the bluebird

The semester is almost over. Everything is winding down; the bars are less crowded.  There’s almost no one in line to get in at The Bluebird tonight, and Nicole chats it up with this new guy, Paul, from one of her Informatics lectures. Nicole’s the only person I know who would willingly make a friend the last few weeks of class. It’s like she’s genuinely comfortable being uncomfortable. She wears a white frilly dress that I didn’t know she had, and I wear a skirt and boots and a plain black t-shirt. She wears a leather jacket, but I told myself I’d be fine without one.When we arrive, there’s a $5 cover charge because a band is playing. I roll my eyes at Nicole as we hand the bouncer folded up $5 dollar bills. He doesn’t ask for our IDs.

We both order the special, a Blue Moon beer with a shot of blueberry vodka dumped inside. We’re not sure what to say to each other, but it’s nice to be out and not at a frat. Everyone here looks like they’re from Smallwood or Tenth & College. The girls all wear designer skinny jeans and strappy Michael Kors heels with flowy tops that open in the back to reveal their bodies. Their hair is stick straight from salon chemicals. The guys wear baggy jeans and flannels that probably cost over a hundred dollars or crew neck sweaters. Their hair is slicked with gel. They wear thin, chain-link necklaces.  

“Stop staring at them,” Nicole tells me and is almost done with her drink, tipping the glass backwards, her mouth wide.

“They want to be stared at. Their whole lives are centered around getting people to stare at them.”  

“Yeah but like, let’s just not be weird.”

“I like being weird.”

“I’ve noticed,” Nicole says, and I don't know what her problem is. I mean, I know she’s mad about me leaving the Little 5 party early, but like, is she going to get over it? Is she just going to stay mad forever and hold this against me for the rest of the year? The rest of our lives?

The band is setting up to play, and I motion to Nicole that we might as well go into the other room and watch. The stage is in a separate area of the bar, a back room free of tables and chairs so people can dance or sway or just watch and hangout.   

I see Buzz setting up on stage, his long blonde hair and oversized tie-dye shirt unmistakable in this crowd. I elbow Nicole. I’ve been lucky not to run into any of Coley’s friends since the breakup, which is odd and not odd at the same time. It’s a huge campus of over 40,000 people. But still, there are only so many bars, so many restaurants, so many streets we all share.  

“Maybe we should go,” I say and sip my drink faster, eyeing the crowd forming around us.

“Maybe Coley won’t be here,” Nicole says.

“Coley never misses a show. What the hell else would he be doing?”

“True. Well, I think we should stay. I'm going to get another one.”

Nicole heads back to the bar. I check my phone and see that Asher Levin texted me, sup cutie? Nicole would kill me if I left the bar to meet up with him, so I just reply, @ bluebird. There’s a closeness I feel to him that I can’t escape, and I wonder if we’ll talk through summer, if he’ll get some girlfriend when he’s interning or working or whatever. I think about his eyes and how when he looks at me it’s like I'm sinking where I stand.  

Just then I see Coley out of the corner of my eye. He’s been staring at me and I understand now how weird it is for someone to stare. He’s wearing jeans and sneakers with a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a bomber jacket that looks warm and comfortable. He needs a haircut, but otherwise he looks good. He’s drinking a Bud Light and I can tell he’s high.

“I thought you hated this place,” Coley says and passes the beer bottle back and forth between his hands. He settles and then starts picking the label off the bottle with his nails that are so short they look painful.

“Nicole wanted to come,” I say and sip my Bluebird Special. I look around but I don’t see any of his other friends.

“Where is she?”

“She went to get another drink. What time are they supposed to start?” I motion to Buzz who is plugging in various cords to speakers and every so often a loud noise erupts and jolts him and the crowd. He’s probably stoned too.

“Uhh, it might be a while,” Coley says. “You know, I had an interview last week.”

“Really? For what?” I ask and then realize how strange it is to be talking to him like this. We’d been together for four years. I’d lost my virginity to him back in high school. We had four years of fast food and teenage fucking, of concerts at the West Palm Beach amphitheater, of sleepovers at each other’s houses, trips to Disney World. I still had the letters he wrote me in a shoebox in my closet, notes that we slipped each other in the halls between classes. And now here I am talking to him like we’re strangers meeting for the first time at a bar. He’s different and the same all at once. He was my first love, and probably the person who knows me best.

“It’s for a law firm in New York. Maybe I’ll follow in my dad’s footsteps after all.”

“That’s great. How do you think it went?”

“I think it went well. I’d be starting at the bottom, you know, but I can work my way up, and I’d have to eventually take the Bar and all that.”

I look towards the bar for Nicole, and I see her flirting with some guy in a camouflage hat. I sigh and look back at Coley who looks like he might cry.

