Further reading: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Also check out the official Livin' Large FAQ, Cast List, Flow Chart 1.0, Flow Chart 2.0 and the Livin' Large Epilogue: Part 1.

Sorry, folks. Once again, the epic length of this epilogue is forcing me to post one more installment after this one. Finishing this installment drained me.

Future NBA All-Star

Future NBA All-Star -- hereafter referred to as FNAS -- went on to lead our men’s basketball team to a 29-5 record, a conference title, and an appearance in the Elite Eight. That's where his dreams of a national title ended at the hands of a superior team with its own future NBA All-Star. FNAS had his worst performance of the season during that final game, and many people assumed that the opposing future NBA All-Star had shut him down. Not so. Did that guy play great defense against FNAS? Yes. Did the team, which really was comprised of superior players, have the defensive schemes and personnel to make FNAS work like hell for everything he got? Absolutely.

But what's less well-known is this: FNAS strained his back in the previous game, and that injury, more than anything else, held him down. I had season tickets that year, and I attended every home game but one. (In a painful bit of irony, the one game I missed was the one Larry Bird attended back when he was doing scouting work for the Celtics. The next day, there was this big picture of Bird on the front page of the school paper. I wanted to vomit.) I had watched FNAS do some truly amazing things. He really was the best college player in the country that year. I still have scars on my hands from all the high-fives I threw during those games. And let me tell you: FNAS was hurt during that Elite Eight game. He wasn't moving right. If you had watched him at all that year, you could tell he was laboring just to get up and down the court. Now, this is where someone (Cortez?) is going to call bullshit or faking or choking or something. But I will die believing that FNAS's injury is what doomed him that game. Not the team, necessarily. They might have lost anyway. But the Other Future NBA All-Star did NOT shut FNAS down.

Sure enough, FNAS left school after that season. He was unanimously named the conference player of the year. He won the John R. Wooden Award and the Naismith Award. He was also named the USBWA College Player of the Year. Not surprisingly, he went first overall in that year's NBA draft.

Like I said, FNAS was amazing during his final year in college. I honestly believed that the sky was the limit with him. Maybe he couldn't be the next Jordan, but I thought he could maybe be a better version of Dominique Wilkins. That didn't happen. Not even close. Don't get me wrong. He had one helluva career. He averaged a shade over 20 PPG over 11 NBA seasons. In fact, he ranks (yes I know this is a dead giveaway but whatever) 42nd all-time in points per game. That's right. All-time. He was named to two All-Star teams, and he won an NBA championship (although it was as a bench jockey).

Not too shabby, right? And yet when I think about FNAS, I can only think about what he didn't do. He never owned the league. Never even came close. He was never one of the top ten players in the Association. One year he ranked 16th in MVP Award Shares, so I guess you could argue that he was at least in the top twenty for a while. But, in my most humble opinion, that wasn't nearly good enough for someone with his talent.

Ultimately, I think the problem was attitude. The guy was a competitor. He wanted it. No question about it. He had some big games. In one matchup against the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls -- one of the great defensive teams of that decade -- he went shot-for-shot with Michael Jordan. Both men finished with 44 points, but MJ's team won 104-100. And that sort of defined his career: always coming up a little bit short. (It's probably worth noting that Scottie Pippen didn't play that night. Chances are, Pip wouldn't have let FNAS drop 44.)

Yeah, he wanted it, but not in the same manic, "I would step on your grandma's throat to beat you" kind of way that the great players do. FNAS wanted to be the best, but he just didn't have a bloodlust necessary to make it happen. Is that his fault, or is it a case of "either you have it or you don't"? We'll probably never know.

Taco Bell Jennifer

I have no idea what became of her. I called her once to check on her during the second semester of my freshman year, but nobody answered the phone and there seemingly was no answering machine. This was before Caller ID, so I doubt she was screening her calls. My guess is that, since she had dropped out of school to support Matt, she simply moved back home.

Cindy

Cindy eventually forgave me for leaving her dangling for a month after I decided to date Aimee instead of her. As Cindy put it, "How can I stay mad at you? You're my best friend."

A word of warning to men of the world: beware when a woman dubs you her best friend. In my experience, it almost always means the exact opposite of what you want it to mean. For instance, if you're completely head over heels for a girl and she calls you her best friend, she means "friend" in the most literal sense of the word. And your friendship is so valuable to her that she will never, under any circumstances, consider you anything more than that. On the other hand, if you're attached or have decided you absolutely don't want to date the girl for whatever reason, being named her best friend means she wants you and may be willing to do anything in her power to bend you to her will.

