“It’s important, Sean,” my mom pleaded. “You’re talking about giving up Harvard! That’s such a wonderful opportunity. Not to mention the inadvisability of making a long-term commitment to an individual on the basis of a few short weeks. You need to allow yourself the time, and the exposure to other options, to make a realistic assessment. Surely you see that it must be an informed choice.”
I wiped my face. I was surprised to find it wet. “If I do that, if I agree to meet this Jeremiah, will you support me if I decide to stay at Madison?”
My mom and dad did that secret-eye-language thing again. My mom spoke, “If you agree to go out on at least two dates with Jeremiah, and afterward, you still want to remain at Madison, we’ll support that.”
“But you have to give him a fair shot,” my dad qualified.
I could see the logic in their argument. I was inexperienced. I knew how I felt about Bubba, but could it be naivete? Surely, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to be more informed. If I kept it an intellectual exercise, Bubba would understand, wouldn’t he? It wasn’t like I would sleep with this Jeremiah or even kiss him. I’d meet him, that was all.
I nodded. “Fine. I agree.”
The next day, my parents dropped us off at the Amtrak station for the train back to Madison. The train wasn’t crowded, and Bubba and I got seats next to the window, facing each other in an otherwise empty aisle.
Bubba had been unusually quiet that morning as we’d had breakfast and said goodbye to my parents. I was glad to finally have a chance to talk to him though I wasn’t sure how to say what I needed to say.
“Bubba?”
He looked up from his phone. In the daylight from the window, his eyes looked tired and red-rimmed. “Yeah, Sean?”
I took a breath. “Um… so… I had a conversation with my parents last night. They asked me to do something. And I know you won’t like it, but I think it probably has some merit and—”
He held up a hand. “Can I say something?”
I stopped, surprised. “Sure.”
He sat up stiffly and looked out the window. “I’ve been thinking. We kinda got carried away. I mean, we haven’t been dating that long or anything. We should maybe back off a bit. Date other people.”
It felt like someone had put their hand inside my chest and squeezed my heart. The pain was sharp and accompanied by a wave of nausea and a sense of dread. “You… really? I know it wasn’t a great weekend. But it wasn’t that terrifying, was it?” I managed to joke.
He didn’t smile. “Yeah. I dunno. I guess meeting your parents made me wonder if we really should be meeting each other’s folks at this point. Like, my dad would totally freak. So maybe we should just… ya know….” He still refused to look at me.
“No, I don’t know, Bubba,” I said, more strongly than I’d intended. “What are you trying to say? Just tell me.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Bubba finally met my gaze. “A clean break is better. You’re a great guy, Sean. Hope we can still be friends and everything. But I don’t think we should date anymore.”
With that, Bubba stood up, grabbed his duffel bag from the overhead, and walked away, exiting to another train compartment.
I watched him go, my heart hammering, air stuck in my throat like I might never breathe again. Oh my God. I couldn’t even catch up with my feelings. He’d just broken up with me.
Bubba had broken up with me.
But what? Why? Because of one weekend with my parents? I hadn’t even mentioned the idea of having to see someone else in an experimental capacity, so that couldn’t be the reason. No, he broke up with me because—because he wanted to, bottom line. His feelings for me had obviously changed. Maybe meeting my parents had made him finally see me for what I really was—a boring nerd. And my parents were proof I’d be one into old age. Or maybe it had just been too soon to take him home, and he’d been scared off. Too much, Sean. Too much. But it was too late now to take it back.
Bubba was my first. My first date, first boyfriend, first orgasm with another person. And now, first one to break my heart.
Just two days ago, we’d been happy. How had this fallen apart so fast?
Chapter Eighteen
Bubba
I stood by the door of the train, hoping so hard that Sean didn’t come in. Didn’t try to talk to me. Stupid thing for a big dumb ox to say, but I couldn’t take anymore.
The outskirts of the station flew by the window, and I crowded even closer to the exit.
For two days, I’d felt like every bad thing anybody ever said to me—about how stupid and useless I was and how it wasn’t worth it to try—all that shit was printed on the faces of Sean’s parents every time they looked at me. They didn’t exactly say it. They didn’t have to.
You can do better, Sean. You don’t need to settle for a—weight lifter.
And of course, they were right. Stupid. Stupid.
What the hell had I been thinking?
The train jolted to a stop, and I was off before the doors were even fully open, walking fast toward the exit. A town car Sean’s parents had arranged had brought us to the station, and there’d be another one to pick Sean up. I looked at the signs for the buses that went to the Madison campus.
When I found the bus stop, I leaned against the wall and tried not to think, but it was no use. The weird thing—what was that word? Irony? Yeah, the irony was that for a guy like me, what I’d done, using my grandma’s money and my own savings to leave the auto shop and go to college, had felt like a huge deal. So what, I was a phys ed major? It didn’t seem simple to me. It was a pathway to a job I wanted to do and a future way beyond what I’d imagined as a kid.
But that didn’t put me in Sean’s class.
Jesus, not even on the same planet. I was like a big clumsy bug that’d gotten all excited about crawling onto a leaf. Sean was a freaking butterfly.
I wiped a hand over my face. The way those people had looked at me, like I wasn’t fit to polish Sean’s shoes. In Hartsboro, nobody cared much about anything I was doing except playing football, but at least at the auto shop, I’d gotten respect for being a good mechanic. The guys in my fraternity might not think I was the brightest bulb in the pack, but they liked me most of the time.
Yeah, other people might think I was as dumb as dog shit, but this was the first time anybody had looked at me like I was the actual poop. The worse part was, they didn’t even seem that mean. They were just smart enough to see what I really was.
The bus pulled up, a few people got off, and several who’d been waiting climbed on. I waited to the last so I didn’t have to sit next to anybody who looked like they were going to Madison. Halfway back, there was a seat open next to an older lady, and I dropped into it. I gave her a nod, then leaned back and closed my eyes. Wish I had some earbuds.
My pulse hammered too hard, and heat kept pushing behind my eyes, so I took a couple deep breaths to try to calm down. I hadn’t slept at all the night before. After I went to bed, I felt so weird that when I heard Sean walk past, I decided to follow him. I’d thought maybe we could have some milk and laugh at how his parents were such nerds, they’d never get a guy like me, but that was okay.