“I don't know what I did,” he starts, “but I'm really sorry. And I miss you. This is hard for me, you have to know, to say this, that like, I miss you. I just…if I would have known what was coming, I would have made things better.”

I don't know if I believe him, but I put my hand on his face and his cheek is stubbly but soft, the baby fat of his face resting on my fingertips. He looks so sad and I feel the world turning on its axis, something shifting below me, inside me, around us, and I tell Coley we should get out of here. I think back to months ago meeting Alya Lansky in the bathroom at Kilroy’s, the way she said, You just don’t do that to a nice Jewish boy.  Where’s your loyalty? Her voice was shrill and scratchy from cigarettes, but it stuck with me, that guilt, the idea that I’d wronged my people by ending things, wanting to find myself because I’d been so lost. But I'm still lost. Time has passed, and I'm still searching.

I set my glass on the nearest table and Coley tosses his beer in the trash. Soon we’re out in the cold and he takes off his bomber jacket and puts it around me. Coley takes my hand, and we walk to his place. It’s only a few short blocks away, but we don’t speak, our hands clasped so tightly to one another.  

We get into his house and all the lights are off. Upstairs in his room, everything is still a mess like it was before, but we leave the lights off. I fall back onto Coley’s bed, and he sidles up next to me. I turn my back to him, and I can feel his dick hardening against my back. It’s a routine of ours, he gets me off before we have sex, so he won’t feel bad if he comes fast. I arch back into him and moan and don't care because no one’s home and the house is dark and it’s just us. I pull my underwear down but keep my skirt on and he fingers my clit and I come fast. I turn over and he takes his jeans and t-shirt off and fucks me from behind. I don’t ask him to use a condom. I trust he hasn’t been with anyone, except that stupid girl in Spain, but I doubt things ever got this far, and I'm on the pill anyway, so it’s fine. Bottom line, I trust him, and I always will. There will always be a special place for Coley in my heart, a warm feeling. Even years from now, he will email me occasionally to ask how my parents are doing. It’s that type of love, something sweet and innocent.  

When Coley finishes, I go to the bathroom to pee and a cloud of his semen emerges in the toilet. I flush it away. I take one of the blue towels, which I know for a fact are his, and run water over it under the sink and clean myself up. I go back to Coley’s room and start to dress again.

“What now?” Coley asks. He’s turned the lights on. His posters are peeling away from the wall and papers are overflowing in his garbage can. I think of what a waste they are to not be recycled properly, and there’s maybe twenty mostly empty water bottles on all surfaces of the room. The hangers hang empty and useless in the closet and his clothes are draped over his dresser. There’s no comforter on his bed anymore, and I wonder if it’s in the laundry or just gone. Coley’s put his boxer briefs back on. He seems to be in better shape than before, his arms have some muscle on them, and his stomach is less of a gut and more toned.   

A car pulls up outside and lingers with its engine idling. I hear the faint sounds of a girl being dropped off next-door, exchanging goodbyes with whoever it was she’s with, and I try to imagine myself as her for a second. Sometimes there is such a strong urge to transport myself into the body of someone else, to evaporate from where I stand and trade places with another being who doesn’t suffer so much, who doesn’t think so much about every little thing and make it their weight to bear. What would it be like to be her, to be in that car driving home, not thinking, just listening to music on the radio or looking out the window without excruciating fear? What is it like to say “see you later” and “okay then” and “sure thing” and mean it and be okay with the freedom that comes with such words. When you don’t live in a world of obsessions and anxieties and worries. I want to know.  I want to live a life outside of my own. The ease of life, how the sun doesn’t worry about clouds or rain, how the trees sway but don’t fall down.

“Rockits?” I suggest because it’ll make me seem cool, like I'm okay with eating pizza after midnight. All those calories, who cares?

We put our coats back on and Coley lets me wear his bomber jacket again. We walk the few blocks back to the same street corner as The Bluebird, as Rockits is across the street. On weeknights, you can get dollar slices of cheese or pepperoni. Coley gets pepperoni, and I get cheese. He pays, and we share a can of Coke. We stand on the curb, and eat the slices that are dripping onto flimsy paper plates.

“Come to New York with me,” Coley says, throwing his empty, greasy plate in the trash and motioning for the can of Coke.  

“Coley,” I say and then catch Nicole out of the corner of my eye across the street.  She doesn’t see me, but she’s with the camouflage hat guy and he has his hands around her waist. They look deeply in love the way two drunken strangers can look at this hour.

“You know I love you,” Coley says. “I want you to move to New York after you graduate. We can get married. We can have a family someday.”