Anyway, Cindy and I remained friends. During the summer following my freshman year, Aimee and I got together and broke up and got together again and broke up again. Bad times. The end result was that I was single for most of the summer, and I ended up spending a lot of time with Cindy...which led to a little blowup with Aimee.

It was Fourth of July weekend and my mom was throwing a party at our new home. (She got remarried that summer and we moved into his house because he had a kickass in-ground pool.) Mom suggested I invite my friends, which is what I did. Including both Cindy and Aimee. I know that seems like madness, and it kind of was. But I thought I had it under control. Cindy was leaving for vacation the next day and could only stay until 1:00 p.m. because she had to back. Therefore, I told Aimee not to show up until 1:30 p.m. I figured that give me a perfectly safe half-hour window. What a sucker.

Cindy showed up around noon, by which time the usual suspects (Gauvin, Greg, Hornbuckle, Mikey/Statbuster, etc.) were already there. I greeted Cindy with a hug, at which time she told me, "Guess what? I packed last night, so I can stay for the whole party!"

Uh oh.

I barely had time to register that little nugget of brain lightning when Aimee rode up on her bike. Now, it's important to mention here that I had told everyone that it was a pool party. However, nobody showed up with bathing suits. Nobody, that is, except Aimee. And, since she figured she'd be getting right into the pool, her hair was tied up in a bun, she hadn't really put on any makeup, and she was wearing an old pair of athletic shorts and a huge t-shirt over her bathing suit.

Cindy, on the other hand, had dressed up and was in full makeup. This, of course, embarrassed Aimee to no end: her primary competitor for my attention was essentially showing her up not only in front of me, but in front of my entire hometown social group, all of whom were on the porch and watching with morbid curiosity.

Aimee was pissed. She dragged me into the garage and let me have it. "I can't believe you invited HER here when you knew I was coming! And nobody else is wearing a bathing suit! And I look like complete and total crap!" On and on. I got why she was upset, and under other circumstances I might have cut her a little slack. But repeatedly breaking up with me on a whim was one thing. Now she was screaming at me in front of my friends like I'd just eaten her puppy. No way could I let that go.

"You gave up the right to choose my friends," I said, "when you broke up with me. Again." And I had a few other choice words to say, after which she jumped back onto her bike and pedaled away in a huff.

When I returned to the porch, everybody took an unspoken vow of silence about what had just happened, but I could tell that Cindy felt that I had chosen her over Aimee this time. Which I kind of did.

After that, Cindy and I started semi-dating. I say "semi" because I refused to close the deal. We would hug, hold hands, wrestle around playfully, get in those little pre-foreplay tickle fights, etc., but every time her face hovered into the vicinity of mine, I pulled back. The bottom line was, in my mind, once I kissed Cindy, it was ON. I honestly wasn't sure I wanted it to be on. Sure, I'd spent most of my high school years wanting to date her, and she'd proved sweeter and more dependable than Aimee. But the spark was missing. And I was waiting for it to appear. The thing about sparks, though, is that they're either there or they're not.

So the summer passed. Aimee and I sort of got back together and then sort of broke up again, after which she told me she had no intention of having a boyfriend going into her sophomore year. She was in a sorority now, Delta Delta Delta, and she wanted to leave her options open. "Okay," I told her. "But know this: I'm not waiting around for you. I'm going to date around too. And trust me, I won't be single for long." Bold words, but I believed them.

Meanwhile, Cindy was still working on making her best friend her boyfriend. I actually had made a long-term date plan with her. Early in the summer, when Aimee and I had briefly gotten back together, she had convinced me to buy tickets to a concert featuring both Celine Dion and Michael Bolton. I know: gak. Love gives you The Dumb. Anyway, the concert got canceled and rescheduled for September, only Celine (thankfully) canceled and was replaced by Yanni (oh God no). Since I was stuck with the tickets anyway, I invited Cindy to the concert. She said yes without even thinking about it.

Leading up to that, I invited Cindy to my school for a day visit during my first full weekend back at school, the infamous Truth or Dare weekend. BadDave's memory of this was slightly askew, because I actually drove to Kokomo to pick her up and brought her back. We arrived right as Dave was leaving for Truth or Dare: Part II. Dave immediately liked her for whatever reason.

