Take a Lemon

Janine? The girl in the bathroom was Janine? I was in shock. I had worried about running into her and Jeremy, but I suppose I hadn’t really expected it, not so soon, anyway. The only coherent thought left in my mind was, Don’t let him see me. I pulled Geoff around so that he was between me and them.

“What are you–?” Geoff started to protest.

“Shhh!” I hissed at him, and peered around his arm at the other couple as we danced in place. They were laughing about something, and looked incredibly comfortable with each other. Jeremy seemed to be a much better dancer than Geoff, and Janine followed him almost as though she was reading his mind.

“Why are you leading?” Geoff whispered to me, as I steered us back and forth, not allowing him to turn.

“Never mind,” I whispered back, heart pounding. “Let’s get out of here.”

He tried to drop his hands, but I forced them back into ‘dance position’ and started backing off the dance floor. Jeremy wasn’t looking my way, but I didn’t want to take a chance, and I didn’t let go of Geoff until we were out of the room.

“What was that all about?” Geoff asked when I finally dropped my hands.

“I… I didn’t want them to see me.”

“Who?” he insisted, following me as I hurried back to the table for my purse.

“It doesn’t matter. I have to go.”

“Go? Go where? What are you talking about?”

I stopped. Where was I going to go? It was still early, and I didn’t want to go back to my room, not yet. It would be admitting defeat. I could go to another dance, though, and hadn’t Lee Ann mentioned…? “Danby,” I said. “I’m going to Danby.” That would be a strategic retreat, not surrender.

“OK, I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t need to. I’m the one–”

“Marsh, you’re panicking, and I’m not letting you go out there alone.”

I glared at him. Just because I was a girl now didn’t mean that I was helpless. “I don’t need you to walk me anywhere,” I snapped.

“Hey, if I just let you walk out by yourself, and without telling anybody, Lee Ann will have my head.” As my nostrils flared, he quickly changed his approach. “Look, I know I don’t come off as a serious guy sometimes, but I’m a really good listener, and you look like a girl who needs to talk things out. I can be your sounding board.”

A good listener, huh? I didn’t remember that; of course, it’s not as if I’d ever felt the need to confide in him when we were rooming together, but I did feel the need to unload on somebody, and if he was volunteering… “Fine,” I said. “I’m going to get my coat. You can tell anybody you like and meet me at the door. If you’re not there in five minutes, I’m going by myself.”

He was at the door three minutes later. “Lee Ann says she’ll round up the gang and meet us over there within half an hour.”

I winced. “I don’t want to disturb anybody if they’re having a good time.”

He waved off my concern. “That was the plan anyway. Don’t worry about it.”

He pushed open the door and I followed him into the night. “OK,” he said as we started walking. “You want to tell me, or should I guess?”

I sighed, my breath visible in the brisk December air. “I ran into this boy this morning. I didn’t even know he was a student here, and suddenly I realized both that I had a crush on him and that he had a girlfriend. And I just saw them together. And… yes, I panicked.”

We walked on in silence for a few minutes, while he seemed to try to process what I had just said. “Um… this is a guy you knew from home and you didn’t know that you liked him?”

“The whole situation is really bizarre. I mean, I remembered liking him when I met him, but I didn’t realize… well, actually, I had been thinking about him and all, but… I mean, I knew that I liked him, I just didn’t think I liked him.”

“O… K…”

“And I guess I’d hoped he would like me, too, but it turns out he already had this girl, and that was her.” And it would be so much easier if I just could go back to not liking boys.

“Well, OK, so… yeah, I guess that would hurt a lot.”

I looked at him sideways. “You should know. Doesn’t it hurt you to see Lee Ann with Stephen? How can you bear to be around them?”

“Well… I don’t know that I ever really expected to wind up with Lee Ann. I just kind of hoped.”

“I told you it wasn’t going to happen.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his head, “and Chandra kept telling me I had a chance, and that Lee Ann could be talked into dumping Stephen. I guess she was lying.”

I nodded. “She…” did that to me, too, I thought. “… just doesn’t like him and apparently was hoping to get Lee Ann to dump him.”

“I figured that. That’s sort of one reason I’ve been hanging out with Lee Ann. I mean, I like her as a friend, too, you know? My other choice would have been to be with Rajiv, Mike and Tommy, but Chandra would have been there. On the whole, I’d rather be with you guys. At least Lee Ann was honest with me.”

