Lawrence had forgotten that he was not the only guy in Marina’s life and that Drew was still dating her. He borrowed Kevin’s car to drive into Marina’s suburban home, but another car was in the driveway. Marina was kissing Drew goodbye in front of her house. Lawrence got angry, and even he knew it was unreasonable- he wasn’t dating her. But he was sort of marrying her. At least they should be discrete!
Drew started heading to his car and waved at Lawrence as he parked along the curb. “Hey bud!” He did a little jog to the side of the car window. “I really appreciate what you’ve been doing for Marina and her mom! We need to catch up, Larry.”
“Great to see you too,” replied Lawrence with a fake smile. “I love Marina’s mom, I would do anything for her.”
“Yeah, she’s great. I haven’t gotten around to meeting her though.”
“Why not?” Marina joined Drew and leaned on his arm.
Drew ran his hands through his dirty blonde hair. “I’ve been working long hours in downtown. I know she means alot to you, babe-” he interrupted his sentence to kiss her “-but I promise I’ll meet her soon.”
“You could have met her now instead of ‘hanging out’ in Marina’s room,” snapped Lawrence before he could catch himself.
Drew laughed. “Sorry, what? What are you implying Larry?”
“Nothing at all, I just don’t think you’ve completely appreciated every facet of her existence.”
“Stop it with the big words, bro. You sound like a pretentious dimwit.”
“Sure Drew, but you’re calling 5-lettered words ‘big’ right now.”
Marina cleared her throat. “Drew, I think you should go, I’ll see you later.” Drew pulled her in for an obnoxiously long kiss. Marina tried pulling away from him, but he kept her from leaving for another second or two.
He turned to leave but faced Lawrence again as he got out of the old and outdated black Pontiac. “Hey Larry, I think I should break the news to you instead of Marina, but I’m gonna be one of your groomsmen. It’s part of the deal. I need to make sure this wedding goes as smoothly as possible, so I need to play a bigger part.” He gruffly patted Lawrence’s arm before finally leaving.
Marina crossed her arms in front of Lawrence and waited until Drew was safely out of the neighborhood. “I’m honestly surprised that you didn’t punch him.”
“I’m not the kind to get into physical altercations, Marina.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, but he is, and you’re kind of easy to provoke.” Lawrence took a deep breath kept his mouth shut. “Anyway, where are we headed?”
“I’m on a 50 dollar budget, you pick.”
“Are you borrowing money from Kevin again?”
“Ben,” he corrected. “I’m borrowing Kevin’s car though.”
“I really appreciate you trying to make the effort to make things go well.”
“I feel really bad about everything. I’ve kinda been a piece of shit to you and to everyone and I need to change that.” He adjusted the scarf around his neck before continuing. “I don’t know. You know I’m kind of impulsive in the shit I say, which hasn’t really been beneficial recently since I’ve been kind of petty and mean to everyone around me.”
“Well I’m impulsive too, you know that,” she laughed. “But I’m an optimist, so things play out a bit differently. Like when you told me about Drew, I didn’t realize how badly that could have turned out until I actually met him, and I thank you for introducing us.”
“Yeah…” Lawrence remembered Drew’s days as a college athlete when he brought home a different girl every week or so and was sometimes unable to remember their names, or their existences, the next morning. “Is he really going to be one of the groomsmen?”
“Yeah, I told him how you were only thinking of 3 others, so I thought it would be nice if your roommate, who started it all, was there with us. Also I’m still dating him, so he’d be coming anyway.” She bit her lip and smiled at him.
Lawrence scratched his head. “You know he and I don’t get along anymore.”
She frowned. “He told me a story, but it sounded weird. He said it was because you were jealous of him and how he always had girls around. Wanna go inside? It’s cold.”
Lawrence followed her in. “Well, that was never a problem. It’s not like I wasn’t a douche the first year or two of college too. I just don’t like who he is as a person.”
“Are you saying he’s never changed?”
Lawrence shrugged. “He probably has. I dunno, I just didn’t want to hang out with him as much anymore. He also had a lot of scandals that I didn’t like the way he and his friends handled.
“Like the drug thing- you were fine, but they ratted out one of your friends?”
Lawrence shifted his weight from one foot to another. “Yeah, I guess, that’s one of them.” He sat down on the couch across from her.
“Otherwise you would have been caught. It’s not like you regret it, you can’t hate Drew for covering for your stupid actions. It was actually a good move for you.”
“I won’t deny it, but after that I just wanted to be around him less. I guess you were right about the way he treated girls too. I don’t know. I just want to put him behind me, and I know I have to exist with him for the next three months, but I’d rather not as much as you want us to.”