We had a nice, almost romantic day walking around campus and just hanging out. That night, we ended up back in my room, and we once again started wrestling and tickling and all those other little accidentally-on-purpose games that usually lead to something naughty. But once again, I pulled back. Cindy stood up and walked to the window. With her back to me, she said, "Do you think your roommate would mind if I spent the night?"

Whoa.

You have to understand, Cindy was a good girl. Like, God was probably her best friend more so than I was. The fact that she was suggesting, on her own, spending the night, was like a sucker punch to the nuts. And I realized in that very moment that I did not want to date Cindy. Not now, not ever. It just wasn't going to work. The only thing we really had in common was each other. We didn't like the same things. We didn't do the same things. And that wasn't going to change. In fact, those differences were only going to become more pronounced over time as we slowly matured into the people we were going to be. I had to end this.

"Well," I said, totally ignoring what she said, "I guess I should take you home now."

She didn't like that answer, but she complied. As we headed down the highway toward Kokomo, she broke what had turned into an uncomfortable silence. "I'm conflicted," she said.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Another word of warning men: if you don't want the answer to a question, do NOT ask it.

"Because," she continued, "at times, it feels like there are two sides to me: Cindy the friend...and Cindy the woman."

After missing a beat, I said, "So, how 'bout some music?" And I turned on the radio. We drove the rest of the way back to Kokomo in complete silence.

When the concert came around, I was dating Aimee again but didn't want to tell Cindy. Yeah, yeah, I should have learned my lesson. Only this time, it didn't really come back to bite me in the ass. Unless you count having to go to that concert. I tried to get out of it. I told Cindy I had an exam. She said she'd drive and I could study on the way. I told her I was sick. She said she'd take care of me. I offered to give her the tickets so she could take someone else. She said she wasn't going with anybody but me.

And we went. We had lawn seats, and I pulled a real superdick move: I laid out our blanket, laid down on it, and immediately fell asleep. I slept through the entire concert. Cindy got the hint. There was no romance in our future. Not together anyway.

But we remained friends. In fact, Cindy thought so highly of me that, when she got married two years later -- yep, she worked fast -- she demanded that I be in the wedding party. Eventually, I ended up being an usher. "I really wanted Scott to make you a groomsman, but he refused," she said. "And since you can't be a bridesmaid, an usher was the best I could do."

It was totally bizarre. I was single, owing to the fact that Aimee had recently broken up with me yet again. And here I was, ushering at the wedding of the girl whom I spent years wanting to date in high school...and whom I might have ended up marrying had things gone a little differently.

We kept in touch up until a few years after I had graduated. She even had me to her house for a family dinner once (by which time she already had two children). The last time I saw her was at Highland Park in Kokomo. She was there with her five -- yes, five -- kids and her husband. I was there with Gauvin. We chatted about what was going on in our lives and then we were left with...nothing. The years had stripped away pretty much everything we ever had in common...which, in the end, was only our shared experiences. That was the last time we ever spoke. I doubt we'll ever speak again.

Susan

Aimee and I broke up early into the second semester of my freshman year. As fate would have it, Susan became single about the same time. I figured this was my chance to make something happen. But, as was the case with women to that point in my life, I moved reeeeeaaal slow. But we were spending a lot of time together, and we even had become pledge parents in APO. Then came Easter weekend. My mom, who had just started dating a guy named Wally, had plans and actually told me not to come home for the holiday weekend. When Susan found out, she invited me to come home with her. I thought that was it. I thought I was in.

But when I showed up to her place for the ride to Indy, there was a guy in the front seat. It was this complete douchebag Australian guy who had recently moved into Susan's social group. His name was Stu. And he was apparently dating Susan.

Fuck.

To make matters worse, Susan and Stu were in the newly dating phase, which meant loads of PDA, and I was forced to watch. Temporarily. Because it was more than I could stand -- after all, I was still sort of reeling from getting dumped by Aimee, and now even my mom didn't have time for me -- I retreated to Susan's mom's guest room and spent most of the weekend reading The Big Three by Peter May. Meanwhile, Susan and Stu drank and partied and played cards with Susan's mom and brother. My hermit-like behavior earned me a reputation as stick-in-the-mud loser with Susan's family, and I can't blame them. Stu was the douche, but I was the one acting like a douche. Not my greatest moment.

After that weekend, Susan and I really didn't talk for the rest of the school year. I became a single pledge parent in Susan's absence, and our pledge daughter, Lisa, came to resent Susan. Which didn't matter, since Susan wasn't around, not even on initiation night.

