Dumped on New Year's Eve. Brutal. Humiliating. And also... not so bad.
Ben parked in the driveway of his crappy little college house, a three-bedroom hovel he shared with two miscreants who wouldn't be invited back for their senior years if they weren't careful. Usually he had to fight for the driveway spot, but both roomies were out-of-town for the Christmas break. Oddly, he was kinda hoping one of them would be here when he arrived. Would've been nice to talk to someone...
He turned the car off, and with it the CD player. "Peaceful Easy Feeling" by The Eagles had been playing, "their" song, selected by Wendy, of course. Wendy commanded his car's CD selection every single trip. "Fucking Eagles," he muttered to himself, as he pulled his wallet from his back pocket. He took out the picture she forced him to pose for, at that cheesy place at the mall, Glamour Memories or some shit. He looked like a dancer in a Madonna video, and she looked like, well, like Wendy. She was beautiful.
Ben walked to the house, unlocked the door and stepped over the small pile of mail, pushed through the slot in the door. He plopped down in the recliner with the cracked leather and intended to watch some TV, to get his mind off Wendy. Just as he aimed the remote at the television, he saw a paper grocery sack on the floor, just in front of the hallway. He went to see what was in it.
One of the guys, apparently, had forgotten to take his loot with him. Two bottles of pop, raided from the fridge, both with Ben's initials on the lids. A roll of cookie dough, also Ben's, and a box of spaghetti noodles, theirs not his. Plus about seven VHS tapes.
The tape at the top of the stack caught his eye -- "Nikki," written in black marker on a plain white label. It was porn, and not just any porn. It was Ben's porn.
"Charles, you cocksucker," Ben muttered under his breath. That rat bastard had intended to "borrow" Ben's porn for his road trip, and probably got away with a few tapes in the grocery sacks he didn't forget. But hold on a sec. Charles, that libidinous sex pervert, had left for his parent's house on Saturday. This was Friday of the following week, and Ben had been in and out of the house dozens of times since then.
The pop bottles were cold to the touch. Someone set that bag there very recently.
A sound from down the hall, something knocked over or knocked against. Who the hell could be in the house? Ben immediately predicted he'd find Charles back early from his vacation. He walked down the hall and looked in Charles' room. No one there. But the door to Ben's room was closed.
"Damn it," Ben said as he burst into his own room, expecting to find Charles, or maybe Carl, jerking off on his bed.
Instead, he found a girl standing there, who screamed at the top of her lungs when Ben startled her. She'd been holding a stack of VHS tapes—Ben's porn—and they flew across the room when she screamed, hitting the wall with a clatter. She saw Ben, said, "Jesus," leaned against the wall, pressed her hands to her racing heart, said "Jesus" again.
"Tamara?" Ben said.
"Uh, hey," Tamara said. She almost seemed to be playing it cool, the way Ben would if he'd just gotten caught doing something wrong. That certainly didn't seem like Tamara. She was always so above-board.
"Hello," Ben said, unable to think of anything else.
"I should go," Tamara said. Then, nothing. Neither of them moved.
"I guess I have to ask..." Ben started. Then he noticed that a porn video was actually playing on the TV in his room, with the sound down. "Are you stealing my..." He couldn't say the word "porn." Blood pounded red in his cheeks.
Tamara's cheeks were red, too. "Oh my god," she said, unable to look at Ben. "Can I just leave now? God, oh my god."
Ben laughed without meaning to. Because the laughter surprised him, he tried to suppress it, but then he snorted, and that made him laugh harder. Tamara laughed, too, and soon they were going at it hard, the way only close friends can. After a few seconds, they were holding their sides in pain. Tamara, doubled over with one hand on the bed, pleaded through tears, "Stop, please stop."
"You stop," Ben said, which made him laugh harder.
"I can't!" Tamara yelled.
They found themselves sitting next to one another on the edge of the bed, shaking with after-giggles, still unable to look at one another. Finally, mercifully, they sat breathing way too hard, still coughing around the occasional chuckle.
Tamara reached out and turned off the TV, banishing the image of two hardcore lovers. "I'm so embarrassed," she said, her hand pressed to her mouth.
"I don't see why," Ben said. "It's my porn you're stealing."
They both burst into laughter again. When Tamara leaned against Ben's arm, struggling to gain her composure, he began to know they'd get through this, at least short-term, without any lingering ill-effects on their friendship.
Not that they were friends in the strictest sense of the word. Tamara was Benjamin's sister's roommate. His sister, Beverly, also his twin, had been parading Tamara around Ben for the past twelve or thirteen years, and in a contest to see who most closely fit the bill for his third sibling, Tamara would have won hands down. Same age, same friends, same classes in school, same parties -- as kids they had all three been very close, unless the girls were ganging up on Ben, or Ben and Bev were sharing a "twin moment" which Tam couldn't quite grasp. Close moments between Ben and Tam were less frequent, but they did occur. Now Tam and Bev shared an apartment, as well as, obviously, a key to Ben's house and the knowledge that he kept a porn stash in his room.
"You're hoping I won't ask," Ben said.
"Do you even need to??"
"Uh, yeah!"
"Well, duh, Ben. I'm stealing your porn."
"What for?"
Tamara rolled her eyes. She stood, putting distance between them. "What do you think it's for?"
Ben blinked. "I know what I use it for." A looooong silence. "I guess I just never thought of you as..." Another silence. "... someone who... liked to..."
Tamara fell back against the wall, then slid into a puddle on the floor. "Oh my GOD."
"I'm more curious," Ben said, changing the subject, "how you know I have this stuff."
Tamara blew out some air, regaining composure. "Hell, Bev and I knew you watched porn back in junior high."
"JUNIOR HIGH? Oh... my... I... want to die... until I am dead."
The girl on the floor chuckled. "Benjamin, buddy, wake up. I'm not taking it so I can rat you out. I mean... we've also been... you know... since junior high."
"Ummmmmmmmm..." Ben had no words, what with the questions and images flooding his mind. What was Tamara trying to tell him? That she and Beverly had... well... WHAT was she trying to tell him?
Tamara said, "I think I'm gonna throw up." She really looked like she might.
"Why?"
"This is just so embarrassing."
"For you or for me?"
"For both of us."
Finally, Ben found a lifeline he could follow back to reality. "Well look, Tamara, if that's all that's bothering you, I mean... I can keep a secret if you can."
Tamara chewed the tip of a fingernail. "It's a start."
"And also..." Ben searched for just the right words. "I mean, we can either both be embarrassed about this, or we can both decide NOT to be embarrassed, and either way we'll be on equal ground, since no one knows this ever happened anyway."
The girl took another deep breath. "Keep talking."
"Except..."
"Except what?"
"Except I know you tell Beverly everything. EV. Ree. Thing."
Tamara shrugged. "I don't have to. There's a first time for everything."
Ben laughed. "Oh ho ho. So you're telling me, that one day next month, you won't confess you came to steal these tapes, just so you and Bev could have a good laugh about it?"
