Stone Cold

For the past week, all Jude’s been able to talk about is this girl he met at the house party we crashed last weekend. He ran into her in the bathroom and apparently they went out for pancakes? It didn’t make sense and he’s not the best at sharing every finite detail when it comes to anything, but he’s been obsessed ever since.

Every time I come home from class, he’s on the phone with her. Sometimes I'll catch them on the phone in the middle of the night. And when they’re not talking, they’re texting.

I’ve known Jude long enough to know he falls hard and fast for every girl, but he swears this one’s different than the rest. He’s also coming off a bad breakup. His high school girlfriend of two years dumped him last month and he’s been a wreck ever since. His dad always says the best way to get over the old one is to get under a new one—or something like that. So that’s always been Jude’s MO. He’s never single for long. In fact, I don’t even think the dude knows how to be single.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, exhaling. “I was hoping I could finish this paper before we left. I’m on the last section. I’ll probably skip dinner and meet you guys at Meyer’s.”

“Lame,” he says. “As your best friend, brother from another mother, and roommate, I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”

I smirk. “It’s not up to you.”

“Come on. I really want you to meet this girl. She’s nothing like Brittany. You’re going to love her, I promise.”

“And if I don’t love her?”

“Then you’re a fucking idiot. Now come on. She’s going to be here any minute.” He waves for me to stand. “Hustle, Atwood. Move it.”

The way he’s bouncing around on the balls of his feet and flailing his arms reminds me of a kid waiting in line for a super hero movie, already hyped up on sugar and soda. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the man this excited for anything.

Brittany sure as hell didn’t put this kind of pep in his step.

If anything, she brought him down.

Those two were always fighting, always bickering, and always knee-deep in their drama-of-the-week. The day she dumped him, I silently celebrated. I felt guilty of course because Jude was destroyed. He sulked around, refused to go out, and only left his room to go to class. Even then, he’d oversleep and miss half of them.

Last Friday I had to sit him down, tell him to snap the hell out of it, and forced him to go out. Being underage, however, meant our only options for going out were to wander along Farley Street looking for the houses playing music and packed with people.

That’s the night he met this chick—whoever she is.

That’s the night I also met Jovie.

I don’t tend to get hung up on girls, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about her constantly. Despite only sharing a brief conversation, it felt like we were clicking. She had the cutest fucking smile too. Dimples and all. She was gorgeous with wavy blonde hair that stopped at her lower back, eyes bluer than the Pacific. Full lips the color of ripe strawberries.

But more than that, she was witty and funny and genuine and didn’t reek of desperate insecurity like most of the other girls that night, who were falling down drunk and wearing hardly more than a couple squares of fabric on their overly tanned bodies.

I noticed her when we first walked in. She was sitting by herself on the armrest of some sofa, sipping a peach wine cooler and bobbing to the music, her eyes closed. In a world where being alone is a death sentence for most, she was the picture of contentment.

Maybe it was the three beers I’d already chugged, but I decided to shoot my shot.

Everything was going well until she excused herself for a second—and never came back. People do that shit all the time—they walk off to do something, run into someone they know, and get sidetracked. Despite the fact that she never came back, I didn’t take it personally. Odds are I’ll see her around again either on campus or at some random party.

Before my mother passed, she always said, “What’s meant for you will always find you.”

She hasn’t been wrong yet.

In the past nine years, I found a home with Paul and Jude, a hell of a deal on a vintage Mustang the week before my seventeenth birthday, and a full-ride college scholarship to the University of Maine. All things considered, I’m sitting pretty good and my life’s only getting started.

Jude grabs a couple beers from our dorm fridge. We’re getting low, but Jude’s dad comes once a month to visit and he always stocks us up.