Then, during the last week of school, Susan called me with news. She and Stu...were getting married. Apparently, Stu was having Green Card problems and would be sent back to Australia if he didn't get married. So Susan had agreed to tie the knot. I went apeshit and told her she was acting like a crazy person. She said I was being rude and asked me to be happy for her. I said no way. We ended things on a bad note and I honestly figured I'd never hear from her again.

Then came the Sunday night of the first full weekend of my sophomore year. This was two nights after Truth or Dare and one night after Cindy the Woman. BadDave and I were chilling in our dorm room when the phone rang. It was Susan.

Since she had been the bigger person and called me, I decided to be nice about her marriage to Stu. "So, how's married life?"

"Oh, Stu and I didn't get married," she said.

"What?! Why not?"

"Long story short, he was an asshole and I really shouldn't have been marrying him anyway," she said. "So we broke up and he went back to Australia."

"Wow. That's...news." It was all I had.

"So," she said, "Are you dating anybody?"

"No," I replied. "Aimee and I got back together over the summer, but we broke up again."

"Cool. You wanna come over to my place?"

And of course I did. I went over. We drank a few beers (which I never did at that time...only for Susan). She told me the full story about her breakup with Stu, which I won't bore you with since it's pretty boring. It got late, and she said she was tired. She walked me down to my car. I suggested we go on a date the next Friday, that I'd take her out to dinner. She smiled this special little smile and said yes. Her face floated up to mine...and I didn't kiss her. Why? Because, frankly, I wasn't really sure that she wanted me to. Ultimately, Aimee was my only real dating experience, and I didn't have the confidence in myself to take what I wanted. But I figured that, if things went well on Friday, we might end up doing more than kiss.

When I got back to the dorm, I was pretty high on myself. On Friday, I had been dirty-danced naked by two chicks, both of whom I'd made out with and one of whom I had gotten touchy-feely with. On Saturday, Cindy basically threw herself at me. And on Sunday, a girl I had crushed on for the entirety of my freshman year had agreed to go on a date with me. I felt like the complete and absolute shit.

Then, late that Sunday night, Aimee called, inviting me to Indy to hang out with her and some friends. And I went. And things happened. I went back to see her again on Wednesday. And things happened again. So, just like that, Aimee and I were seemingly back together. Not that we openly agreed on it, but, well, I had to assume.

On Thursday night, I called Susan and canceled our date. I explained that Aimee and I had gotten back together, so I couldn't take her out. She said it was fine, but I could tell it wasn't.

It didn't put a damper on our friendship, though. We still hung out a lot. We went to APO parties together. She even went to an APO party with me and Aimee, who was in APO at Butler and wanted to find out what our chapter was all about. Boy, that was awkward. Once again, I showed an inability to understand that girls who are sweet on the same guy shouldn't be in around each other.

During my junior year, Aimee and I broke up yet again. Unfortunately, Susan was dating this schmuck named Dave. (Not BadDave.) Fortunately for me, he was enough of a schmuck that they broke up during the second semester. It was my time to move in. So one night, after Susan had aced a really difficult Organic Chemistry exam, I took her out to celebrate. We hit all the campus bars and were having a really great time. I really felt like things were going in my favor until Byron showed up. Byron was in APO with us. He was kind of an enigma. He was black and powerfully built. He kind of looked like a pro athlete. But he had a high-pitched voice and was the biggest, most socially awkward nerd you're ever likely to meet.

He was out at the bars by himself and looking for someone to hang with. Susan was always one to pick up strays, animals and people alike. So she adopted Byron, who proceeded to follow us around from bar to bar. I was livid. So much so that I ended up punching a wall in the bathroom of Kazoos (which, sadly, no longer exists) and hurting my hand. We closed out the bars. Susan lived in an off-campus apartment, and I said I'd walk her home.

"I'll go with you guys," Byron said, "then you and I can walk back to the dorms together, Matt."

Fuuuuuuuuck.

So we end up back at Susan's place, where Susan introduced us to her fish. I couldn't even pretend to be interested, so I announced I was leaving.

Susan said, "Nooooo, don't go yet." So I stayed, but I was so pissed Byron had cockblocked me that I just stood there, sulking, while they chatted in the near darkness. (Susan didn't turn on the lights because she didn't want to bother her roommate.)

