Forget All About It

(Alert-Contains Mature Content)

She is almost ready for bed when she opens her laptop and Facebook dings. A bald head and lined face fill the screen. Not enough time has gone by since she thought about that face or her summer at the beach. Nothing made her want to reminisce about those long, lazy days or the people in them, but here he was. Here was her old friend Chuck. He typed, “Don’t you remember me?” And of course she did. She closes her eyes and instantly she is there, the moments coming back to her in disconnected ripples.

~

It was early in the summer just after her sophomore year at college. The days started cool and ended in afternoons that baked your skin. She picked up a job in a beach town about an hour south of school. Most of the other seasonal kids hadn’t arrived yet. The early comers liked to get together at Chuck’s apartment in the center of town. They came to drink cheap, flat beer and forget their boardwalk jobs. They gathered in the cramped walk-up, still smelling of grease or sugar or whatever they peddled that day.

She really had nowhere else to go. She knew Chuck from college, so she hung out with him. He was stocky with a buzz cut that made his face look even chubbier. A decent friend but not very reliable. He was, however, good at supplying beer. Sometimes you were friends with someone, not because of who they were, but because of their proximity.

She trusted Chuck, so nothing seemed off when he introduced her to Steve, his new roommate, who walked in wearing blue jeans, a plain white tee and black boots. He was tall, thin and had short blonde hair. His eyes — something she didn’t notice about most people — were intensely blue. He sat down next to her, and beer made the conversation easier, even if it was a little hazy. They discussed her love of Depeche Mode and his love of Iron Maiden. She quickly realized that, other than being nice, he was far from her usual type.

She stayed past midnight and returned the next night. When she got to Chuck’s apartment, it was cooler outside, but the beers were still warm. She and the rest of the kids sank into the musty armchairs scattered around the apartment, chatting about music. Steve arrived home from work about an hour later, still wearing his name tag. Delivering pizzas seemed to be his specialty, which was handy because in his hands were two large pies, cheese and basil wafting through the air.

They ate pizza and talked. She isn’t sure how or why they ended up in the bedroom. When he showed an interest in taking things a little farther, she finished her beer, got up and followed him. The room was sparse-the walls white and the carpet beige. There was very little in it aside from the sheets on the bed and a navy-blue comforter. She could see only a few shirts hanging in the open closet, like either he didn’t live here or didn’t intend to stay.

He shut the door behind him and gently pushed her down on the bed, running his hand up her leg and between her thighs. He wasn’t a good kisser, but he also wasn’t rough. She was dry, and he stopped, spit in his hand and shoved it between her legs. It happened so quickly that she felt like she was sleeping. Afterwards, he got dressed, left and went out to drink more beer, leaving her alone in the room.

They went on like this for several days. She knew she kept connecting with Steve because she was bored. Bored with college, bored with living in a beach town before the season started, mostly just bored with herself.

Then, one night he didn’t come home. He didn’t come home the next night either. She waited with Chuck and acted like she didn’t care, but a strange pit formed in the bottom of her stomach. Chuck’s other friends were just bummed there was no pizza.

The days got warmer but continued to be slow and mundane. She carefully stacked boxes at work and walked on the boardwalk during her break. She began avoiding Chuck’s place. Instead, at night she went to random bars with her coworkers, where she showed a fake ID. It was passable enough that the doorman, knowing she wasn’t 21, allowed her to enter. Once she thought she saw Steve at a club, but he didn’t acknowledge her.

After that, she tried to move on and do ordinary things. She and some girls from work went to the beach to tan; the greasy smell of Coppertone stuck in her nose. She disliked the briny water, but it was a hot day. The sweat dripped down her chest, sand sticking to what felt like every inch of her body. They got up from their towels and headed for the water.

She felt a dull thump behind her eyes and the sour taste of last night’s beer on her tongue. It clouded her thoughts and made her slow, her arms and legs feeling heavier than usual. She had felt like this so many mornings she no longer knew what normal was.

The hungover girls chatted as they walked into the water; the waves coming in slowly at first and then harder. They laughed at the rocking motion of the water. It lifted them up with each wave break, the salty spray wetting their faces. The conversation with the girls continued — what they drank last night, who they slept with, what time they had to be at work.

Distracted, she turned from the girls and faced the shore. Her mind felt blank as she pushed her slipping sunglasses onto her nose. She hoped the other girls didn’t notice her glancing around for Steve. She didn’t see the giant ocean wall as it pushed her down; the waves smacking into her. Water filled her nose, and her knees stung as they dug into the sand. She flailed but couldn’t get back up, stumbling back every time she tried. It felt like minutes until she got her footing. She tasted pungent water, blinked and realized her sunglasses were gone. That was the last time she went anywhere with those girls.

That night, she lay awake watching the car lights reflect off the ceiling, the whirl of their wheels stopping at the sign on the corner. She couldn’t stop her mind from dancing through her thoughts. Her body humming, she wondered about Steve, and she wondered about herself. She felt like she was falling, like something was about to occur.

And something did. It all ended abruptly, like a balloon getting too close to a light bulb. A seismic outcome, but over quickly and with an enormous boom-

The next afternoon she was sipping a brain freeze cold slushy, the liquid dying her lips red, and an idea popped into her head. She should give Steve her phone number. That way he could reach out when he wanted to see her. She dug into the bottom of her purse and found a pen and some crumbled paper, hastily scratching her number onto the page.

She walked the block to Chuck’s apartment, each step feeling a little lighter, avoiding the cracks and piles of sand that gathered around the street corner. She watched the bikers with their cute little front baskets as they dipped and glided around pedestrians on the sidewalk.

Five minutes later she was ringing Chuck’s bell. When he answered the door, she looked around him and asked for Steve. Chuck looked too and had a strange expression on his face. He turned back, opened and closed his mouth, took a deep breath and stopped. Then it came pouring out, “Something happened. He is in jail. He beat up his girlfriend… broke her jaw and everything.”

The words smacked her in the face like a brick, and the air stopped as she tried to adjust her thoughts. She wanted to feel something and nothing all at once. She blinked twice, balled up the paper in her hands, dropped it on the street, turned and walked away.

After that, things weren’t any different. She left the beach a few days later, angrily shoving her things into her car before driving home. She needed to escape the people she didn’t understand; most definitely needed to escape herself.

~

She opens her eyes, and her screen comes back into focus, “Don’t you remember me?” glaring at her. The blue of her screen is begging for an answer, the words feeling like a yell. She sinks deeper into her office chair and uncrosses her arms. She leans forward, hits delete and shuts her laptop with a slam, sending it all back into the past where it belongs.