Yeah, it’s definitely been FOREVER since I wrote in here. Mainly because I lost it. I know I could have started a new journal, but that just seemed wrong somehow. I got all bored on Christmas break last year because Nick was gone for 90% of it… he was here for Christmas eve, Christmas day and the day after and left again… so I had nothing to do. I decided to re-arrange a bunch of things, tossed this in a box that I thought would be really obvious to find, and then promptly forgot about it. So, now, almost a year later when I finally got to the box again… ta-da!
The past 10 months have been kind of crazy… a lot has happened… for everybody. Nick’s on a break right now… AJ’s in rehab. The whole situation was kind of scary and Nick was just… broken up over everything. He’s scared for AJ, his friend, but mostly, I think he’s just worried about AJ, his brother. He loves those guys, probably more than I or they realize even. So he’s been trying to keep himself busy.. we’ve done some travelling, just to stay occupied.
I graduated in May and very quickly realized… my degree is totally useless. So right now, I’m pretty much just a semi-employed loser who’s mooching off her boyfriend. Justin teased me about being a gold-digger, which kind of offended me, but then I realized it was kind of true. So that kind of sucks. I guess it’s either grad school now, for something slightly more useful or… I don’t know what. For now, I’m still at Surf Style and I’m going to be there until I die, apparently. But hey, I’m a shift manager now!
Justin moved to New York after graduation and I already miss him to a ridiculous degree. He got an awesome job and found an amazing boyfriend in like, three days of getting to the city. He’s happy and I’m happy for him, but I really wish he was still here to just hang out with, go shopping or whatever. We had a “break-up” when he left and I was honestly devastated about it, so I’m sure I pulled off the broken-hearted, just-dumped girl just fine. More on where this leaves my actual relationship in a moment.
The girls… this is the truly shocking news. Everyone is STILL TOGETHER. Anais got MARRIED last month… Devon was offered a job in San Diego that he really wanted… and he wanted Anais to go with him, they decided to get married, threw together a wedding in like, 4 weeks and they’re moving in another couple of weeks.
The Holiday-Cheese twins are engaged. In a cheesy-holiday move… the guys proposed to both of them on Christmas… in front of their family. I fully expect it was in unison and they were probably all wearing matching sweaters. I really do like them, I swear… but… SERIOUSLY!?! Holiday + twin proposals + family audience = LAME! I just can’t get over that. And it was just so fast. I know that Anais and Devon were technically married quicker and they’ve only been together the same amount of time – like, 6-8 months, but they made sense to me somehow. And I’m not saying that The Twins don’t make sense… because I do think they’ve met their matches… I don’t know, maybe it’s just because they’re younger. They mentioned once, in passing, that they were actually thinking about a double wedding. Part of me wants to say I’d boycott, just on the grounds of sheer ridiculousness, but at the same time, I don’t think I could miss that, because it would just be one of those things you’d need to be able to say you’ve witnessed once.
And now the truly crazy part…. Jovan..is… pregnant. Jeremy is actually being pretty cool about the whole thing. I think they’ll probably end up married eventually… but this whole SURPRISE!BABY thing, did kind of throw them for a loop. Which I understand… and will get to in a moment, also. She just found out right before Anais’ wedding, which made for some awesome hormonal moments during dress fittings and the ceremony.
Sage and Hunter are doing really well. They’re the “we’re so cute and happy” couple… you just love to be around them because they’re just so damn adorable together and you can tell they’re crazy about each other. I’m ecstatic for her… she deserves this. She finally left Surf Style and has a job she really likes… she’s in a good place.
And Shaun – is still a punk ass. He’s a manager at Hooters and finally started taking school seriously. He’s going straight into the MBA program. He got his own place over the summer, a year at the frat house turned out to be enough for him. He dated Olivia for a lot longer than I expected, but she actually ended up cheating on him, so he’s back to his usual habits.
