Most people remember the moment they knew their spouse was the one. The first kiss that took their breath away, that moment they saw fireworks, that very second when they thought, ‘I could have this man’s children.’
Faith didn’t.
It wasn’t that their first kiss wasn’t a magical moment. It wasn’t that she didn’t know Jarrod was the only one for her the first time they made love.
She just didn’t remember it.
The Salty Dog Saloon on University Avenue was half-empty. It was midnight on a Thursday and the young, raucous UF college crowd was thinning out a little earlier than usual. It was mid-term week and for a good chunk of students there was still Friday to get through. It was October 20, 2005.
‘Hey there. What’s your name?’ The guy with the mop of curly blond hair and red cheeks who was suddenly sitting beside her at the bar asked.
Faith studied her happy neighbor on the stool over. He was cute: tall, lean, really muscular, as far as she could tell from the tight T-shirt he was wearing. He looked like a biker, she thought. Not a Harley biker – a bicycle-biker. No … maybe a surfer, with those salty, bleached highlights, although the beach was hours away from land-locked Gainesville. Judging from the color of his tan, he was definitely from Florida. Maybe California. What he definitely wasn’t was Italian, which was her type. She ignored him.
‘No, come on, what’s your name?’ he asked again. ‘You look bored.’ He cocked his head quirkily and rested it in the palm of his hand, his elbow on the bar. But his head slipped off, and he almost smashed his chin on the bar.
‘You look drunk,’ she replied.
He looked around and nodded. ‘My friends left me. That’s sad. I have no friends. And we were so close, all of us. They’re like brothers to me. Come on, what’s your name?’
‘Faith’ she answered.
‘No shit! ’Cause ya gotta have faith!’ He started singing loudly and pathetically off-key. He didn’t sound anything like George Michael. Not even close.
‘I’ve heard that one a thousand times before,’ she said. ‘If you’re not gonna be on key, at least be original.’
‘OK, OK. Reach out and touch faith!’ he tried, again nowhere near the right key. If she hadn’t heard those lyrics a thousand times, too, she wouldn’t have known it was a song he was trying to sing.
‘That’s the Depeche Mode version,’ he said with a smirk. ‘You want me to sing the Marilyn Manson one? I’m really good. Thank God I don’t look like him, though. He’s scary.’ He shivered.
‘It’s the same song,’ she replied, smiling.
He slapped the bar. ‘That makes three songs with your name in it! There’re no songs with my name in it. You’re so lucky.’
‘You’re good. For someone who’s bombed. I’m surprised you can remember the lyrics.’
‘I’m not bombed, I’m Jarrod,’ he replied with a sweet chuckle.
Definitely not Italian. She smiled anyway.
‘Do you go to UF?’ he tried. ‘What’s your major? Let me guess – arch-e-ology!’ he declared with another chuckle that was a lot heartier. It was a joke that obviously only he got and one that he found hysterically funny. ‘You look like you could use another drink, Faith. One more! Whatever she’s drinking,’ he yelled across the bar at the bartender. ‘Whatever “Ya Gotta Have Faith” over here is drinking.’ Then he looked at her drink, reached over, picked it up and examined it. ‘It’s pink, whatever it is. Make it two! And hit all her friends, too,’ he added, looking around the bar. ‘Did your friends leave you, too? That’s sad. We’re a lot alike, you and I – we’ve both been abandoned.’
‘You want to buy my boyfriend a drink?’ she asked.
He looked around the bar again and smiled coquettishly. ‘Boyfriend? I don’t see one of those. Nope.’
‘He’s in the bathroom, but he’ll be back. Then you’ll be in trouble – he drinks Scotch.’
The surfer made a face that looked like a two-year-old who had tasted spinach for the first time. ‘Scotch? He must be, like, old.’
‘I like old. And he likes expensive Scotch.’
He shook his head. ‘No way. If there was a boyfriend, he wouldn’t leave you alone for a second – you’re too pretty. But to be sure … bartender! Three shots of Scotch! What’s a good Scotch? I’m not a Scotch drinker. I don’t think this place even has Scotch,’ he announced as loudly as he had sung. ‘No one here is old enough to drink Scotch; they’re not old enough to even drink, bunch of freshmen. You have to be a grandpa in a sweater to drink that shit. Chivas, right? That’s what my grandpa would drink. You’re not a freshman are you? I didn’t mean to insult you.’
Faith’s friends had cleared out a half-hour or so before. God knows where any of them were now. There was no boyfriend. But a free drink with a cute boy who was making her laugh couldn’t hurt.
