Confessions of a Teenage Caffeine Addict

10 // My Charming Girlfriend

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello! I thought 17 by Sky Ferreira was the perfect song for this chapter. Basically explains Jules. Let me know if you guys have any song suggestions for other chapters. Enjoy!

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Things do not change; we change. —Henry David Thoreau

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JAKE

DECEMBER // WEEK 3

I watched the coach's daughter walk into her perfect little house and had the strangest feeling creep inside of me: I wanted to chase after her... and I didn't even know her name. This had never happened to me before, seeing as girls were usually the ones chasing after me—including Jules. As soon as I thought of Jules chasing after me I thought of Ava's phone call. All too-familiar images flashed through my mind of Jules dancing on tables at parties.

I leaned my head against my steering wheel. Jules wasn't always the table dancing, alcohol loving girlfriend—but that was before she got sucked into cheerleading. She slowly became obsessed with being head cheerleader—having that power. I knew what that type of hunger felt like and I admit, it was tempting to give in at times. Rung by rung, Jules climbed the ladder towards having everything... or whatever her definition of everything was. In the process she left her sanity, dignity, and pretty much everything she cared about behind... even me. I soon became her trophy boyfriend without even realizing it.

A few rungs up the ladder, Jules started going to different parties than me which was all fine and dandy until my buddies started calling me to inform me that my charming girlfriend was taking body shots... At first that's all it was—just body shots. Jules took another step up the ladder and started dancing on tables, which of course involved her famous strip tease, which was quite irresistible if you asked me; and finally Jules progressed to strip poker. I didn't even want to know what the winner got.

After I had sobered up enough, I would drive to wherever Jules was. I usually found her friends in the middle of some drinking game and I knew none of them actually cared enough to pull her down from the table, so that became my job. Once it became apparent that Jules had no intentions of getting down from the tables, I stopped rushing to parties to rescue her, and because driving too fast never ends well. One time, I got pulled over and the only reason the cop left me off with a warning was because I was Jake Roswell, the guy who had scored the game winning goal in overtime to advance our hockey team to the semi-finals. Eventually, people stopped calling me to let know what my charming girlfriend was up to... or up on; not because they knew I wouldn't come but because there was nothing I, or anyone else could do to stop her. That's the way she wanted it—so that's the way it was. My girlfriend is just charming.

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I took my head off my steering wheel and glanced over at the coach's daughter's house one last time. I forced myself to drive off towards the party that A-Mart was throwing, a party which I had fully intended on going to tonight, drinking a ton and having a hell of a good time. I was going to forget about Jules, the baby, and every other problem I had. Now I was going to this party, knowing I wouldn't be able to celebrate one of our biggest wins of the season because Jules had decided that dancing on tables was a better idea. As I drove (at a reasonable speed limit) to save my "damsel not so in distress" I wondered what I was going to have to promise her tonight to get her off A-Mart's table.

I parked my truck in the first open spot I found, behind a motorcycle, and walked quickly up the wide brick pathway to A-Mart's house, which was nothing less than prestigious. It was a big white house with big doric columns. It reminded me of the President's house almost, except on a much smaller scale. A-Mart's lawn was basically a replica of the lawns you see on the cover of those gardening magazines. His dad and my dad could literally talk for hours about grass. My dad will probably turn me into grass when he finds out just how badly I screwed up.