Byron announced that he had to use the bathroom before we headed to the dorms. As soon as the bathroom door closed, Susan gave me this look, walked up to me, and said, "Is this what you've been waiting for?" That statement immediately trumped Aimee's "You don't have to sleep on the floor" as the sexiest thing anybody had ever said to me.

Then we started kissing like crazy until Byron came back out of the restroom. "Well, you ready to go?" he asked.

"Wait," she said, "I have to show Matt something in my room."

As we walked into her room, I flipped on the lights. She closed the door, smiled at me, then turned the lights back off. Then she knocked me down and we started kissing and grabbing in the dark. I don't know how much time passed, but things came to an abrupt halt when Susan, seemingly out of nowhere, said, "We shouldn't be doing this. You're just going to hurt me."

"What?" I was totally confused. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Yeah," she said. "You are. We should stop."

So we stopped. I tucked her in, kissed her lightly on the lips, and left the room closing the door behind me.

Byron was long gone. I walked the long, long walk back to my dorm in a stupor. By some strange twist of fate, I walked up to the building just as BadDave was getting dropped off by someone. I don't remember who dropped him off, or what he had been doing. I just didn't care.

BadDave knew something was up. "Dude," he said, "you okay?"

"Yeah, fine. Just tired." It sounded like a reasonable excuse. It was, after all, past 4 a.m.

If things had ended a little differently, I would have told BadDave everything. But I was upset and unsettled. Had Susan and I taken The Next Step, or had things gotten worse between us? I had no idea. So, rather than telling BadDave the story, I went to bed without a word.

Susan avoided me for a few days. She claimed she was sick. I didn't believe her. I passed through those days in a state of heightened anxiety. I was terrified that I had ruined something special. When we finally got together, Susan was as friendly as ever. With an emphasis on the "friend" part. And despite furious efforts on my part, she didn't want to talk about or even acknowledge what had happened. But I wasn't prepared to go down without a fight.

We went out for dinner the next week (she insisted on paying for her half...a bad sign). She had driven, and as she dropped me off at my dorm, I said, "Look, Susan, I know you don't want to talk about what happened a while back, but I think it's pretty obvious we're attracted to each other. We've been close for years. We're both single. I think we should date."

"I don't think that's a good idea," she said. And nothing I could say that night changed her mind. But still I was determined.

A week or so later, we were out at the bars with her roommate, Laurel. At one point, while Susan was in the bathroom, I asked Laurel to tell me whether she thought I had a shot at dating Susan. "I don't know," Laurel said, "you guys are pretty close. Maybe. I don't know." Not exactly a stirring endorsement.

The bar we were in was, as always, backed body-to-body. And although it usually took people forever to return from the bathroom, Susan had been gone way too long. I went looking for her and found her talking to some guy I'd never seen before. I walked up to them.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

"Yeah," Susan said, "This is Torrey."

"Hey man," Torrey said, sticking out his hand for a shake.

Susan spent the rest of the night standing there talking to him. Even when the bar closed and they were kicking people out, they stood there just talking and talking. As we walked out, I said, "Well, I'll walk you girls home."

"No, that's okay," Susan said. "I think Torrey's going to come back to my place for a while."

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

Just like that, Susan was in a relationship again. I was beyond crushed.

The thing was, Torrey graduated at the end of that semester, after which he moved to Seattle. I figured that was a good thing. After all, long distance relationships rarely last. But it turned out that most definitely was NOT a good thing, because Susan had decided to move to Seattle too. Not until after the first semester of the next school year, though. She planned to enroll in pharmacy school in Seattle, but she had to get some of her core requirements out of the way first. Suddenly, I had a deadline.

Aimee and I got back together briefly near the end of the school year, but she broke up with me yet again and started dating some foreign exchange student. She then spent the summer in Mexico...where this guy happened to be from. I spent the summer in Kokomo working for a furniture moving company, hanging out with my friends (including Dave D., who had just returned from the army), and spending my weekends with Susan. Usually I'd drive down to Indy on Friday night, pick her up, then drive to the town our college was in, where we would party and then stay with her roommate (who was going to summer school). Several times there was some semi-sparkage, but I didn't want to put the moves on Susan while she and Torrey were still a couple.

Aimee returned at the end of the summer and we once again got back together briefly. In fact, she came to my school for the first full weekend and stayed with me. I was now an R.A. in the school's nicest dorm, so my room was pretty sweet. Oddly enough, Brett was visiting from Phoenix the same weekend. In one of the truly odd experiences of my life, Aimee, Brett, Susan and I went out dancing together. Brett ended up crashing at Susan's place while Aimee and I went back to mine.

