Breakfast

Breakfast

I almost had breakfast this morning.
That probably sounds like a weird thing to say. So what? you ask. I had breakfast today, yesterday, and I probably will tomorrow.
That’s all well and good. You should eat breakfast; it’s the most important meal of the day. What makes it special, though, is having it made for you. By someone else. Someone you’ve been dating off and on for a year, who is hesitant to call the two of you a couple, even though you’re as close to it as can be. Someone who will, if you’re lucky, give you a glass of water before you leave in the morning because you’re dehydrated from all the vodka and Sprite you drank the night before.
When he makes you breakfast – it means something.
Or it would have meant something to me, anyway, if I’d actually gotten it.
It’s become something of a routine with Eric and I. Monday nights, I pick him up at ten-thirty and we head to Joclyn’s, this bar about ten minutes away where all of our friends hang out. Joclyn’s is strange, in a high-school kind of way. It’s very cliquey. As I regarded myself as somewhat of an outsider in high school, I like the feeling of belonging somewhere. I like looking at people who aren’t there every Monday night and wondering exactly what they think they’re doing there. Childish, I know, but I never got to do that before, and I’m sure I’ll get over the thrill eventually. We hang out until three, an hour past closing, playing the naked girl match-up game on the Megatouch until Albert throws us out.
I never assume I’m going home with Eric, even after a year, but on the drive home he always asks me if I’m staying. Predictably, I say yes, because we both know I’d rather sleep in his bed than mine, because when I sleep in my own bed I’m inevitably yanked from sleep by the sounds of my sister and her boyfriend doing God knows what in her room next door – and we still live with our parents.
Anyway, after I park the car in what’s become my spot in the parking lot of his development, we go in and hang out with his roommate Richie in the kitchen, sometimes drinking another beer, always smoking a few more cigarettes while Richie makes dinner for himself – at three-fifteen in the morning – and they talk about their band. Then Richie takes his food to the living room, and Eric and I go up to his bedroom, where he gives me a T-shirt and disappears into the bathroom.
I change and slide into bed first. I would brush my teeth but I don’t have my toothbrush, and even after so many months of this, I still think that keeping one there or bringing one with me would seem presumptuous since, after all, we’re not a couple. I just keep chewing my Trident until the last possible second, when he comes out of the bathroom and sits on the edge of the bed, setting the alarm because even though he doesn’t have to leave his house until seven (or later) the next night, I have class in the morning.
It takes a while for me to warm up, even once he gets in next to me. The fact that I’m freezing makes me want to cuddle up but he always takes it to mean that I want something else. Actually, lots of times I do, especially depending on how much I’ve had to drink. Sometimes he’s more than willing to go along with me – other times, he decides it’s “not such a good idea” and we just go to sleep. Usually after that happens I decide he’s probably right, since we’re not a couple, so the next time I don’t do anything and he asks me why I’m not trying to rip his clothes off. And men say women are crazy.
He’s always sleeping when I leave in the morning because, rock star that he thinks he is, he sleeps until two every day. So I try to dress as quietly as I can, then kiss him goodbye while he’s cocooned in his blankets and snoring. During class, I’m a waste of space.
And never once have I gotten breakfast.
It comes up a lot, for some reason. I don’t mention it, but my best friend Desiree – who is also one of Eric’s best friends – always talks about the great breakfasts she and her boyfriend Kevin make on weekend mornings. I always rationalize, telling myself “well, they’re a couple” but something jabs at the inside of me every time they describe how they eat their eggs, how they fight over whether to make bacon or sausage, how Kevin has to go to Wawa and get coffee because he only drinks French vanilla and Desiree only drinks regular. And I wish Eric and I had stupid things to fight over, instead of the fact that he’s been sleeping with me for months but he’s bringing his ex-girlfriend to a wedding, or how he always seems to forget when we have date plans, no matter how tentative.
And that’s how it is.
For some reason, though, last night felt different. It was a Monday and as always, I picked him up and we went to Joclyn’s. Nothing out of the ordinary happened there, except two girls were there that I know don’t like me because he and I are “attached at the hip”. Eric got drunk, as always, and once we played four rounds of the naked game, he was ready to go.
“I’m drunk,” he announced as we got in the car.
“I know,” I replied, waiting.
“Are you staying?”
“Do you want me to?” I countered. I figure since he seems to like being the one to call all the shots in our relationship, it was only polite to leave that one up to him.
“No,” he said.
“Okay.”
He buried his fingers in the back of my hair and tugged lightly. “You know I’m kidding, right? I want you to stay.”
And that was all it took. Pathetic, huh.
Richie was warming up some roast beef or something when we walked in (he was a strict Atkins-worshiper and we spent hours discussing the benefits of low-carb versus low-fat). He immediately started complaining about his girl problems, with a girl named Carly this time. We all basically hung with the same crowd, knew the same people, even though not everyone liked each other – I’d been the undeserving target of some vicious gossip myself, and only because apparently Eric was such a stud – and Richie always went for the crazy girls, the ones who got a kick out of playing games with his little bald head, the ones I could never understand no matter how hard I tried.
(See, I don’t play games. That’s one more reason for Eric to love me, even though I don’t think he thinks of it that way.)
Eric’s one of those drunks that says whatever he thinks and somehow, we got on the subject of whether or not I tell my family how good he is “in the sack” (his words). I wasn’t exactly willing to have this conversation in front of Richie, but he assured us he was absorbed in his roast beef and not paying the slightest bit of attention. Eric was adamant, asking me if I told them this or that or about this time or that time and when I was too shy to answer he started laughing at the fact that my face was so red. That’s when I decided it was time to go to bed.
