Eddie Doesn't Like Much Of Anything

I stumble a little as I try to catch up with him but I stop myself before I bump him and that’s probably for the best. Eddie doesn’t like to be touched.

He jumps away and I hold my ground, uttering out a quick apology.

“Sorry,” I said, “I just-“

“What do you want?” he asked, sudden and aggressive as he wheeled on me.

Now I knew the guy and I knew that he was… well let’s just say that confrontational would be giving him a whole lot more credit than he deserved. And even if my instinct was to leave him to it, my heart wouldn’t let me.

Often I got the sense that Eddie wouldn’t be the same if I hadn’t been there for him. Not to say that he was ever particularly happy, he got his jollies out of being angry most of the time, but still I was loathe to think of the state he’d be in if he went through college without any friends at all.

I felt an odd kind of attachment to him, one that was probably better described as an obligation. Eddie could be rough and could be intimidating and could be downright infuriating, but I couldn’t just let him weather the storm without me at all. That didn’t seem fair, not after we’d been in the trenches together.

So in spite of the fact that he was being an asshole right now, I wasn’t wholly put off. I braved on against his indifference and his anger because frankly if this was a second chance for me then it was one for him as well.

I shrugged, “Just looking to make friends. I don’t know anybody here and I don’t think you do either, given the fact that you’re out here alone, so I figured maybe we could get to know each other and maybe find out we have a bit in common.”

He looked like he was about to laugh and say something mean. Just one eyebrow raised and an incredulous look on his face.

“I don’t know man,” I spat out, “I’m trying here. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Eddie actually seemed to consider my words for a minute before his eyes furtively looked around and he reached in his coat to pull out his bottle of vodka and take another quick swig from it before secreting it away.

“Not interested,” he said bluntly, taking a few steps back and shaking his head.

He was drunk, I’m pretty sure. Swaying a bit back and forth and flickers of expressions coming across his usually mostly impassive face. He looked thin and drawn, more so even than usual. And the way he was looking at me right now, well I knew how he was looking at me.

For someone who constantly put stock in how hard it was to pin him down and define him, Eddie certainly liked to box people up into neat little groups. First sorting them into ‘worth his time’ and ‘not worth his time’ and then subdividing from there by his own biases and preconceived notions.

With the dress I’m wearing it’s clear that he’s already boxed me up and is now ready to send me off. I dressed up for the event, a contrast to him not changing at all. The effort involved with that is enough to make him second guess me, but then adding to that the fact that what I’m wearing is close enough to a costume to count for him makes it all even worse.

And then there is the dress itself, somehow undoubtedly both too feminine and not feminine enough for his tastes. His eyes snapped up and down it, up and down my body, and I could practically feel the judgement lick all over my skin.

Eddie figured out exactly who he wanted me to be right from the beginning. Probably thinks I’m hot, popular, and eager to do him wrong. Probably thinks that… oh hell he doesn’t need any of that to hate me.

All he needs is the fact that I’m a woman at all.

Because with my current gender he puts me firmly into the box of women who want to make his life a living hell and there isn’t a venn diagram encompassing the two circles of both women who don’t and women who do want to hurt him, there is just one circle. He takes one look at me and everything else goes out the window and he’s figuring that this, right here and now, that me being nice is the beginning of some kind of trick.

Eddie probably thinks that I’m a plant. That I’m going to start flirting with him and that I’m going to start teasing him playfully. I’m going to pretend to be interested in him and draw him into someplace where he’s **** and just when he’s let his guard down out will pop my friends to humiliate him.

In short he thinks that I’m the start of a prank being played on him. We’ll take pictures, we’ll call him names, we’ll humiliate him for thinking that he had a shot.

Eddie, like I said, is guarded. And though he never really went into the past before college too much with me I always had the feeling that it was for good reason, that he’d had some truly heinous shit happen to him and that it had scarred him, had put up all those walls, had closed him off.

If I wanted to be his friend, well I didn’t know how to get inside his guards and get him to open up to me but I would absolutely have to. And the thing is that I didn’t really have a choice, the need to try to fix him compelled me and wouldn’t let me go.

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