The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy by James Schoech

Author:James Schoech [Schoech, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Good Cop, Bad Cop

Football season ended in disaster. As Valeria had predicted when we first met, our local professional team had indeed kicked Buffalo’s ass, but that had been in the final regular season game. The Oilers then had to play Buffalo again in the first round of the NFL playoffs, and this time our local team somehow blew a 35-3 second-half lead and lost in overtime. Valeria was pissed. I was overloaded with grading papers that day, so I didn’t care about the game, except that I liked football season and a part of it ends when your favorite team can’t play anymore.

The latest social circle drama was that my friend Kirk had broken up with Linda, according to Kirk, but Linda claimed that she had broken up with Kirk, so nobody was certain who had broken up with whom. Since Valeria had become friends with Linda, Valeria told me everything that Linda had told her, but I wouldn’t tell her anything about what Kirk had told me about the situation. A good friend keeps his mouth shut, even to his girlfriend.

At first, it annoyed Valeria that I wouldn’t discuss what Kirk had said to me. Then she respected me for being able to keep a friend’s secret, but then she became annoyed again. From her point of view, enough was enough; I was her boyfriend, so I had to tell her what she wanted to know. With a few cups of coffee in me, I broke. Coffee has always made me talkative. I told her everything. I probably shouldn’t have.

I talked about how Kirk was back to having one-night stands with drunk women. I told her about how he thought it was good that he had broken up with Linda because he thought he would have eventually cheated on her anyway. I even started talking about how Kirk and I had been roommates in college, and how I had a cot set up in a friend’s room for the times when Kirk brought in a one-night stand. Kirk had some good qualities, but he liked his one-night stands. One-night stands and drinking: those were his character flaws. One-nights stands and drinking.

To make things worse, acting normal around Valeria was difficult when I knew I’d have to break up with her soon. Before we’d left my mom and stepdad’s house the morning after Christmas, I’d secretly written my brother a couple checks, and these had wiped out most of my savings account. Without the money in this account, I’d had to hit my credit cards to pay for a couple of Valeria’s bills. I knew I couldn’t do that for long, so I figured that was it. I’d try to enjoy the last few weeks as much as I could.

Months earlier, I would have been able to talk this over with Sharon, my platonic female friend, but once it seemed that Valeria and I were serious, Sharon and I had stopped talking. I guessed that when a girlfriend moves in, the platonic female friend must go.

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