This story is a fantasy based very loosely on actual events and real people. As always, any similarities to any persons, places, or things, or anything you have heard before is a complete accident.
*****
I lay in bed the next morning, thinking I was going to die.
I mean, it could happen, right? I was 40 years old. If it was 200-300 years ago, I would have already outlived my life expectancy. My mother's father died at 40 of a heart attack. I just had a checkup and I was given a clean bill of health, but that didn't matter. It didn't have to be from anything obvious. There could be a number of things wrong with me that a doctor would never be able to detect if they weren't specifically looking for it. An aneurism, or something like that. Maybe my episode of impotence the night before was an early warning sign of some sort of disease that would eventually kill me.
I called out sick to work. That in itself was noteworthy. I never called out sick to work. I was always the guy who came to work so sick that my co-workers would beg me to go home before I infected the whole office. I was the guy that was always taking off half of December because he had to use up his PTO by the end of the year. Even when I was going through my marital issues and my divorce, I never missed a day of work unless it was to go to court, or engage in the antagonistic, unproductive meetings between my ex and our lawyers. Work was my solace from all of that in those dark days.
I was never a person to lie in bed and do nothing all day. If I was going to stay in bed, it was probably for a sexual reason, either alone or with someone else. I thought that maybe I should try to get an erection, but I was terrified that it wouldn't work again, so I avoided anything sexual. I watched the baseball highlight show on MLB Network for hours, the same hour-long show over and over again, eventually turning over to the network game shows later in the morning. When I was too hungry to stand it anymore I got out of bed and ate the sandwiches and snacks I would've brought for lunch that day. After that I just sort of wandered around my apartment, feeling old.
I mean, was this it? Was this life? I never thought I was a shallow person, but I always avoided those types of questions. It was probably how I ended up in such a shitty situation in the first place, I thought to myself. Not thinking about my future and where I wanted to end up. So here I was, 40 and divorced with no children, stuck in a dead end job in a one bedroom apartment, and I had no real hope that anything would get any better.
My mind finally drifted to what I had been avoiding up until then. Jamie. I could see her in my mind's eye, those auburn locks, those dark brown eyes, moving in to kiss me, but I froze. What was crazier, pushing away a 25 year old woman who wanted me or thinking that being with a woman 15 years younger than me was a good idea? Sure, I led her to believe that I was her age, and if she knew my true age she probably would not have been interested. I blew it though. I blew it completely. I wondered if Jamie ever wanted to see me again.
I settled into my recliner in the afternoon, watching mindless television and trying to avoid the dark, depressing thoughts I had been mired in all day. I ate a frozen dinner and plopped back into my recliner, waiting patiently for the day to end.
When the knock on my door came I was so startled I jumped. It couldn't be Jamie, could it? I thought to myself as I moved to the door. I looked through the peephole and sure enough it was Jamie out there. I had an odd feeling in my gut. Do I let her in? Maybe it was better if I didn't, if I acted like a complete asshole and pushed her away. She could go find someone her own age, like that tattooed muscle head with the backwards hat in the laundry room. Sure he had a girlfriend, but guys like him were easy to find. Bars were full of them.
While I was standing there deliberating, Jamie knocked again. "Rich," she said, "Open up. I can hear your television." Busted, I thought. It's only fair that she could hear into my apartment too. I couldn't pretend that I simply wasn't there. I took a deep breath, and then I opened the door. Jamie was standing there, dressed in light blue scrubs. She must have come straight from work. She gave a little start when she saw me. I must have been quite a sight. I didn't shower or shave that morning. My short brown hair must have been a mess, my t-shirt and shorts disheveled. "Are you okay?" She asked. "Are you sick?"
"I didn't feel good," I mumbled, "I called out sick."
"Oh," Jamie said, "I can come back another time..."
"No," I said forcefully, surprising both of us. "I'm fine now. You can come in." I pulled the door completely open and moved out the way.
Jamie looked skeptical, but she walked past me and into my apartment. "I like what you've done with the place," she said dryly. Unlike Jamie's fully furnished apartment, mine was Spartan, at best. My living room only contained my recliner and the flat screen TV I sprung for, sitting on the cheapest stand that would hold it. I had a rickety second-hand kitchen table and chairs. There were no pictures on the wall, or any tables or shelves full of trinkets, no nothing.
"Well, sit down," I said to her, gesturing to my recliner. I moved the few steps to the kitchen area and pulled one of the chairs over beside the recliner. Jamie perched uneasily at the edge of my recliner, and I guessed that she had something short and dismissive to say, and then she would be gone. Let her get it over with, I thought to myself, and then I could go back to wallowing in my misery.
"About last night..." Jamie said, and I braced myself. Here it comes, I thought, and then I wondered why I was bracing myself. I was the one who pushed her away, and now I didn't want to hear her rejecting me? "I just wanted to apologize again," Jamie said. "I should have known that a guy like you wouldn't be interested in a girl like me."
Wait, what? I thought to myself. That line was unexpected, and I found myself asking the question before I could even think about it. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you," Jamie said, "Tall, dark, handsome, funny. You have your shit together. I'm short and fat and I..." she trailed off.
"You thought it was because I wasn't attracted to you?" I asked incredulously. "You're not tall or thin," I said before I could think better of it, "But you're not ugly." I almost added 'you're young', but I held back.
"Then you know, don't you," Jamie said. "God!" She wailed. "I thought a guy that didn't grow up around here wouldn't know..."
"Know what?" I asked.
Jamie stared at me. "You really don't know, do you?" She asked.
"No. What?" I asked again.
Jamie's shoulders slumped, and she looked down to the floor. She was wringing her hands. "Back in high school," she said, "I had a moment of indiscretion. There was this guy; well he was the captain of the football team. And he got my number from somewhere, and he started texting me. I was thinking, wow, the captain of the football team is interested in me? I was so naïve. After a while it got, you know, sexual. Eventually he talked me into sending him a naked photo of myself. And then... he shared it with the whole school."
"Wow." I mumbled. It was all I could say.
Jamie was still staring at the floor. I could only imagine the strength it took to even tell somebody about it. "It was all a joke to him, to his friends. Not so much to his girlfriend at the time, who cornered me after school one day with all of her friends. I thought I was going to die. They called me all sorts of names, slut, whore, tramp. It was the must humiliating experience you could imagine. This was eight years ago, before there were even words like sexting and slut shaming, before cyber bullying became a thing. I don't know how I got singled out by that guy. I wasn't one of the 'cool kids', but I wasn't exactly an outcast either. My family and friends were supportive, and I suppose that's how I made it through when some other girls... didn't. I should've moved far away as soon as I had the chance, but I didn't. I didn't want to leave my family. My only real boyfriend was in college and he was from the other side of the country and never knew anything about it. Most people are cool with it now. It's the girls, really. They're the ones that are nice to my face and talk about me behind my back. Most of my friends are male, except for Sue. And that's it. That's my story."
