Part I ~ Part II ~ Part III
The Kris Story, Part IV
or...My Screw-Up
4.9.8
I stood there in the street just watching as she walked away. I was completely stunned by what had just happened. It was as if I had been talking to an entirely different person (I didn't know it then, but I would have plenty of time to get used to this new Kris).
Over the next few days, I did everything I could to reason with her. I wrote her several notes, which she didn't respond to; I tried to talk to her in the halls, but she was avoiding me. Before I knew it, the school week had ended and February 14th was upon us. I didn't see her at all that night. Incidentally, that was the last time I would ever make plans to celebrate that ridiculous holiday, as the next year would see the birth of my annual Anti-Valentine's Day party.
The next morning, I heard about her night only through rumors and secondhand accounts. According to the grapevine, Kris had ended up spending Valentine's Day with Stephanie after all. Furthermore, it was believed that she had indeed done ecstasy and even slept with someone. I refused to accept the news as anything more than hearsay until I had talked to her, though. I finally got my chance when I saw her in the courtyard. As I approached her, she was surprisingly receptive.
I asked her about the ecstasy rumor and she eased my mind, informing me that it wasn't true. Unfortunately, she couldn't say the same thing about the other allegation. Somehow, mere days after ending our supposedly serious relationship, she had decided to lose her virginity by "fucking some guy" at a party. I didn't understand how she could have done that, but I resolved to forgive her nonetheless. In a way, I blamed myself, believing that I had somehow pushed her into this with my previous outburst. Besides...forgiveness, I assumed, came standard when it came to "unconditional love."
Over the next few days we once again started hanging out, this time strictly as friends. I still wanted her back, of course, and was beginning to piece together exactly how I would complete such a task. The relationship was obviously strained, but for the most part all was going well.
The night of her birthday, I was feeling particularly ballsy.
We were finally alone, having dropped off the last of our friends. Because we were still forbidden to see each other, I was dropping her off by the same mailboxes she had hidden behind the night of our premature escape. It was there that I made my move. We sat there in awkward conversation for awhile before I finally leaned in to kiss her. As I did this, I reached over and took her hand in mine. Remembering our previous unsettled bet, I had palmed a dollar bill beforehand, which I then left in her hand. "You win," I said to her as our lips parted. She then smiled sweetly and exited the car.
It seemed like such a smooth action on my part and I was certain it would prove to be the first step towards our reconciliation. I was dead wrong on that count, though.
There was to be no reconciliation. Instead, the next year became an endless cycle of false hope and disappointment for me. There would be other similar instances where we found ourselves kissing, but they were few and far between. They came with vague explanations from her like, "I don't know. I guess I just wanted to kiss you." Furthermore, those tender moments were marred by the vast periods of abuse surrounding them.
Basically, she made it a point to sleep with as many people as possible, especially when I was around. It was as if her first time had opened some kind of sexual floodgate. At parties, she would immediately find someone to drunkenly attach herself to. I say without exaggeration that this almost always led to sex. One time, at a camping party in the woods, she even pulled a guy into my tent to fuck him on my sleeping bag. I slept in my car that night, wishing I had the ability to simply run the tent down. In a slightly less dramatic response, I instead burned the tent to the ground after they exited the next morning.
Most people would have lost that lovin' feeling after mere months, weeks, or days of this. My problem, however, was my ability to rationalize her actions. Kris' biological father (this was how she always referred to him) had walked out on her mother when she was too young to form lasting memories. A stepfather, whom she considered to be her "real" dad, had done the same thing years later. This left Kris with an extreme case of abandonment issues. She cried about these events on a regular basis (Everclear's Father of Mine, for example, never failed to illicit a stream of tears).
I felt enough sympathy for her plight that I allowed myself to accept that the promiscuity, binge drinking and drug use were simply unintentional psychological responses to this sad past of hers. I convinced myself that I just needed to be there for her. Surely, one day she would realize that her father's actions had nothing to do with her, at which point she would magically snap out of this phase. When this day came, I wanted to be the one that had stood by her every step of the way. She would then finally be capable of loving again.
As ridiculous as that sounds in retrospect, it seemed reasonable enough to my stupid teenaged heart at the time. I put up with a lot of shit while waiting for her to come around, though. A couple of events in particular strike me as being exceptionally offensive now.
The first event was really quite minor in the long run, but devastating at the time. Kris had, for some reason, agreed to attend prom with me. While I certainly didn't expect too much from the night, I was at least happy that I would be spending it with her. Unfortunately, she had other plans. The majority of my night was spent trying to find her, as she did absolutely everything she could to avoid being around me. She spent a rather large portion of the dance in the girl's bathroom, even. Finally, towards the end, she actually allowed herself to be spotted near me long enough for us to take our prom picture. As we posed for the shot, the photographer directed us to get closer together. Just before snapping the picture he jokingly commented, "Try to pretend that you actually like each other." His unintentional wisdom made it hard for me to smile. Her expression showed no remorse.
The next event occurred towards the end of my senior year. My grades had slipped severely due to my constant road trips and the emphasis I had placed on Kris over my schoolwork. Essentially, I was given one last chance to finish high school on time, but it meant that I would have to work my ass off until graduation day. Any screw-up on my part would stop me from being able to walk with the rest of my class.
Well, it just so happened that one afternoon, as I was hanging out with everyone at Carl's house...my screw-up decided to dial his number.
To be continued...