He smiled at her and toasted her Seabreeze with his beer as the bartender laid out three shot glasses on the bar and reached for the Chivas. ‘You’re a good man, kind sir! Keep ’em coming till one of us falls down! I hope it’s not me. But if it’s my new, beautiful lady friend, here, don’t you worry: I’ll carry her home!’
She woke up the next morning in a strange bed, naked and tangled in white sheets. The blond surfer whose name she couldn’t remember was sleeping next to her, his bare ass sticking out from underneath an army-green comforter. She sat up with a start. Where the hell was she? Her head hurt so much. She wrapped herself in the sheet, ran into the bathroom and threw up. She rinsed her mouth out in a sink that was coated in bathroom slime. She spotted a couple of toothbrushes resting precariously in a plastic cup from Checkers on the Formica counter, which was dotted with amber cigarette burns, next to combs and hairspray and different bottles of men’s cologne. On the toilet tank was a fish bowl. There was an inch of water in the bowl and a poor fish somewhere in the murky water. On the floor were piles of abandoned towels and men’s underwear. She opened the mirrored medicine cabinet, ignoring the partied-out image looking back at her. Trojans, KY Jelly, Gillette shaving cream, aftershave. She bit her cheek. She was in a guys’ apartment. Guys’ – as in plural. Oh God … was she in a frat house?
How much had she drunk? Enough that she had gone home and obviously had sex with a man she didn’t know. She didn’t even remember his name. What was it again? It wasn’t Italian – she remembered that much, but that was about it. She pulled the sheet tighter against her and looked around the bathroom for an exit other than the door. She felt like such a slut. It didn’t matter how high up it was, if there were a window, she would’ve already been out it.
She had to get out before whatever his name was and his frat brothers woke up, before anyone saw her face. Hopefully there were no pictures or video. She quietly opened up the bathroom door.
‘Hey there,’ he said with a lopsided smile, rubbing his head. He was standing in front of her, completely naked. ‘I’m Jarrod. And I hate to ask this, but … what’s your name again? I know there’s a song about it. Mandy? Cecilia?’
She’d been too embarrassed to run out. He had not asked her to leave. So she’d stayed. He went downstairs – after putting on a pair of shorts – and had come back with coffee, two bagels and a bottle of Tylenol. He asked if she wanted to watch a movie. It was a Friday, but she had no class, so she’d said yes. One movie led to two led to a Godfather and Rocky marathon. They ordered pizza and ate dinner in his room. They had sex and this time she remembered it. And when he kissed her, she definitely saw fireworks.
She learned his last name was Saunders and he was in his second year of law school and wanted to be a litigator. He had a brother and a sister, and he’d grown up in Illinois. His family still lived around Chicago. He went to Purdue for undergrad on a baseball scholarship, but after he tore his rotator cuff and baseball didn’t work out, he wanted to get out of the cold, so he picked UF for law school, but he had taken a year off to work for his dad before starting and he knew for sure he didn’t want to end up back in Chicago. He had broken up with his girlfriend of a year a month earlier. He hated peppers. His favorite food was Italian. He was German-Irish, so he loved Oktoberfest and St Patrick’s Day, which was his favorite holiday. He wanted to move to New York. His favorite baseball team was the Chicago Cubs and he loved the Dolphins but couldn’t explain why, because they sucked and they sucked every year and they would continue to suck until he died. He loved dogs and wanted to get a German shepherd and name it Dante when he got his own place.
She finally went back to her apartment Sunday morning and they’d been together ever since. She and Jarrod were the exact opposite of how it should happen. They were the poster children for how not to start a successful relationship. She had stayed that day to prove she wasn’t a drunken slut – that, in fact, she was in control of the situation. A Sex in the City chick, who could have wild sex with a stranger without regret, although she never had before. He likely had not forced her out the door because he’d wanted to prove he wasn’t a jerk. Last month marked nine years that they had been together. Seven years ago, on a freezing cold beach in Key West three days after Christmas, with a breathtaking sunset behind them, she’d promised him forever – for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, through good times and through bad, to love and to cherish, till death do they part. He’d done the same. And when the notary pronounced them man and wife and his soft, warm lips met hers, the sky erupted like it was the Fourth of July.
The bar at the Royal Pig was packed, every table was taken, waiters and waitresses hurried out of the kitchen with platters of food. Dinner hour was in full swing. When had that happened? She craned her neck to look past the bartender – it was dark out. The sun had long since set. She couldn’t remember how many vodka cranberries she’d had and she didn’t want to. She pushed the last drink back, which was still half-full. She felt proud of herself for doing that – leaving before she had finished.
Then she grabbed her iPhone off the bar and slipped it in her purse.
It was time to head home.