I was sworn to secrecy. If she knew the truth, she wouldn’t trust him or me. He doesn’t look the same as he used to. He said, “I feel like one of those people that go through life not really living, but remain fixed by fear. It’s like I’m scared to move on. She must think I don’t care about her anymore. The truth is that I avoid conversation with her because I’m afraid to tell her.”

Teresa and I walked hurriedly across the parking lot into the café. She seated herself at the table closest to the bar and asked for the manager. I stayed near the hostess stand at the front of the café. A young girl with silky black hair draped across her shoulders smacked her lips and told Teresa that the manager would be right with her. Teresa had been here earlier in the week and interviewed for a waitress position. This was the call back day. I watched her as she fumbled with the shoelaces on her torn Keds and adjusted the mismatched socks under them. Two of the male bartenders, resembling Calvin Klein models, gawked at her behind a stack of liquor bottles. She did not notice their wildly entertaining gestures, as she applied a brand new stick of fuchsia lipstick, just like the hostess with painted red lips who stood beside me. One of the waiters brushed by her seat, mumbling something about her nose ring. She glanced over at me and laughed, throwing me the gold stud. A moment later, the tall dark and handsome manager walked towards her with his gleaming smile. He sat down at the table across from her and cleared his throat for a few minutes. She already knew the position was not hers. She sat impatiently through his excuse about not needing servers at the moment, and about her lack of cooking skills for a chef position.

Instead of thinking about it, Teresa and I headed on over to the park, where we practiced yoga. No one seemed to bother us there, except for the few dogs that just couldn't resist but to investigate a stranger standing in the grass. We laid out our mats and began our exercises with bare feet. A beautiful, sturdy man was in the grass ahead of us, playing Frisbee with his dog. His brown shaggy hair matched his dog's.

“Isn’t he gorgeous,” she asked me with a grin. I watched her stare and flash a smile. Her hair was braided along her back, and she messed with it, trying to pull it down. The guy and his dog ran off, and Teresa, who had already lost interest in him, began doing some more relaxing stretches.
After our workout, we went to the farmer's market at the corner to get some peaches and apples. The usual vendor wasn't at his tent; instead, it was the guy from the park, with his dog sitting, worn out, beside him.
“Isn’t that your man, Teresa?” She smiled at me and ran quickly over to his display.

"A dozen golden delicious apples, and a dozen peaches, please," she asked him. She watched his movements very closely, maybe making him feel a little awkward. As he rang her up, she just stared at him and mentioned something about grabbing some coffee together later. I don’t think she realized she had spoken the words.

He looked at her strangely and said, "I've got plans already, sorry." She thanked him for the fruit and we headed home. I knew she was embarrassed by what she had done. That was their first encounter with each other. The shaggy-haired guy and his dog stuck in her mind. I would soon find out that Sam was his name.

Teresa and Sam started dating that same day. After he turned her down at the market, they bumped into each other at a bar. Teresa had gone there to pick up a keg for a party she was throwing later. She told me how nervous she was when she first saw him there, and how he helped her carry the keg to her car. She invited him to the party, and he finally accepted the offer.

Getting the keg to the party was one of the hardest things we had ever done. Imagine three tiny girls, no taller than 5'2", carrying an enormous metal can full of sloshing beer. Teresa, a friend, Jamie, and I were in charge of putting the keg on ice and getting it out to the bonfire in the woods. We managed to roll it across the dirt all the way to the clearing we had made. The thing weighed like 200 lbs. While Jamie poured bags of ice into an empty trash can, Teresa grunted silently behind me. She was panting and struggling to call for help, holding the keg all by herself. Jamie and I relieved her from the keg and rolled it towards the trash can, while Teresa caught her breath. Jamie tripped clumsily over branches and yelled, "Yeah, they weren't lying when they advised us to get three men to carry this!" Then she pissed her pants. We may have had more fun before the party than during it.

Well, with the exception of Teresa. She spent the greatest night with the new love of her life. Sitting around the campfire, I recall hearing Teresa's moaning from the woods in the distance. That was their first spontaneous night together. Sam and Teresa were youthful, daring, and happy with each other.

Their relationship was a bit different. It began under normal circumstances, but over the past year it had become more difficult for Teresa to get Sam's attention. She had almost reached her limit with him, and it came at a stressful time for her.

Teresa was moving out of her house in a day or two. She had lived there her whole life. Never anywhere else. She was a strong girl, and I knew she'd make it through okay, but she deserved a break. Her real father had five heart attacks the past year, and her step-dad was addicted to coke and depended on a trashy drug dealer for his fix and for sex. That was why Teresa's mom finally decided to leave him. She had been clinging to the idea that her husband wasn't cheating on her. It took her a year and a half to admit that the rumors were true, and she just now chose to get out of the marriage. If Teresa followed her mother's courageous footsteps, she would be able to get out of her unhappy relationship too.

She finally hung up the phone, rolled her eyes, and said, "That whole conversation with him was such a waste of time." She walked over to the stereo and shut it off quickly. Dave Matthew's song, Little Thing, was silenced immediately. I knew it was because Sam made her that c.d. He mixed up a bunch of songs that reminded him of Teresa, and titled the c.d., Little Thing, his nickname for her. He used to do nice things like that for her. But the past seven months of their relationship had been nothing but arguments and ignorance.

