Tough Love - Chris Sturniolo

Coincidences

Anastasia

Have you ever noticed how sometimes the universe, or God, or whatever power arranges this world, puts things directly in your path just to fuck with you?

Well that's exactly how I felt a few weeks later when I was paired up with a younger girl by the name of Ava in one of my literature classes. I wasn't sure at first if it was the same Ava, but when we found out who our randomly selected partners were, I looked her up on insta and saw her and Chris were mutuals. Fuck my actual life.

Because I'd transferred in my third year, I was in a first year course I needed as a prerequisite, so my class was mostly populated by students a few years younger than me. We found each other in our small group tutorial and took a pair of side-by-side desks to work. She was cute and sweet, but even though I knew Chris had played this girl like he'd played me, I still wasn't going to fucking like her.

We worked steady for a while, but eventually the topic of conversation moved away from our assignment and onto ourselves.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" She asked innocently. She didn't know me or my connection to Chris, so it wasn't like she was asking just to fuck with me. She was just being nice.

"No, definitely not," I replied, typing out a quote from our textbook into our shared document. I may be a bitch, but I was also a curious one. "Do you?" I asked.

"No me neither," she replied, flipping through her textbook. "I was kinda seeing this one guy for a while but that died. What can you do, you know?" My heart rate jacked up along with my curiosity and I reminded myself to try to stay impartial during this conversation.

"What happened?" I asked, feigning innocence.

"I don't know, I think I liked him more than he liked me," she sighed, finding the page she was looking for and scanning it.

"Yeah, I've been there," I agreed. I felt bad for deceiving her, but I couldn't help it, and I did what any girl in my shoes would do. "What was he like?"

She barely thought on that before replying. "Oh my god he was so hot," she started, and I regretted even asking. "He has these gorgeous blue eyes and his smile is like...beautiful. Plus he was funny," she described. Yeah, that was Chris alright. "But you know any guy who's good looking and funny is gunna be an asshole." That last comment intrigued me and I stopped typing.

"How was he an asshole? Was he rude to you?" I asked. She stopped typing too and we made eye contact as she spoke.

"No he was never rude or anything, he just didn't put any effort in. I always had to text him first. He was always flirty but never asked about me or my life. We stopped hanging out a while ago, but when we used to hang out, I was always the one to plan it. I felt like he liked me, but then I could never get him to be real." I felt bad for her as she spoke, knowing he'd taken advantage of how much she'd clearly liked him. "And like he wouldn't even kiss me. What kind of mixed message is that?" she added and my heart rate sky rocketed. I tried to process that quickly.

"He never kissed you?" I asked, trying to buy my brain some time.

"Yeah. Isn't that weird?" She asked, trying to connect with me.

"Uhhh," I replied. "If a guy likes you, he'll want to kiss you, Ava."

"No, no," she replied, defending him. "He was just being respectful," she tried to explain, and I realized then that she didn't understand how guys worked at all. "He didn't want to push me away in case I wasn't ready."

"Sure," I replied, not actually in agreement at all. Sure, that could be true, but I knew it wasn't in this case.

"But anyway, I texted him the other day and he was like 'I never wanna talk to you again' or whatever and that sucked but oh well. He's so busy with his hockey and his job," she said, and that confirmed she was talking about Chris. "He didn't score in his last game which is so unlike him. He's just got so many other things on his plate." There were so many things happening in this conversation that I couldn't process it all quickly enough. "Sorry," she added. "I just like...told you my whole life story." She really was a nice girl, but if I thought I was naive, I was nothing compared to her.

"It's okay," I said, meaning it. I reminded myself that she was younger than me. Only by a few years, but that still made a difference. She obviously didn't have a lot of experience with guys, and I felt for her. She didn't know yet what it felt like to be truly liked. I didn't know if I had either, really, but I knew more than her, and I wanted her to walk away from this conversation with something to help her. "We all have our bad experiences with guys. But when you find a guy who really likes you, he'll make sure you know it. You won't have to text first. You won't have to plan your dates. And you definitely won't wonder why he isn't asking about you or your life, because he'll want to know everything and he'll just do it. Trust me."

She smiled at me then. "You're really nice," she said, and I laughed out loud. "What?" She asked.

"No, nothing, I just don't get that often," that was true, but I'd also just mined her for information, so her assessment wasn't accurate by my standards. I turned back to my laptop.

"I find that hard to believe," she said, returning to hers as well.

Once we'd finished our assignment and packed up, I left the lecture hall and headed towards my dorm.

What I'd said to Ava was true. When a guy liked you, he found a way to make sure you knew it. I thought about the last few months I'd spent here, and thought about them alongside the things Ava had told me about her relationship with Chris.

Clearly he didn't like her. What I'd realized immediately was that what she'd described wasn't anything like my relationship with Chris at all. That much was obvious. But as I walked through the quiet evening of my campus and thought on it further, what I did realize was that, with the exception of him not kissing her, she had actually described my relationship with Dom. Except Dom was worse, because he did kiss me, he called me his girlfriend, and we slept together. It was a weird moment of realization when it occurred to me that Chris was a little better than Dom. No question, he never should have been leading on girls to begin with. It was childish and I didn't like that. But Dom had no problem taking advantage of me while giving nothing back, and I had to make peace with the fact that Chris hadn't done that to her and he could have. In my mind, I'd been trying to convince myself that the two were one and the same.

I turned the corner to my dorm building, heading for the door, and stopped in my tracks.

I'd know him in an instant. Grey hoodie pulled up, he sat at the steps of the entrance to my dorm, forearms resting on his knees as he scrolled through his phone, the light shining up onto his face and illuminating his handsome profile. Pretty asshole.