Page 9 of The Keeper
“Thank the Lord,” I mumble, and my hands resume scrubbing the shampoo.
“No, this isn’t about him. This is…” there’s a pause. A long pause. So I know she’s trying to summon up the courage to tell me whatever it is. “I had sex with Jeremy.”
My hands stop moving in my hair, shampoo forgotten, and I feel all of the color drain from my face. I grab the shower curtain and practically rip it off as I pull it back to see Charlie sitting on the toilet, exactly how I had pictured her.
“You what!?” I shout, completely uncaring about standing buck naked in front of my roommate, with the water still on and now splashing off of my body and onto the floor.
“I’m sorry, RJ,” she says quickly, tucking herself further into her body. “I should have told you about it. I told myself over and over that it was wrong for me to keep this secret from you. But I just didn’t want you to hate me for sleeping with your brother. Your friendship means too much to me. He said we shouldn’t ever tell you because you would be really upset. So I just never said anything.”
My face scrunches up in confusion.
“Wait a minute, when did this happen?”
“Freshman year.”
“What!?” I shout again. My eyes fall shut. I cross my arms over my breasts, lifting a hand to squeeze at the bridge of my nose. “So, I tell my brother to stay away from you because I don’t want to ruin our friendship and he immediately goes and gets you into bed? I am going tomurderhim.”
“Oh my god, RJ, pleasepleaseplease you can’t tell him I told you!” Charlie’s face is contorted in some weird mix of mortified and terrified. “We promised each other we wouldn’t ever say anything about it since both of us said it didn’t mean anything. It just turns out I might have been lying when I said it, and he wasn’t. I’m only telling you now because I feel like you’re owed an explanation for why I react the way I do sometimes when I’m around him.”
I let out a long breath and swipe the shampoo that is now trickling down my forehead away from my eyes. I’m trying to formulate the words I want to say without sounding like a bitch.
“Charlie, I get it. The way you act is howmostwomen feel after he sleeps with them and then breaks things off. I dealt with enough broken hearts asking me why he didn’t want to date them when we were freshmen. But Itoldyou this about my brother before you even met him. I specifically told you that he was bad news from a relationship standpoint and not to fall for his shit. I mean, after all of the guys you’ve slept with, why is he the one that has you all up in knots and unable to move on?”
She looks at me a bit confused.
“Maybe you just don’t understand because you haven’t had sex with anyone before.”
I roll my eyes.
“You don’t get to pull the virgin card here, okay? Just because I haven’t had sex before doesn’t mean I don’t understand that it can have an emotional impact. I just don’t understand what it is about Jeremy that has you hung up on him three years later.” And then I quickly add, “And your explanation better have nothing to do with his penis.”
Her mouth tips up at the side, and I see her trying to hold in a laugh.
“I’m not saying you don’t understand because you’re a virgin. I’m saying you don’t understand because you don’t know the difference between your first time, and every other time. Your first time changes everything.”
I pause and look at her.
“You were a virgin when you slept with Jeremy?” She nods. “But I thought… I mean, when we moved in together freshman year you used to talk about the guys from high school that you’d hooked up with.”
“Oh, don’t assume I was completely innocent. I definitely had my fun in high school,” she says, grabbing her hair and pulling it forward across one shoulder. She lets out a sigh as she starts picking at the tips of her hair. “But I was a virgin until Jeremy.”
I sit down on the edge of the tub and stare at the drain, trying to reorganize the past few years to try and better understand. Charlie was a virgin when she slept with Jeremy. Does that mean that her one-night-stand-a-thon for the past three years wasbecauseof Jeremy? Because she was trying to forget the person she gave her first time to? And all those times she talked about him, but pretended she wasn’t interested, she was pretending because she knew I didn’t want them together? My jaw tightens as I realize that Jeremy must have slept with her and then used me as an excuse to discard her.
“I’m so sorry, Char. I didn’t know.”
She shrugs and stands up.
“Well, now you do. So, can you promise me you won’t tell your brother?”
I look at her for a moment, unsure whether I can really make that promise. When I finally nod at her, she leans over and kisses my forehead.
“You’re a great friend, RJ. Thanks for not kicking my ass for handing my flower to your brother.” I shake my head and let out a chuckle. I hate when she calls it a flower. As I stand and begin to close the shower curtain, she adds “And your ass looks amazing, by the way. That extra training is totes paying off.”
I glance over and find her grinning at me before she pulls the door closed and I’m left with my thoughts.
* * * * *
The doorbell rings at 12:45. Having been ready and wandering aimlessly around our apartment for nearly an hour, I come flying down the stairs with such energy that I nearly slip on the tile near the entry.
