pushy or something. I really wanted to keep up the perfection of the evening, so after dinner I just walked her back to her dorm.

There was a slight breeze and we could see the stars somewhat despite the lights of campus. Elaine held my hand the whole walk back. I tried to memorize everything she said, every movement she made, so I could recall it later when I was by myself. We got to the door of her dorm room. I could feel my palms sweating. Please don’t let me ruin this now, I thought.

Elaine turned to face me. “I had a really nice time tonight, Miles,” she said looking into my eyes. I wanted to look away. I was afraid she would see through this cool semblance of a person with some aptitude for social interaction, that by somehow looking into my eyes she could see into my heart where I was just a ridiculous loser. But I didn’t look away, because at the same time, as much as I feared some bizarre revealing of my soul might occur, I really wanted to look into her eyes, too.

Then an amazing thing happened. You know how in “The Princess Bride” they talk about the five greatest kisses ever? Well, yeah. Elaine leaned over, and we kissed. And it was just a small kiss, it was not hot and heavy, it was not very long, it did not require coming up for air or anything of that sort. It was just a kiss, a short, normal kiss. And it was the most amazing thing I had ever experienced. I felt a chill run down my spine, all the way into my toes.

I smiled.

“Good night, Miles.” She kissed me on the cheek this time and then went inside.

I stood there in stunned silence. I had not anticipated that it would go at all this well. I ran all the way back to my dorm room. I had triumphed! This was something I needed to announce to the internet. I logged into the game and went into chat and started talking about my amazing evening.

“Take it to IRC, Gloriosus,” a player named UrMomIzMyWomn said. Gloriosus was my username. I didn’t care if that guy wanted me to take it elsewhere, I was going to share my victory with the world. I looked at my buddy list. Cassie was on, but she hadn’t messaged me. That was weird. I messaged her.

“Hey,” I typed.

“Hi,” came the reply. That was short, for Cassie.

“What’s up?”

“Very little. You?”

“Did you see about my date?”

“Yup. Congrats, stud.” That was really short for Cassie. The problem with the internet is that there’s no inflection. People sometimes try to accomplish it with various smilies, substituting clever configurations of punctuation marks for real expression of emotion. Cassie was one of the few people who actually typed like a person might speak or write outside of an online context. Was she angry at me? Had I done something wrong? Was I supposed to call her? Would she care if I was supposed to and didn’t?

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said.

“Do you want me to call you?”

“Whatever.” Something was definitely wrong.

“I’m exhausted,” I told her. “I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you all about it.”

“Great,” she said. I was getting really worried.

“Take care of yourself, alright?”

“Not a problem.”

“Night.”

“Sweet dreams.”

I logged off, changed into my pajamas, and got in bed. I fell asleep and had dreams all night wherein Elaine and I spent amazing time together, but we were always followed by a gloomy dark elf.

Day 2 - The next 1670 Words

2005-11-02T21:56:00.000-05:00

“Praise be to free long distance,” I emailed back and then picked up my cell phone. I’d never spoken with Cassie over the phone before, only online. I was a little nervous – what if I’d created a charming persona online and now she would find out what a terrible dork I was and not want to be my friend anymore? I started to dial and then hesitated. Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should just email her. Maybe I – no, I told myself. This is to get the girl, this is to get Elaine, and if you alienate Cassie with your less than perfect phone manner, so be it. I finished dialing and then waited before pressing the call button. I took a deep breath. Here we go, I thought, pressing the button.

The phone rang. And it rang again. One more time. I was thinking about hanging up before Cassie could pick up, because I hate the phone. But then there was a click, and –

“Wazzaaaaaaaaa!”

“Um, Cass- Cassie?” I wasn’t sure if it was her. “Wazzaaaaaaaaa!” was kind of an odd way to answer the phone.

“Speaking!” She sounded different than I had expected. Her voice was kind of high pitched, and there was a lot of energy in it. I had expected a dark sound, dry. The username DarkProphetess had probably colored my expectations a bit.

“This is Miles.”

“I know that, doofus. I just told you to call me, remember?”

“Oh, um, yeah.” I scratched the back of my head. This really wasn’t going well. I was doomed. Cassie wouldn’t help me get Elaine, and also she wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore, because I was such a loser.

“So, you want help wooing your lady fair?”

“...yes?”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“I do, I do.”

“Okay. What does she like?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“There, my friend, is your first problem.”