So, now, there’s me. I guess I’ll go in order… back in April, I had a little… freak out. I was 2 weeks away from finals… I’d hadn’t seen Nick in about six weeks… I was stressed out, lonely and just miserable. And then… I was late. So I had to figure out… do I tell him there’s a possibility or do I wait and find out for sure if there’s even anything to tell him. He called one night when I was in the midst of a “oh-my-god-what-do-I-do?!?!” crying jag, that scared the hell out of him and he talked me into telling him what was wrong. So I told him there was a tiny possibility I might be pregnant. There was silence then, “Can you please find out?” He had to get off the phone pretty much right then, so I called Sage in a gaspy-hysterical panic and she appeared almost instantaneously at the house. When I finally managed to tell her what the problem was, she went a bought like, six tests for me and the biggest soda I’d ever seen. So I peed on sticks and thank God they were all negative. I guess it was just my general emotional state that had been giving my body hell or something. I was relieved because I know that would have been less-than –ideal timing. Nick calls me back the next day to see what I found out and I told him not to worry, everything was fine and he says, “I wasn’t worried… we wouldn’t have kept it.” I was so shocked, I actually dropped the phone. It just seemed so flippant and so… final, like I wouldn’t have even had a say in it… I couldn’t believe he’d said it. I picked the phone back up and hung up on him. I couldn’t get over the “we wouldn’t have kept it” like we’d been talking about a stray dog we’d found on the side of the road. I’m not saying that I necessarily would have been all “yes, I’m going to raise this kid whether you like it or not”, but I would have found a better way to say it.
We didn’t talk for over a week. He kept calling and I kept ignoring him until he showed up while I was in the shower and about gave me heart failure. He stepped into the shower with me, fully clothed still, and pulled me into the tightest hug and apologized repeatedly… he may have been crying, but I couldn’t really tell. He said he understood why I was so mad, he realized as soon as he’d said it that it had been horrible and he didn’t necessarily mean it – he’d just found out the extent of the problems AJ was having and it was more a reaction than his actual thoughts on the subject. After we got out of the shower (he ended up stripping down and staying in to wash my hair) we had a long talk about things. He says he’s actually not opposed to kids but definitely doesn’t want them anytime soon… neither do I! Sometimes I’m not sure if I want them at all. And then he started telling me about how things had been on the road… with AJ and all the tension between the other guys that was building up, mainly because of the way things were going with AJ. So things were much better when he left than when he arrived.
Justin moved at the beginning of June, which meant it was time for us to “break-up”… like I said, I was kind of a mess. I was still alone and then one of my best friend leaves me. It worked out okay because Nick and Mandy gave up on everything earlier this year, so he’s been saying he’s single. He figures since I’m out of school it’s not quite as big a deal, but he still wants to keep things as quiet as possible. He’s been photographed with people and is letting everyone make up whatever they want to. If that’s what he prefers and feels it’s easier… okay. I admit though, I still worry about what was going on before/after some of those pictures. He swears he’s faithful, but there’s always going to be part of me that wonders. Not because he doesn’t love me, because I think he does… but I also know him and know what he needs and when I’m not around, I guess I just figure he’s going to get it from someone. And I hate that.
Nick hadn’t been “single” for five seconds when Victoria appeared. Dumb skank she may be, she’s more observant than we would have guessed … she told him she “knew” they were just faking it and she was just waiting for him to finally give up so he could give someone else a chance… and who better than her? She was dismissed as kindly as possible, but then pretty much became psycho-stalker girl… putting Jovan to shame. Mandy was actually the one that told her to back the fuck off and they got into it, which was probably a relief to Mandy, since she never really liked her anyway.
I think that’s enough of an update for now… plus I have to go grab a few things. Nick and I are headed out on the boat for a couple days, to relax and try to get him to unwind some. I hate seeing him all stressed out and there’s so little I can do about it.
~~~
Desi snapped the journal closed and tossed it on the pillow next to her, squeezing her eyes shut to try to stop the tears threatening to escape. She remembered that summer very clearly – the stress, the uncertainty. She was sure it had made them stronger in some ways, but had probably started some of the little cracks that would ultimately tear them apart, too.
She tried to smile as she thought about Sage and Hunter, finally getting ready to get married in only a few months and Anais and Devon, who’d had just recently welcomed t heir second child. She hadn’t seen The Twins in a while, but had heard that everything was going well. She knew Justin was happy. But she… was not. She couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if she had been pregnant then. Their kid would be… almost three years old? How would that have altered the course of their relationship? Would it have ended sooner? Would they have been able to hold on longer and make it work?
She lay back in the pillow and pulled the covers around her, wondering how the pain could still be so real, so raw. Even though it hurt now and had hurt then, she still knew she’d trade anything, no matter the price, to be there with him again.
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