Watched by belladet
I, too, would throw myself in front of a train for a man as fine as Vronsky, even if he’s blonde. And has a mustache. And is Russian. Safe to say, Vronsky is not my “type.” But I do love men who look a little bit pathetic, so he checks off one box.
My freshman-year boyfriend and I met at a game club one night in September. My roommate and I both wanted something to do to meet people, and she found a flyer for a game club where they met in a few classrooms in Mason Hall to play games. Board games, card games, Nintendo games, and sometimes Wii if a member brings it in. It’s one of the nerdiest things I’ve ever done. We’d already been a couple of times before. Made acquaintances with a few people, got numbers, and had friendly conversations enough so we could text each other to say, “hey, r u going to game club tn?” But these were all game club friends, no hang-out-in-my-dorm friends. Not yet, at least.
The semantics of how we met aren’t significant enough to remember. But I remember getting ice cream after spending hours playing Catan or this Japanese game an international student taught us.
You know that jump-start in your heart when you meet someone and think, “This could work?” You don’t even know each other yet, but god, there’s something there, isn’t there? It’s the anticipation of something new, struggling to sleep the night before a field trip, or waiting minutes before an audition—the possibility. Drunk on the excitement of college boyfriends.
We walk behind the group, knocking elbows and brushing arms, in our own conversation, hauling across the diag. I get moose tracks, and he gets some weird fruit flavor, which, in hindsight, was a red flag, but I find it endearing. The group makes camp in the diag to eat. Sitting under the ugly yellow haze of diag street lamps. The wind blows through the trees, carrying the whisper of fall. I feel my cheeks heat up, and I giggle and act like a silly girl. He smiles, and we talk and talk and talk and talk. Simple stuff: Where are you from? Oh, Kentucky, that’s so cool. I’m an acting major. Oh, psych, that must be…tiring!
We sit for about an hour and a half. Ice cream melts down my hand, and he offers me his napkin. Even though he’s in much worse shape, chocolate coating his wrist. I take it anyway and tear it in half. One for me and one for him. He dips his head, and his hair falls forward, covering his eyes in a coy way that again paints a blush on my cheeks. He smiles. I smile.
My roommate drags me back home, and on the walk to Martha, we link arms and stumble over each other's excitement. I gush, and she gushes over me gushing. When we enter the dorm, I leap face-first into my bed. My roommate sits at my feet.
“You liiiiiiiiiiike him.”
I tackle her and shove my pillow in her face.
For all the bad things at the end of our relationship, which weren’t even that bad, just dull, there will always be the start of something new. The awkward conversations, never really knowing much about each other but too much simultaneously. I can deny, deny, deny, tell my friends he was a coward, noncommital, and didn’t communicate. It doesn’t erase the blush that painted my face when we first bumped elbows walking to Michigan Creamery.
Although I didn’t throw myself in front of a train for this man, I cried when we broke up. It was more out of anger over a lot of built miscommunication, but the tears were still very real and red hot. This was after he wanted to break up over text. Yeah, you read that right. Text.
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We had been dating for 6 months, and this boy wanted to end things with me over 1’s and 0’s. A binary breakup. If there’s anything he should’ve known about me, I am not the one. So we did it in my all-female dorm, sitting on my bed. He couldn’t even look me in the eyes. Fidgeted with my yellow Barnes and Noble twin comforter like it could swallow him whole and save the shame I'm sure he was feeling. After it was final, I had to walk him down to the exit because guys aren't allowed in Martha unchaperoned. He finally looked at my face and opened his arms for a hug—the naudacity. I couldn’t contain the laugh that shot out of me. His face got red and twisted up in anger, and he hurled the door open, stormed off into the snow and left my life.
Whenever freshman year crosses my mind, which isn’t often at all, I think about that first night and how I was in love with the idea of love. I look forward to that everywhere: meeting a stranger's eyes on the bus, bumping into someone leaving a building. Every late night Rick's line, chatting with the guys in front of us playing heads up on our phones.
So, if you know any Vronsky’s out there, give him my number.