I talked to Cassie for two hours as she helped me make a game plan for asking Elaine out. We even wrote a script, so I could study it and memorize it to avoid stuttering or chickening out. I would ask Elaine if she wanted to study for the midterm together. I was pretty sure she didn’t have any other friends in the class, because I was the only person she ever really talked to. When she said yes, which she inevitably would, Cassie had assured me, I would ask if she had a location preference. If she did, that was where we would go, and if not, I had a few places to suggest. The library was a bit obvious but also a last resort. We could go to any of a number of coffee shops, or some nice student-friendly restaurants. Cassie warned me off of anything too ritzy. Not only would the restaurant staff be angry, if I wanted this to be a study session I had to treat it like one. If I wanted to ask the girl on a date right off the bat, Cassie said, I should just do it already.

I didn’t think I could work up the courage to just ask her out without a pretense, so study date it was. I was feeling good about the whole thing and, to my surprise, Cassie didn’t treat me as though I had the plague, in spite of the fact that I sounded like a complete ass on the phone.

“Call me and let me know how it goes,” she said.

“Oh, I will,” I told her.

The next day I was a man with a plan. I strode into class, sat down, and waited for Elaine to walk in. I waited. And waited. Class started. I waited some more, and attempted to take notes while I did so. Class ended. I sat there for another ten minutes, waiting. No sign of Elaine.
This is just great, I thought. I had been ready to go. I was set, I was good, I was going to stride right up and sweep her off her feet, except probably I would have been sitting down.
Instead, I saw neither hide nor hair of her, when I’d like to have seen more than a little of both.
I walked back to the dorm feeling more dejected than I’d ever felt in my whole life. On the way, my cell phone rang. It was Cassie.

“Hello,” I mumbled.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“She wasn’t there.”

“No way,” Cassie said.

“So way.”

“Dude, I’m really sorry.”

“Did you just call me dude?”

“Yes.”

“You are weird.”

“Why, thank you. Look, you’ll see her again before the test, right?”

“Yes, but there will only be a couple days until the test by then,” I sighed.

“Doesn’t your school have a directory?”

“Yes.”

“Look her up and call her!”

“I can’t do that. I’m terrible on the phone.”

“Miles,” Cassie said very seriously. “You are fine on the phone. I’d talk to you all day. You’re funny as hell. Give her a call and ask her out.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re exhausting!” Cassie declared. “Think about it. I’ve got to get to class myself, but if you need coaching just on calling her even, you can call me later. Okay?”

“Yes,” I grumbled.

“Peace out, starshine.”

“Weird. Weird, weird, weird.”

“Later.”

“Bye.” I got off the phone with Cassie just as I was getting into my dorm room. The landline was ringing. I made a mad dash for it.

“Hello?”

“Miles?” a female voice said between coughs.

“This is he,” I answered.

“This is Elaine. I looked you up in the directory. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, that’s – fine.”

“I’m sick, that’s why I wasn’t in class today. You’re the only person I know in the class so I was wondering, do you have notes I could borrow or something?”

“Yeah, sure. Where are you? I can bring them to you now.” That was the most I’d ever said to her without stuttering.

“Oh, I’m in... my dorm... But I don’t want to make you sick.”

“No, don’t worry about it. Where do you live?” She gave me her room number and her phone number so I could call her and ask her to let me in. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” It wouldn’t have taken me twenty minutes to walk to her dorm, but I had had a flash of inspiration. I would go to the cafeteria and get a bowl of soup for takeout and take it to her. This would be sure to impress her. And then once I was there, I could ask her about the study date. It wasn’t the ideal situation but I was running out of time.

I grabbed my notes and dialed Cassie’s number as I walked to the caf. I got her voicemail. “This is Cass, with your prophecy of the day: DOOM! DOOM! DOOM! Leave a message and I’ll call you and tell you things that you won’t believe. No, really, you’ll think I’m lying or something.”
“I am walking right now to the cafeteria to get soup and to take it to Elaine’s room. I am kind of in a panic. I am going to ask her about the study date. I am freaking out here, Cassie. I’ll call and let you know how it goes.”

I got the soup and walked to Elaine’s dorm. I found the callbox and called her.

“Hello?” she rasped.

“Elaine, it’s Miles.”

“Just a minute, I’ll let you in.”

A minute or so later, the door opened up. I know women work really hard to make themselves look good. I don’t know if they do it for men or not, but I guess I’ve always assumed they do. If they do, I don’t know why. They don’t need to. Elaine was wearing pajamas and had her hair thrown up in a bun and didn’t have her glasses on. She was just as beautiful as every day when she came into class. I guess this was how you could tell I had it bad; at her least attractive I still thought she was amazing.

“I brought you some soup,” I said, holding the bowl out to her and walking into the front hall of the dorm.

“Oh, that’s really sweet!” Oh, yes, I thought to myself again. She will be mine.

“It’s nothing, really. I just thought, since you were sick-“

“But did you remember the notes?”