Marina frowned. “I guess I can see why you don’t want to be with him. But I want you to know that he’s changed, a lot. But he was always nice to you anyway. Why do you hate him?”
Lawrence got out of his car and followed her in. “You saw how he said hi to me now! We have a mutual dislike of each other.”
“Without ever really knowing why.”
Marina stayed silent for a moment. “But you still introduced me to him, then, when you disliked him?”
“I was mad at you, and you guys always seemed to suppress some sort of interest or tension you had with each other. If- and honestly I expected a ‘when’- he hurt you, I knew you’d be able to blame it on yourself. I know that’s shitty of me, but that was a year ago. I’ve changed.”
“No,” she corrected him, not making eye contact. “You’re trying to change because you regret everything and you’re mad that I’m with Drew.”
“You were just telling me why you hated Drew now!”
“Marina, that’s not the point! I don’t want you back!” Lawrence took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Okay sorry that was blunt.” And a complete lie, he thought to himself in surprise. “I don’t want us to get into a screaming match okay? Please? Three months, we need to pretend we like each other.”
“I wanted to tell you about that, the wedding’s solid for December 13th, I told you about it a few days ago but it’s finalized.”
“That’s in the middle of finals week. Can’t you move it for the weekend after Thanksgiving?”
She frowned at him. “You just want to get this over with, don’t you?”
“What? No, I mean, yes, but I actually have finals that week, and I can’t miss them. Literally nothing will excuse me from missing an exam.”
“I managed to get a date during one of the busiest seasons, and you want me to move it?” She glared at him. “Don’t you think that’s kind of inconsiderate?”
“No, considering my education and future career comes before any phony wedding. I’m going to grab a glass of water.”
“You mean my mother?” But he turned without answering her question.
He got up and went into her kitchen. To his shock, it was a disaster. Marina was a slob, but normally still on the hygienic side of things. But everything was a mess, and there was a stench. There was more than one dirty pot on the stove, and two bags of trash slumped against the trash bin. Food was caked on a few plates in half the sink. Lawrence rummaged through her cupboards trying to find a clean glass and settled for a children’s plastic cup with the picture peeling off of it.
“Does Drew live here now?” he asked, returning to the living room.
“No, he can afford his own place,” she said. Lawrence swallowed guiltily.
“Why aren’t you fake marrying him?”
She looked down at the ground and player with her hair before answering. “Because I’m pretty sure he actually wants to get married and I don’t want to do that yet,” she confessed. “Especially with him. I don’t know, he kind of holds me down.”
Lawrence chuckled. “Funny because he’s living a bachelor's life that you think will make you settle. Kind of ironic, no?”
She shrugged. “We get along. I mean, nothing is wrong with him. I just… I don’t know. I don’t feel a connection to him. Or passion.” Lawrence raised an eyebrow. “Okay, shut up. You know what I mean. Our conversations just aren’t exciting. They’re so basic. I could live a perfectly okay life in the suburbs with him, but I don’t think I’d be doing everything I wanted to beforehand.”
“Husband material, but not boyfriend material?”
“Well, I don’t want that kind of marriage either. But I’m 23, I don’t need to worry about this now.”
“That sounds miserable,” said Lawrence before he could catch himself. “Funny because you were just defending him a few minutes ago.”
“I’ve thought about breaking it off, but nothing is really wrong between us.”
“Well, he’s definitely influenced your cleanliness habits based on the kitchen,” he mumbled. “And to be honest, your living room doesn’t look like it’s been vacuumed.”
Marina playfully kicked him. “Stop! I know everything’s a mess. I’ve just been caught up in everything else. And turns out teaching requires a lot of unpaid work at home.”
“I mean I’m only an assistant teacher so I don’t have that much of a presence for the kids to like me.”
And so began one of their hour long conversations, the kind where topics flowed easily from one to another. From meaningless complaints about job and school to heavier gossip about their friends, Marina and Lawrence talked like they used to.
That was one of the only things they really ever connected about. They could have a fantastic conversation about nearly anything. Interesting and engaging, their conversations were filled with emotion- and often lead to fights. At the beginning of their relationship, it was cute because they might have had unusually strong feelings about something that one wouldn’t expect. But after a few months they got tired of listening to each other have such angry fights about how often the car should be washed, how many magazine subscriptions they should have, why the perfect weather was humid instead of dry. Other people’s relationships usually died because of the tedium that overtook them and their conversations. But theirs died because no one was ever calm enough to realize how irrational they were about everything.
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