Mackie, May I?

Mackie, May I? Chapter 8

Deciding to ask her a question that’s been on my mind since a few nights ago, I ask, “Is there something going on between you and Fred?”

Her reaction is immediate.  “God no,” she grimaces, “Ew.  No, he has some past relationship drama he’s told me all about.  I don’t want to get involved with all of that.  But he’s super cool, as a friend and such.  Nothing more, though.”

For some reason, I feel relieved when she says this.  “Okay cool, I was just wondering.  I need to know these things, you know?”

“I know,” she smiles, “At the moment, I am totally and completely boy-less.  Which is great, because it gives more time to harass you about Jesse.”

As I stick my tongue out at her in response, I feel my phone vibrate against the table top.  I look down and see that I have a new message from my dad.

Restraining order has been issued, so if he comes around you call the cops.  See you at Thanksgiving.  Love you.

“That Jesse?” she asks teasingly, and when I look up at her and she sees the serious expression on my face, hers drops.  “What’s going on?”

Seeing the text, knowing that there’s now a restraining order on someone so that they don’t come harass me, just makes everything feel so much more real.  The minute I left high school and left town, I left the harsh reality of the situation with them as well.  Coming to college in a town two hours away let me believe that I could be myself again, that I could breathe again.

But now, now it’s finally followed me and put that slight difficulty back into breathing again.

“I called my dad the other day and told him about Cameron, and he told me he’d put a restraining order against him.  He just said it’s been finalized and to call the cops in case he ever shows up again.”

“Shit,” she exhales, her previous excitement from talking about Jesse and I effectively disappearing.  I think the weight of everything has just hit her as well.  Since she wasn’t around in high school, she never truly had the opportunity to feel the weight of the situation.  “That’s crazy, Mack.”

“I know,” I sigh, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment and then, after, turning my phone’s screen off.

“You okay?” she asks hesitantly, and the concern and worry in her voice is almost palpable.

Being the strong girl, the unbroken college girl I’ve tried so hard to be since I got to college, just got a lot harder.

And I hate it.

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“That was brutal as fuck,” Fred curses the minute he and I walk out of the Spanish classroom early the next Wednesday morning.  After having spent the past two nights cramming for the exam at Fred’s apartment, we finally had to put all of our knowledge to the test.

It didn’t work out so well.

While all of the studying has made me somewhat confident in writing and reading Spanish, I don’t think any amount of studying could possibly make me decent in talking it.  And, if the previous five minutes are anything to go on, the same can be said for Fred.

But, although we didn’t do the greatest, we also didn’t run too short on time and the professor never had to step in to give us a sentence to go off of.  So while we definitely won’t fail, we’re not even near the atmosphere of an A.

At this moment, though, I couldn’t care less.  Now that that’s over there’s a huge weight off of my chest, and, since we pulled a near all-nighter last night, an overwhelming desire to crawl into bed and never return.  I barely even had the energy to put makeup on this morning and, for me, that’s definitely saying something.