“So you’re just shrugging it off?”

He sighed. “Not sure what else I’m supposed to do. I thought it was worth the effort, thought I really did have a chance, even though you and she both said no. I guess you live and learn, right?”

“Right.”

So… what are you going to do about your situation?”

“Well, I’m going to look elsewhere, of course. I’ve decided…” I trailed off, suddenly realizing that telling him that I had promised to say yes to the next guy who asked me out would be a bad idea. “I mean, Lee Ann is going to help me figure out who I can see.”

“That’s not something you can figure out for yourself?”

“I don’t know. My heart doesn’t seem very sensible right now.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” he agreed, ruefully.

“You know, Geoff, given the campus ratio, there should be plenty of girls who’d want to be with you.”

“Oh, I’m not worried. There are plenty of girls here, and a lot of them are pretty desperate.”

“But Lee Ann…?”

“I just thought she was something special, and I was hoping for somebody special, that’s all.”

I stopped and peered at him in the light surrounding Danby Hall. This was a serious side of him I’d never seen before, and it touched my heart. Only… had he said it to me just two months ago, I probably would have made a joke about it. That was something that definitely required some additional thought.

Our brief talk had taken some of the edge off of my panic. It still hurt, seeing Jeremy with… her, but as I followed Geoff into Danby, I was starting to feel that I had overreacted. I was distracted enough that I didn’t even realize, as we looked for a place to sit that I had allowed him to help me with my coat.

“Hold on, Geoff,” I said, as we passed a table. I’d spotted Jack, and a quick look showed that he was sitting with Naomi, Alvin, and Nikki, as well as several people I didn’t know.

“Geoff,” I said after I had exchanged greetings with my friends, “this is Nikki, Naomi, Alvin, and Jack. They were part of Mousetrap. Guys, this is my friend Geoff; we were with a bunch of other people who are on their way over here in a bit; we just decided to go on ahead.”

“Well, pull up a couple of chairs until then,” Alvin suggested, and we sat down, with me next to Nikki. She looked back and forth at Geoff and me, a question in her eyes.

She leaned in and whispered, “And who exactly is your… friend?”

“Hmm? I was a bit upset at something that happened at Blair, and Geoff insisted on walking me over here,” I whispered back.

“Oh? What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it in front of…” I gestured with my head.

“You guys mind if Marsh and I take a walk?” Nikki asked aloud.

“Will you be OK?” I asked Geoff, feeling guilty about abandoning him among strangers.

“Seriously, I’ll be fine, Marsh,” Geoff assured me, breaking off from a conversation with Jack.

So Nikki took my arm, and we strolled toward the refreshments table. Once we had gotten to a point where we wouldn’t be overheard, she lowered her voice and said, “OK, spill. What’s going on?”

So once again, I told the story of meeting Jeremy, and realizing my feelings for him, and how crushed I had been when he’d mentioned Janine. I told her how I had met Janine in the bathroom and then noticed her on the dance floor with Jeremy. “… so I freaked out and Geoff walked me here,” I finished.

“Well, excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor,” she commented when I was finished. “So, suddenly you do like boys, now?”

“Apparently,” I muttered. “I’m still reeling.”

“So, this boy is a rebound thing, then?”

“Who? Geoff? No, he’s just a friend. In fact, he was my roommate, a couple months ago, when I was male.”

“Really?” her eyebrows arched. “And does he know that? About being just a friend, I mean?”

“I…” I stared at her. “I assume so. I mean, he must, right? Ugh. I don’t know anything about this. It was so much easier when I was a guy. I didn’t have any of these problems. I mean I never had a painful crush on a girl I couldn’t have. I understood the rules. I need to be a guy again…”

“And is that likely?”

“I don’t know…” I sighed. The last time I spoke with Eric, he said he had some ideas, but nothing’s happened yet, so I’m still at ‘stuck as a girl.’”

“So having Geoff as a possibility is a good thing then, right?”

“No!” I said, emphatically. “In the first place, I’m not even all that sure that I’m attracted to boys in general. The only one I know for sure I like is Jeremy – well, Jeremy and Phil, I guess – but despite what his girlfriend thinks, I’m not interested in him.”

“Uh huh,” Nikki said, smugly.

“Look, why don’t we just get back to the table?” I suggested, feeling my face turning red. “They’re probably wondering what happened to us.”

“Lead the way…”