I wonder if an offer like this comes once in a lifetime, and if by rejecting Coley, I am slighting future versions of myself for the rest of my life. But I also know that I do not love him in the way that ends with a move across the country, with a marriage, with a family. I can’t just make myself love him more deeply because it’s the right thing to do, because he’s Jewish and I'm Jewish and we belong together for that sole reason. I can’t be with him just because it’s comfortable, just because we’ve known each other for so long and know nothing else.

“I can’t,” I say. “You know that.”

Coley nods and the conversation isn’t really over, but there’s also nothing left to say. He sees that I'm transfixed by Nicole.

“She can handle herself,” he says, but I don’t answer. He starts walking back towards his place, and I beeline over to Nicole, tossing my half-eaten pizza in the trash.

“Nicole!” I call to her, as she’s about to walk away with the camouflage hat guy.

“You!” she yells back, and I can tell she’s mad but too drunk to really cause a scene. “Where the hell did you go? Oh wait, never mind, I know. You fucked Coley. You just like, can’t have one night alone without a guy. You ditched me.”

“I'm sorry,” I say. “Something came over me, I don’t know, but I'm sorry. I should have just texted you. But I was planning on coming back! Look, I'm here!”

“Well, we’re leaving, so good timing.”

“Where are you going? You know you can’t bring them back to the Phi.”

“Jesse says there’s a party at Tenth & College…”

“This…person knows someone at Tenth & College?” I motion towards Jesse who not only is wearing the aforementioned camouflage hat, but is also in cargo pants and hunting boots smoking a cigarette.

“Put that out! It’s bad for your lungs!” Nicole chides him and he laughs. A friend has joined, another guy who is bald and also smoking.

“I guess that’s okay,” I say. “Since Alyssa and Paige will probably be there because of Simon…”

“Stop overanalyzing! I'm fine. I'm just tipsy, but these guys aren’t getting in my pants.” She says it loud enough for them to hear.

“Your dress, you mean,” Jesse says, and I hate him.

“You can come,” Nicole says, and looks at me in a way that lets me know she still loves me, even though I did a shitty thing. It’s a look that is forgiving and an apology all in one because she knows she’s difficult too, always meeting these types of people and going off with them, trusting in this way, being so open and free.

“I'm okay,” I say. “I'm going to call Sober Sister and go home. But I love you.”

“I love you too,” Nicole says. “I just…I wish you’d think about your friends a little more before you do shit. Or like, at least think about me more. It feels really freaking shitty, you know, that you keep leaving me for…dicks! Like literal dicks. What ever happened to bros before hoes?”

Nicole’s right, and I feel like an ass. And maybe I caught her in a good state of mind; maybe drunk Nicole is being more kind to me than she should be in this moment.

The boys finish their cigarettes and turn to start walking away without Nicole.

“You just have to like…do some reflection,” Nicole says, and looks at me in a way that I know no matter what, we’ll always be friends. But I can’t help but feel terrible about everything, still. I want to make things better.  

“Hey, wait up y’all!” Nicole turns to run towards the boys who turn and wait for her, accept her into their stride, and they walk away together. And then I'm the one who’s been left alone, and yeah, it feels really fucking shitty.  

I realize I'm still wearing Coley’s bomber jacket. I have no idea what to do with it, how to get it back to him after the night we’ve just had. I put my nose to my left shoulder and smell the jacket, which smells strongly of Coley, his Ralph Lauren cologne and a slight smell of weed. It’s such a nice jacket, probably the nicest one he owns, so I take my phone out and call him. He answers on the first ring but is silent.

“I forgot to give you back your jacket,” I say into the phone, the service is bad even though we’re not so far apart. His place is only a few blocks away, and he’s probably made it home already.

“I don’t care,” he says.

“Can I just come drop it off on your stoop or something?” I ask.

“You’re a fucking bitch,” he says, and he’s crying. “I fucking hate myself and I hate you, and I don't know why you have to do this.”

“I just want to give you the jacket,” I say, and I'm walking towards his house now, sobbing and trying to take deep breaths.

“Please don't come here, I just want to be alone.”

“I just…I just want you to…have this back,” I get out.

“Fuck you!”

“I'm going to…leave it…on the door knob…okay?” I’ve started running.

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!” he hangs up.

Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. She has led workshops for UCLA’s Extension, The Porch, HerStry, Write or Die, Lighthouse Writers, and Stanford. She is a 3x Pushcart Prize Nominee, and her work has been featured in The Sun, MUTHA, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Joyland, and more. She is the author of the essay collection The Perpetual Motion Machine (Red Hen Press) and the novel The Brittanys (Vintage).  She has a forthcoming novel with CLASH Books called The Style of Your Life. Her Substack is taking the stairs.