YOU'RE GONNA LOSE THAT GIRL

What do you do when the girl of your dreams is taken?

I didn't know how I'd gone two full years on the campus without meeting Wendy, but I had. It wasn't until the first day of Junior year that I actually met her. And, damn, I fell for her in a hurry. Since that day, a couple days into the semester, that I met up with her outside, working on our writing class, and I joined her. She was funny, sweet, cute, altogether delightful. It took me a couple weeks to work up my nerve to ask her out.

And she had a boyfriend.

I couldn't help wonder who, you know? Was it anyone I knew? Was he worthy of her? Could I arrange to have him bumped off? Ah, just kidding. But I did wonder who.

And wondering who for long enough was going to drive me out of my tree. By the time that Friday night rolled around, I was ready to blow off some steam. Excess consumption of alcohol seemed to be just the trick. Finding a party around Endicott was never a problem, so that's just what I did.

Of course, I had to pick the party that Wendy was at!

She came over to me five minutes after I showed up. I can't deny it—I was happy to see her. But I wasn't happy to see her. You know what I mean.

"Hey," she said. "You still mad at me?"

I had to laugh. "Why the hell would I be mad at you?"

"Good," she said, and sat down next to me.

For the next two hours, we sat there. We drank, we talked, we said silly stuff. If I didn't know any better, I'd be willing to believe that she was there at the party with me. I mean, I was who she was with, right? Well, that illusion was shattered after those two hours—because, all of a sudden, there was a guy there, and he was bending down to kiss her. "Hi, babe," he said to her.

"Hi, Jon."

"Gonna go get a beer. Be back in a bit."

Dammit all to hell—Jon Belliard. I didn't know him well, but I knew him enough, we were both criminal justice majors. And I knew one thing—his reputation around campus was that he was an asshole. I hadn't been impressed at all in the classes we had shared. The impression that he gave off was that he was an arrogant prick. And this was the guy who was dating my dream girl?

Fuck me.

"That's your boyfriend?" I asked.

"Yeah," she smiled. "I'm so glad he made it. He didn't think he was going to."

It increasingly dawned on me that, as far as Wendy was concerned, he might as well have not made it—because he certainly didn't pay any attention to her. He spent over an hour and a half on the other side of the room with his boys, generally being a loudmouth. Meanwhile, his girlfriend was over her sharing a sofa with me. She kept up a brave face, but kept glancing over at him longingly. I wanted to throttle him.

Finally, after that hour and a half, he sauntered over to her. "Hey, babe. I see Colleen's here, so your room is free. Why don't we head over?"

"But, Jon, I didn't want to leave the party yet."

"Oh, come on, babe. Let me love you."

Oh, Jesus. You have got to be kidding me, I thought. Let me love you? How lame is that? But the girl of my dreams bought it. Before I knew it, she was saying "Bye" to me and taking her asshole boyfriend to her room.

Suddenly, there was someone sitting next to me—a cute redhead that I'd seen around.

"Are you Carl?" I nodded. "Hi, I'm Colleen. I'm Wendy's roommate." She took a deep breath. "Wendy would be pissed off at me beyond believing if she knew what I was about to do, but I have to." She looked right at me. "Carl? Don't give up."

"Excuse me?"

"Look, are you a nice guy?"

"Well, I like to think so," I said with a chuckle.

"You think you'd treat Wendy right?"

"You'd better believe it."

"Good. Don't give up. Look, Jon's an asshole. I don't know what she sees in him, and I'm convinced that she stays with him because of two reasons: one is that she doesn't realize she has other options."

"But she knows that now," I said. "I mean, I asked her out. She knows I'm interested."

"Right," Colleen said, "but now we get into the other reason—habit. And I think to break the habit, you're really going to have to hammer home the first one. Don't give up."

"Let me see if I understand this," I said to her. "You are telling me to steal your best friend away from her boyfriend?"

"That's exactly what I'm telling you."

"Look," I said, swallowing hard, "I'm not exactly a ladykiller. I'm not the type of guy who can swagger over to a girl, make her swoon, and then make her forget about her boyfriend."

Colleen giggled. "You don't have to. Just be yourself. Look, Wendy likes you. Trust me on that one. Just be around, you know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, but, look—I'm crazy about Wendy, OK?" She smiled at that. "I don't know if I can stand to give myself false hope."

"I see your point, but, Carl, this is the thing—something bad's going to happen. I can feel it in my bones. Jon's bad news. He started out fine, got worse over the course of last year, and now he's just completely inattentive to her, except when he wants to get laid."

"Yeah, that's the impression I got," I sighed.

"Trust me. Stick around."

"I'll try."

Colleen did her bit to keep me hanging around Wendy. The next week, the house that they live in threw a party. Colleen made sure to invite me. She also made sure that Wendy knew that I was being invited and would have invited me herself except she didn't think I'd come because her boyfriend was supposed to be there. On the contrary. If her boyfriend was going to be there, I definitely wanted to be there. Colleen had convinced me.

I got there early and happily sat with Wendy for a few hours. Of course, I could see her looking for that asshole. Three hours after the start of the party and he hadn't shown up. She sat and chatted with me—but she was still looking for him.

Finally, he showed up. "Hey, babe," he said to her—and then disappeared again. Off with the boys. I was starting to get pissed.

He breezed by again. "Jon?" she said. "Come sit with me."

"I'm talking with my friends, Wendy," he said. "I'll be back in a bit." He leered at her. "We can go up to your room." Then he walked off again.

Dammit. Wendy looked like she was going to cry.

I still can't believe what I did next. I told Wendy I was going for a beer. What I did instead was I found him. Laughing, joking, surrounded by his buddies. I walked right up to him.

"You're going to lose her, you know."

"What?" he said, turning to me.

"Wendy. Your girlfriend. You're going to lose her. I'm going to make sure of it."

"Oh yeah?" he laughed.

"Believe it. You treat her like shit. She deserves better. I plan to take her away from you. And if you don't get your shit together, you're going to make it easy for me." Then I walked away from him, and back to Wendy.

I really was stunned that I had actually done that. That wasn't me at all. But I was furious at him, desperately in love with Wendy, and at a loss. Challenging him was probably a mistake. I found Wendy.

"Where were you?"

I decided to tell her. I took a deep breath. "Telling your boyfriend off."

"WHAT?"

"I told Jon off. I told him that I was going to steal you from him, and the way he treated you was making it easy."

"Carl! I mean, how could you?"

"Because I'm crazy about you," I admitted. "You're the girl of my dreams. You're all I've ever wanted. And he treats you like shit. Two weeks in a row, you've spent all your time with me. He's unavailable. Why on earth do you stay with him?"

"Well, I mean....I guess...." she stammered.

"Is the sex that good?" I asked pointedly.

"No. It's not good at all," she admitted. "He only cares about whether he gets off."

"So why do you stay with him?"

"He was my first," she whispered. "Not just physically, but emotionally. In high school, I was a chubby nerd who wore braces until junior year. I was persona non grata with boys. He pulled me out of that. He made me feel desirable."

"And he's been playing on that for some time now," I told her. "That's his hold on you. You're a handy, willing, sex partner that he uses for sex, and knows he can get away with it because of what you just told me."

"You don't understand! He made me feel good about myself!"

"Made. That's what you said, made. Does he still?" She didn't say anything. She couldn't.

Just then, he emerged out of the crowd. "Hey, babe. Let's go upstairs," he said, shooting me a glare.

She went with him.

It made me want to throw up.

--The End--

This is the second story of a story arc. The first is called If I Needed Someone. The next will be called Run For Your Life