Vacation on a Whim

Kevin has gone now from the point of annoying me to actually creeping me out, and it's getting more and more serious, not to mention obnoxious. I worked dinner shift on Friday night, and towards the end of the rush I had an 8-top along with my normal tables, so I was pretty busy. Then I poured a twenty-three-ounce beer down my customer's back and had to deal with that disaster, so I wasn't in a great mood and I could definitely have qualified for "panicked." That was when one of the hostesses walked up to me and said, "Someone at the bar wants to talk to you, from Repentance?"

"What?" I asked, totally confused. The bar wasn't in my section, for one thing, and if one of my friends had come in, why hadn't they just said hello? My first thought was that I had a stalker, someone who had seen me at the club and come to find me. Then I thought maybe it was Aiden playing some kind of joke, but he would have just said hello...I went back to the stalker theory. Slightly alarmed, I walked over to the bar, carrying a large tray and unconsciously preparing to wield it like a weapon.

There was only one person at the bar who might have ever been seen at Rep, as the rest were all loud, plaid-wearing rednecks. I walked down to the end of the bar to the last person sitting there. They were hunched over, wearing a long black trenchcoat, and had long black hair. I couldn't tell if it was a guy or a girl, but either way, they didn't look familiar.

Reaching the end of the bar, I poked my head around to get a look at them. It was a guy, and he looked up and smiled at me. Still not recognizing him, I opened my mouth to ask if I knew him, but he beat me to it.

"Hey!" he said cheerfully. I recognized the voice and nearly choked. It was Kevin. All the fuses in my mind immediately blown, I opened my mouth, closed it, glared, grabbed my tray for support, then ran for the kitchen and hid. When I returned a few minutes later, he was gone, and I started cleaning out the dump sink. He reappeared, though, and started talking to me. I said almost nothing, but gave him permission to get on the waiting list for my section. If nothing else I knew he would tip me well.

Tiger looked up at me as Kevin walked away with a questioning and slightly weirded-out look on his face, and I stood with one hand full of nasty wet straws and dead oranges and limes, and pointed with the other at Kevin's receding back. All I could say was, "He's platinum blonde!"

Tiger glanced at him, frowned, then looked back at me and shrugged. "Not anymore."

Kevin hung out at his table for three hours until I got off shift so that he could buy me dinner. I sat and had a civil conversation with him, though I didn't say anything of great import, and I refused to tell him that I liked his hair. Whether or not I think it looks good is completely irrelevant next to the fact that I find it incredibly creepy. It was even worse when he said, "I was going to wear eyeshadow and paint my nails, too, but I couldn't find your makeup."

That did, however, clear up the reason, though he'll never admit it. Wren picked up on it immediately when I told her, as did my mom. "He's trying to look like Aiden." He says he's doing it to prove he can still have fun. I don't see how scaring the shit out of me when I'm working is fun.

After I got out that night, I drove the two hours up to my mom's house to escape, and to explain to her what was going on - especially since Kevin had posted on her Facebook wall professing his love for me, knowing full well I hadn't had a chance to explain the situation to her. I chewed him out for that one, and first he was defensive, then he apologized just to make me happy.

Saturday morning, I was still convinced I was going to Atlantic City with Kevin. By Saturday afternoon, after having told my mom the entire messy story and gotten her sympathy, her laughs, and her advice (as she's done the same thing at least once), I had decided to go instead to Florida to visit Wren, who's there for her break. Then I realized I really can't afford plane tickets, even after I found the cheapest option with some internet research, and I had the sudden idea to go visit my friend Alejandra.

Within an hour, I'd called her and made plans to drive down the next day. I headed back to the house where I live with Kevin, which I can't bring myself to call home anymore. I got there at one o'clock, organized some laundry and started packing, then told him I wasn't going with him on vacation. He took it reasonably well until I said that I was going on a road trip instead, alone, far away, and I wouldn't tell him where or for what purpose.

I finally fell asleep by two-thirty, after ignoring his ramblings studiously, but was woken up again at four by him patting me awkwardly and asking, "Where are you going? And what does it mean to swallow a frog?" My Facebook status that night had mentioned swallowing a frog, which is a metaphor for needing to do something you don't want to do. My frog was telling him I wasn't going on the trip. However, it was four in the morning, I was getting up at seven, and I was grumpy. I refused to answer his questions and told him to let me sleep.

After that I went back to sleep but didn't sleep well. I was uncomfortable and I kept hearing him wandering around and doing odd things. At six-thirty I was awake again because he had all the lights on, including the obscenely bright one in the hall, and he was walking around rearranging the decor in the bedroom.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked. I'm not friendly when woken out of sleep, not friendly early in the morning, and even less so when already perturbed by other things.

"Making it less painful while you're gone," he answered morosely, and after looking around in dazed confusion for several seconds I realized he'd taken all the pictures of me and of us off the walls and stowed them somewhere.

"Do you want me to fall asleep while driving and crash the car?" I asked.

"No," he answered. "Why?"

"Then let me sleep," I said.

"Sorry," he said, but didn't turn off the lights or stop making noise. After a few minutes he came and sat down on the bed and tried to talk to me, but I got up, took a shower, and finished packing.

The goodbye was excruciating, especially when I was forced to repeat it because I reached the end of the road without my camera and went back for it. I was out of the house by eight-thirty, though, filled my gas tank, got breakfast, and headed south. Alejandra told me the drive was usually about twelve hours for her, so I figured I could cut some time off that, because I drive like a maniac, and the car I'm borrowing has a lovely invention called a six-cylinder engine that takes off like a shot if you look at the gas pedal wrong.

I spent an hour getting lost and finding my way out again, but including that the entire thing took me eleven hours. I was exhausted and punchy as hell when I arrived, but I made it one piece with no mishaps, despite the fact that I spent most of the time driving with my knee and texting. I spoke with Aiden three times, my mom once, and Alejandra twice, as well as texting all of the above plus Wren. I also got a text from Kevin, which was a picture of a motorcycle with the caption "my new bike." I forwarded it to Wren and my mom, who both agreed with me that it's just more evidence that he's gone off the deep end.

Now that I'm "down south," (not really...but it's far enough away) I'm looking forward to an awesome week. I feel so much better now that I'm not going to Atlantic City with Kevin - I'm actually looking forward to my vacation now, instead of wondering what fresh hell it will bring. I will admit to wondering what fresh hell my psychotic boyfriend will come up with, as he spent the day bothering my best friends via Facebook, and Aiden, Lily, and my mom via phone. The girls both deleted his posts, and then I went and deleted even his posts on my wall, since they were well into the realm of creepy. I then changed my relationship status to "complicated" from "in a relationship."

The only one who still sides with him is Lily, except obviously for his own friends. My friends and my mom and Wren's mom are all convinced that he's psycho and I'm well shot of him. I did get a message from his friend's fiancee today, who was a casual friend of mine, who in long and excruciatingly misspelled detail told me why I should go back to him. Sorry May, but it's not happening. You have no idea what's going on between us because you're only listening to his side. I haven't even seen her since this whole thing happened, and I never thought she was that smart anyway. Interestingly, neither did Kevin...but now that she's on his side, of course suddenly she's a smart, useful friend!

I know he's not going to get the point of all the little things I'm doing, but it makes me feel better. And a week of girl time and partying is just what I need right now. Hopefully it will produce funnier and less dramatic stories to tell here!