I planned on just sleeping, I really did. I’d worked it out in my head and decided that the reason I always try to rip Eric’s clothes off once we’re going to sleep isn’t necessarily because I can’t keep my hands off him (although sometimes that’s the case) but because that way it’s easy for me to be delusional and pretend that he loves me as much as I love him. I’m not a stupid girl; I know that sex doesn’t equal love. But he’s always talking about how we have something special and when we’re like that, it’s easy to believe him.
I tried sleeping. I didn’t even see Eric set the alarm because my eyes were shut. He slid into bed and put his arms around me and I breathed in his scent, a familiar mixture of beer and smoke and Perry Ellis cologne. Despite our history – his fear of commitment, my tendency to go slightly crazy when I see him flirting with other girls, the fact that on New Year’s Eve I told him I hated him and wished he were never born, and the party he had two weeks after we “broke up” the first time (where he informed me three hours before the party that he’d invited some girl to spend the weekend and she would be there) – I’m always happy when it’s like this.
“Are you sleeping?” he asked after we’d been lying there for five minutes.
“Trying,” I mumbled into his shoulder.
“Why?”
I laughed.
“Because I’m not doing that anymore,” I replied.
“Why?” he asked again.
“What’s the point?” I countered. “Every time I do, you say it’s not a good idea and we should just go to sleep.” Actually, this has only happened twice, but both times were blows to my already-fragile ego, and I’m reluctant to let him forget it.
“I won’t this time,” he promised.
And he didn’t.
At five o’clock we were sitting in his bed, propped up by pillows, smoking his Parliaments. I couldn’t stop giggling, because I’d only ever seen people smoking afterward in the movies.
“You’ve never done that?” Eric asked when I explained my laughter.
“No. Well, maybe on the ride home,” I answered.
He groaned. “On the ride home? Have you ever been with anyone who didn’t live with their parents?”
“I’m twenty-three,” I reminded him. “You’re almost thirty.” And yes, I have been with guys who lived on their own, but he doesn’t like to hear me talk about them, so I didn’t remind him. It was bad enough I’d just reminded him that his thirtieth birthday was in six weeks.
“Thanks,” he said to that, reaching over to flick his ash into the ashtray in my hand.
It was dark in the room except for the glowing tips of our cigarettes. Quiet, too, except for the sound of smoke being sucked, then expelled, from our lungs.
“You know,” Eric said suddenly, “if you want, I could set the alarm a little earlier and make you breakfast.”
I looked at him in surprise, the outlines of his face barely visible to me in the dark.
“Really?” I asked. “I have to wake up at ten.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll set it for eight-thirty.”
Mr. I-Want-To-Trash-Hotel-Rooms-Because-Motley-Crüe-Did was willing to wake up before noon just to make me breakfast?
“Okay,” I said, glad it was dark because I was unable to keep the stupid smile off my face. “That’s in three and a half hours, you know.”
“I know,” he replied. “I’ll just go back to sleep when you leave.”
“Okay,” I said again. We sat there in silence for a few seconds until we were both finished, stubbed our cigarettes out in the ashtray and slid back down beneath the blankets. We fell asleep immediately.
It felt like the alarm went off almost instantly. Eric has the most obnoxious alarm clock, yet it still takes him five minutes to realize it’s going off, and five more to get the energy to reach out and hit Snooze. I always shoot up like a rocket when it goes off. This morning was no exception.
Eric stretched out his arm and slapped the top of the clock, turning the alarm off. Considering I’d just slept for three and a half hours, I was surprisingly awake. I was getting breakfast. This was a big step. I’d always been the only girl allowed to drink coffee out of the Ted Nugent mug on our Sunday movie-nights – at least that’s what he told me – but breakfast!
He was starting to sit up as I got out of bed and went into his bathroom, making sure my bedhead wasn’t too horrendous – short-haired girls get the shit end of the stick where that’s concerned. Luckily, it wasn’t bad. I put some toothpaste on my finger and rubbed it on my teeth, splashed water on my face, and went back out.
He was asleep again, on top of the blankets this time, lying on his back. I climbed up next to him.
“Hey,” I said. He didn’t move. I shook his shoulder gently. “Wake up.”
“Mmm,” he mumbled, rolling over so his face was in his pillow.
“Come on,” I insisted. “You promised me breakfast. I’m starving.”
“Okay,” he groaned. A minute went by, and then I heard him snoring lightly.
“You said you’d go back to sleep after I left,” I reminded him. God, I hated sounding needy and whiny, but he’d promised. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when people break promises.
“But I’m tired now.”
I looked at him for a long minute. His eyes were shut tightly, and I wondered if he was faking still being half-asleep.
“Okay,” I said finally. I got up and put my shoes on, then went around to his side of the bed and kissed his forehead. “Bye.”
“See ya,” he said, not moving, his voice muffled by pillow.
I went out and closed his bedroom door behind me. My purse was on the kitchen counter, and I grabbed it before walking out the front door. There was snow on the ground, unusual for the middle of March – especially when the week before, the temperature had been practically 70 degrees for four consecutive days. I had to clean my windshield off before I could drive.
It was quarter of nine; once I got home, I could sleep for another hour and fifteen minutes before I had to get up and get ready for class. I passed a McDonald’s and a Burger King on the way home; not once did I think of stopping.
I didn’t really want breakfast, anyway.