Picking Up the Pieces

  I remember feeling crushed the night Dena and I officially talked it over and broke up. Although she tried to make it seem like it was a mutual decision. It wasn’t. In my mind she dumped me. Not only that, she dumped me for a shopping cart boy that looked like a frog in glasses.

  I was almost inconsolable that night. Dan Herrington was having one of those weekend parties at his parent’s house and he and George pulled me aside to help cheer me up. It worked to some degree, but I was still upset.

  I believe it was one of the last parties of it’s kind at this house. Dan’s parents were selling the house and moving to a neighboring town. The last party here, it was Dan that was having relationship issues. He was angry about something, and to help him, Jay told Dan to hit him as hard as he could and cupped his hands to receive the blow. Dan took him up on the offer and the impact knocked Jay back and put Jay’s shoulder through the wall. Dan introduced everyone who arrived to his new friend “the hole in the wall” and took it in stride. His plan was to fix the wall before his parents got home from their trip. Unfortunately, the wall paper was from the seventies and was not made any more. Not only that, but this style wall paper wrapped around the whole living room dining room and down the hall. In the end, he re-wallpapered the whole house as a “surprise” for his parents. They were surprised as the house was sold and they would not benefit from all that work. In hindsight, they were suspicious and about a week or two later, they got him when they found a Zima bottle cap in the dishwasher. His father called him in and all he said while holding the bottle cap was “Do I kill you now?” …and after all the work Dan put in… how’s that for gratitude?

  I was usually the one that chauffeured people around and mostly get Dena home in time for curfew. Now that I didn’t need to do that I would be able to crash at whatever place the party was so I actually started drinking alcohol socially. By now I was only a few months shy of 21. Half of my friends were already 21 by now. The first party that I really started drinking at was at Paul’s house and someone brought a friend from school with her and introduced her to me as Deana. I just said “Dena? Ugh…” and turned away, making a horrible first impression. We’ve been great friends ever since.  

  During the next six months or so I had become more social than I had been the previous year. However, because I told Dena that we were always be friends, she took that as an opportunity to torture me by visiting me at work and tell me stories about what they’ve done and it ate me up inside. The healthy thing to have done would have told her I couldn’t see her anymore, but I wanted nothing more than to “win her back”. It was almost like a badge of honor because I was better than THAT guy. Now,  I don’t think she deliberately tortured me, but at times I thought she did. Truth was, I was pretty much her only other friend besides her boyfriend that she could confide in. I went through the whole gamut of emotions the day she told me she was pregnant with the frog’s ‘love child’.  And again when she told me about her plans for an abortion… and again when she stopped by my job on her way home from her from the procedure. I mean, the fact he didn’t even accompany her for that boggles the mind…