Aimee spent that semester as an exchange student in Washington D.C., so we broke up again and I turned my attention to Susan. We slowly eased into...something. I don't know what it was. It had all the qualities of dating, but we never talked about it and she was still officially with Torrey. I wanted to have a conversation about it, but I was afraid that if I brought it up I would kill this special thing that was developing between us. So stupid. I should have spilled my guts. But I didn't know that at the time.

Susan visited Torrey over Fall Break, so I went to D.C. to see Aimee. It wasn't a good trip. More on that in Aimee's section.

As the semester progressed, the non-relationship Susan and I had got more and more intense. But still I remained silent, even as she prepared to move to Seattle. She had already been accepted into a PharmD program. So it was over, then. She was going to leave me.

One cold Decemeber night after Finals, we were sitting in her living room talking about nothing. Finally, I said, "Susan, don't go. Please, don't move to Seattle. I'm in love with you and I don't want you to go. I'm begging you. Don't move to Seattle."

We had been talking by candlelight, and it was so dark I could barely see her face. "Are you serious?" she asked very, very quietly.

"Yes."

After a brief silence, she said, "Why did you wait until now to tell me that? After I'd already gotten accepted into pharmacy school, after I'd already made plans to move?"

"Would it have changed anything?" I asked.

"Probably," she said.

Then we finally talked. Not about everything, but about enough. It all went back to the "You're just going to hurt me" comment she had made years ago. She believed in her heart that if she started dating me, I would break up with her the second Aimee came back into my life. She was completely and totally wrong about that, but I have to admit, it was a reasonable assumption on her part, considering how often Aimee and I broke up and got back together.

"Why did you wait until now to tell me that?" I said.

"Would it have changed anything?" she asked.

"Probably," I said.

And so, after a few more bittersweet nights together, Susan moved to Seattle. It hurt me in a way I hadn't hurt since the first time Aimee and I had broken up. It might even have been worse, because now Susan was effectively gone forever...and it was in large part my fault. If only I had said something.

The first weekend back at school, I went on a drinking binge. My buddy Jeremy, who had recently come out of the closet, had a couple girl friends visiting from Kentucky. I decided I was going to have sex with one of them. The cold was horrific that Saturday night. We're talking -15 wind chill. But, being idiot college students, we made the mile walk to the campus bars without coats, because you didn't want to be wearing a coat in hot bar.

Jeremy's friends: one was hot and a bit of a prude, one was barely average and kind of a slut. Obviously I went after the slut. A few hours in, we were both tanked and making out on a dance floor. This girl, she kissed with her teeth. It was the weirdest thing. It was like she was trying to eat my mouth. At one point, she whispered in my ear, "When we get back to your room, I'm going to give you the best blowjob ever." I shivered at the thought. If her blowjobs were anything like her kisses, I was going to wake up a eunuch.

When the bars closed, we had to make that long walk back to the dorm in subzero temperatures, only this time we were soaked with sweat. Halfway back, I said, "Screw this" and literally sprinted back to the dorm without them. I did, however, wait for them in the lobby. Jeremy was an R.A. on the fourth floor and I was an R.A. on the eighth floor. The slut was pretty much holding me up on the elevator trip, because I was blitzed out of my mind.

When the elevator stopped at the fourth floor, the slut said, "I'm going to take Matt up to his room."

"Oh no you're not," Jeremy said. "C'mon, Matt, let's go."

When we walked into my room, I slurred, "Fucksh you, Jehremy, You cosht me a blowed job."

"No," he replied, "I kept you from doing something you'll regret tomorrow. Now...bed or bathroom."

I considered the question. "Bathroom."

So Jeremy sat me by the toilet and leaned my head on the seat, which is how I woke up the next morning. Then I began the process of pulling my shit back together.

Susan and I remained friends. She eventually broke up with Torrey, who was an abusive asshole. She also eventually earned her PharmD. She still lives in Seattle, where she has a young son named Gabriel whom she adores. I visited in Seattle a year or so after I graduated. We also saw each other a few times when she was visiting family in Indiana. We drift out of touch, and every four or five years I hear from her again out of the blue. Maybe it'll always be that way. Maybe it won't.

Epilogue: Part 3

Labels: college stories, Livin' Large