I looked at her sitting there on the floor, wrapping breakables in newspaper, and I felt her pain. She was so unhappy. Sam had promised that he would help her pack that night and he never showed up.

I heard Teresa arguing with him on the phone, saying, "How can you have six hours to hang out with James, and not a single moment to help me like you promised?"

I knew what his response was. He would give some bullshit excuse about how he hadn't hung out with James in so long and he felt he owed it to him. Sam definitely liked to seem available and helpful to everyone, except Teresa. She was the exception--only because he knew that her love was guaranteed. He felt he had to work to gain the respect of others.

I always told Teresa to break up with him, and make him work for it. If she removed herself from him for a while, then he would know what he was missing.

"I don't wanna break up with him, because I still feel there's a chance that he could change. I just keep holding onto the memory of how sweet things used to be between us," Teresa would tell me.

She was right. I used to see them as the perfect couple. I would go hang out with them at Sam's place over the summer. He would make us mixed drinks and order a movie to watch. Teresa and him would cuddle on the bed in the living room, and I'd sit on the couch beside them with whomever I brought. Teresa would curl herself up, and Sam would wrap himself around her like a blanket. I thought they belonged together.

Last summer we all went on this trip to the Florida Keys and stayed at a friend's beach house. That was the first time I personally noticed a change in him. He wouldn't go near the water, because he was "scared that crabs would bite his toes."

"Why aren't you wearing swim trunks, Sam," Teresa asked him. He told her that he burns easily and cancer runs in his family.

The only time he seemed to enjoy himself was when we went bar hopping and when we went to see fireworks. On the last night of the trip, Teresa was gone to get Mahi-Mahi for dinner, and Sam pulled me quietly into his room. He said he had something very serious to talk to me about and I could never tell anyone.

“You absolutely have my word,” I swore to him.

With a nod of his head, he dropped his pants and boxers. I didn’t mean to let my mouth drop open, but it was an astonishing sight. All over his legs and groin area were patches of red bumps and blisters.

“Sam, what is that,” I asked him, trying not to stare.

“I got this virus a couple weeks ago. I don’t know where it came from. But it hasn’t gone away yet,” he told me.

“And you haven’t mentioned this to Teresa,” I asked him.

“She wouldn’t dare touch me again,” he explained to me.

I told him that he needed to tell her the truth, and that would bring out the best outcome. “She won’t judge you by what is on the outside,” I said. I thought it would be comforting.

“Yeah, but it’s probably inside of me too,” he said pathetically.

I didn’t know what else to say to him, so I just swore everything would be okay, and that he could trust me to keep it a secret. In return, I made him promise not to harm Teresa, since he wasn’t going to tell her about it. Sam and I had formed a new bond; one that put me in the middle of everything.

Teresa complained to me later on that he didn't seem attracted to her any more and that he never initiated any form of intimacy. "He didn't even try anything the whole week at the beach," she told me. The poor girl was a feign and Sam hadn't satisfied her in a month straight.

"You don't understand," Teresa told me, "we used to have sex every day. Now I'm lucky if I get one kiss a week." The lack of affection was what really hurt her.

Last night was their one-year anniversary, which Sam forgot. Teresa and I had a bet going. I told her I thought Sam would remember, and that if he didn't even call her, I would buy her a pack of cigarettes. I gave him some credit. I figured that since he forced himself to be distant in a sexual sense, then he would at least act like he cared to protect his secret. Sure enough I spoke too soon. I owed her a pack of cigarettes and my condolences.

"Do you remember how he used to treat me," she asked me that night. “For our three-month anniversary he surprised me with Metallica tickets, and the next month with my kitty cat. How can this still be the same Sam?”

“Okay, stop packing,” I commanded her. “We are getting out of this house right now. Leave all this behind for just a moment.” I didn’t know what else to tell her, so I suggested we go for an afternoon climb.

I looked out across the panoramic view of the Chimneys. Teresa’s head popped up from the boulders below me, and I helped pull her up the side of the cliff.

“I’ve never been climbing this time of year. It’s really beautiful,” she told me.

“That’s why I brought you here,” I said.

“Sam was the only one who ever came climbing with me before,” Teresa said.

“Just forget about men for just one minute,” I told her. Every time she mentioned Sam I had to force an expressionless face. I was afraid of giving it all away. I hated the feeling that I was keeping something from her, and it was worse because I didn’t agree with the way he treated her. She had dealt with him far too long, and I didn’t know which way to direct her.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I know he cares about me so much, but it’s so hard to feel anything for him when he has nothing to offer me. I should just dump him.”

“Would you be as happy without him,” I asked her.

“I would deal with it just fine. I’ve dealt with worse,” she stated. I told her that I would be there for her no matter what she decided to do.

“But what if--,” she stopped short.

“What if what,” I asked her.

“What if he can change,” she asked. “I just don’t want to risk loosing a good thing.”

She walked over to the other edge of the mountainside and stood there looking over at the trees below. Her knees were shaking and tears welled up in her eyes. I thought she was going to jump. She just stood there, opened her mouth, and screamed all her anger away. And like that, her frustrations clung to the breeze and floated away. With the dying rays of the sun, she let go, momentarily, of the troubles in her relationship.