“That I did,” I said, and held them out in one hand as I bowed with a flourish.

“Thank you, Miles. You’re the best.” She reached out as if to hug me but then drew back. “I don’t want to get you sick.” It would be worth it, I thought. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, though.

“I’ll take a raincheck.” Things were going remarkably well. I hadn’t stuttered at all. “Speaking of...”

“Yeah?” She was tired. I better get this out quickly.

“Since the midterm is coming up and we each seem to be the only person the other one knows, I was wondering if you’d want to... study together?”

“That would be great,” she said. The hard part was officially over. “Where were you thinking?”

“I don’t know, someplace informal, like, uh...”

“Why don’t we have lunch in the cafe at the Museum of History and Natural Science?”

“Sounds great.”

“Excellent. Well, I’m going to go eat my very yummy soup, copy these notes, and then hop in bed. I’ll see you in a couple days. Thanks again, Miles.”

“No problem.” I watched her go up the stairs before I left.

Life was good.

The next few weeks where a whirlwind. You probably know how it is. You go on a first date. It’s kind of awkward. I think it being a lunch date for studying made it even more awkward. At the end of it, we hugged. More awkward. I told her I’d call her. I meant it, too. And I did, the night before the midterm.

Day 1 - 1728 Words.

2005-11-01T22:10:00.000-05:00

A movie adaptation of a great comic book hero once said that every story worth telling is about a girl. I don’t know if that’s true of every story, but I do know it’s true of mine. She wasn’t the girl from next door. Hell, she wasn’t even from the next state over. She was, however, the girl who sat next to me on the first day of my medieval history class my first day of college.

Her name is Elaine.

I don’t know which classroom it was. I don’t even remember which building. It was one of those huge lecture halls you find at a major research university, the kind that seat five hundred students. The people in the back are sleeping or doing the crossword puzzle in the school paper; the people in the middle are talking or playing solitaire on their laptops, and then there are the people like me and Elaine.

We sit in the front row.

I didn’t see her walk in the door. I was getting my notebook out and getting ready for class. One of the problems with being obsessive compulsive is that you have to have everything just so. It varies with each person, but part of my obsessiveness, or compulsiveness – I’ve never been clear on which is which, I’m just sure I’ve got both – is meticulous organization of school materials.

No, I didn’t notice her until she spoke.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Is anyone sitting here?”

I looked up.

I knew – at that very moment, without hesitation, without deliberation – that this was the woman with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. So, of course, I stuttered.

“N-no, no one is – I mean, um, you – I – no.”

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

My eyes must’ve doubled in width.

“Not at all.”

And it was as easy as that, three words and the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen was sitting beside me, all on my first day of my first year of the beginning of the rest of my life. Elaine had hair past her waist and glasses with tiny wire frames. She looked like a librarian, and that made her perfect.

“I’m Elaine,” she said, extending her hand for me to shake it.

I stared at her hand and gulped.

“I’m... M- um, my name is – it’s very nice to meet you. Miles, I’m... Miles.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Miles.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Have you heard anything about this professor?”

“No.”

“Me neither.” I didn’t really care about the class at this point anyway; for all that I’m an overachiever and meticulous about schoolwork and whatnot, the entrance into my life of perfection embodied by a woman had erased all other priorities. She will be mine, I thought to myself, channeling Wayne Campbell. Oh yes, she will be mine.

I fumbled for something to say. “So, what are you majoring in?”

“History,” she said. “I’m focusing on medieval. France, mostly.”

“Wow. That’s, um – you’re really... Isn’t it early to know your major so thoroughly?”

“I know what I like. What about you?”

“Oh, I’m majoring in astronomy.”

“Well, see. That’s pretty specific.”

“I guess I, uh, I know what I like, too.”

Yeah, I like you, I thought. I managed not to say it. Which was an achievement, really.

“Oh, look,” Elaine whispered, and pointed to the front of the class. The professor had gotten up and looked like he was beginning to lecture. Some friends of mine had told me that on the first day of class in college, the professor just gives you the syllabus and sends you home. Some friends of mine are liars. This professor felt the need to drone on for the full hour and fifteen minutes of class. I didn’t mind, though. When I got bored with medieval history, which happened rather quickly as it was all church history and no warfare in today’s lecture, I just watched Elaine. She was in her element. The professor would make a joke; everyone else in the class snored. Elaine giggled. Her nose wrinkled up when she giggled. It was the most adorable thing I had ever seen. She smiled a lot. She nodded whenever the professor said something she already knew. Less than an hour in her presence and I was one hundred percent smitten.

By the end of class I had told myself at least a hundred times, “You must ask this girl out. You must. Now.” The end of class came, and she started to put her things away. I turned to her.
“So, I, uh – I was wo- um. I thought maybe we could – I – it was really nice meeting you,” I managed to blurt out. I winced. That was not exactly the smooth move I’d imagined while ignoring the man standing at the front of the classroom blathering about the rise of the Carolingian dynasty.

“You too,” Elaine said. “Well. I guess I’ll see you Thursday.” And with that, she was gone.
This was Tuesday. Forty six and three quarter hours until I would see her again. It stretched before me like an interminable wasteland.

As soon as I got back to the dorm, I sat down at my computer and got online. I’d been playing this online game since right before I left for college, and I was just beginning to feel some camaraderie with the other players. So I went into the game chat and started talking about Elaine, because she was all I could think about. I rambled on at length about her beauty and grace and how smart she was. The other players were remarkably indulgent of me; no one fussed at me for being chatty, no one told me to take it to email. Which is good because if they’d told me to shut up at that precise moment I probably would’ve left in a self-righteous huff and never joined the game again.

Instead, a private chat window popped up from a player going by the name DarkProphetess. That was Cassandra, probably my best friend in the game. Cassandra was her real name. And she knew mine, too. That made us special, because a lot of people were really hesitant to share their real names with their online friends.

“So when’s the wedding?” she asked.

“Hardy har har,” I typed in response. “Very funny.”

“Seriously, though. Are you going to ask her out?”

“I tried today. It was kind of ridiculous. You should’ve been there.”

“Sorry I missed it.”

We went on back and forth like this for half an hour or so before Cassie said she had to go. She was egging me on, I was demurring. I felt pretty good about the whole thing, though; I trusted Cassie, and if she encouraged me to go for it it must be a thing worth doing and a thing of which I was capable. After all, she knew me better than the few friends I’d made at college. If I couldn’t turn to her for advice, who was there?

Wednesday was a blur, twenty four hours spent waiting for Thursday. On Thursday morning I was psyched. I was ready to go. Today I was going to ask Elaine out. Cassie had encouraged me, my friends online had told me to go for it, I’d even called my brother Adrian and asked him for advice. He told me to be myself. It didn’t seem like especially good advice, as the last time I’d tried that I looked like a bibbling idiot, but I thought I’d give it another shot. Adrian had always been successful with women, so he must be doing something right. Maybe I should try to be him.
No, I told myself. You are great. You are the man. You are going to amaze her with your suave demeanor. She will be in awe of you.

I sat in the same seat in the front of class. Elaine sat next to me just as before. “Hi,” she said. “Miles, right?”

“Hi.”

And then we were off – class had begun. Oops. Well, there was still after class.

“So, um,” I began once the professor was done. I think today he was talking about feudalism? It really didn’t interest me. I spent the whole class watching Elaine, again. “What do you – what are you doing now?”

“Oh, I have another class,” Elaine answered.

“You – oh, I – um, which one?”

“Medieval Latin.” She rolled her eyes. “I am studying France, so they make me take Latin. Crazy, huh?”

“Y- yeah, crazy,” I said. Anything to keep her talking to me. “Oh, well, um, okay. Because I thought... well, I just – “ Elaine checked her watch.

“Miles, I really like talking to you, but I have to go. My Latin class is all the way across campus. See you Tuesday?”

“Sure, Tuesday.”

“Great. See you then!”

I slumped down in my chair, deflated. Yes, I, Miles Spartin, was champion of the world. All women bowed before my prowess. I was charming and suave. And completely incapable of speaking coherently to the woman of my dreams.

The next few weeks passed in much the same fashion. I spent a lot of time thinking about Elaine. I came up with a million great ways to ask her out, and I put none of them into action. I kept asking her empty questions. What part of campus did she live on? What P. E. was she taking? Had she taken the required swim test yet? None of these got me any closer to my immediate goal, which was to get her out on a date.

Then it came time for the first of our two midterms. I don’t know why the professor insisted on calling them midterms, since they were obviously not in the middle of the term, as there were two of them. I guess “test” didn’t have the right amount of gravity.

I turned to Cassie for assistance. I shot off an email to her the week before the midterm.

“Can studying for a test constitute a date?” I asked.

“If there’s good food,” came the reply.

“Details, woman!” I tapped on the keys. “Should I ask her to a fancy restaurant? Is that too suspicious? That doesn’t look like studying.”

“Too complex for email. Call me. 206-555-1187.”

Welcome!

2005-10-07T08:22:00.000-05:00

This is where I will be posting my 2005 NaNoWriMo novel. I am happy to share it with the world, but I will be turning commenting off until November is over, as I don't want anything said to me while I'm frantically trying to push through getting it done. We'll leave that for after the first draft is finished.

Thanks for reading!