“Well, go change,” Dad says. “We’re getting steaks.”
The romper is on the floor of my bedroom, and I realize that I don’t want it to only be the thing I was wearing when I was part of a humiliating public breakup. So I put it back on, fluff my curls, fix my eyeliner, and dust powder over my face in the hopes that I no longer look like I was crying most of the day.
I’ve lost the ability to judge if I do or not.
We see him as soon as we walk outside. Dad silently gets into the car, and suddenly for the first time in years I’m glad we don’t have one of those relationships where I tell him everything. If Dad knew about Elise he might back his Subaru Forester right over Matty. And I might hate Matty now, but I don’t want him dead or my dad in jail.
Matty shoves his hands in his pockets. “Hey.” Honestly, if anyone looks like they’ve fallen apart, it’s not me and my romper.
“What?”
“Kat, I love you,” he says like he’s giving me a gift.
“Stop saying that when it can’t be true.”
“We’ve been together for two years,” he says. “I thought you were committed to this. To us.”
I stare at him, the messy brown hair I normally can’t keep my hands out of, his slightly crooked nose, the tiny scar over his lip he got wrestling with his brother when he was only five, the way his dimples settle in like they’re sneaking behind the corners of his smile. If you’ve memorized someone’s details, how can it be possible that maybe you don’t actually know him at all?
“You’re willing to just give up on this?”
“OMG.” I shake my head. “You cheated on me, Matty. Because you were bored. You don’t get to make me the mean one now.”
He grabs me around my waist. “Elise means nothing to me.”
“You know what?” I pull out of his grasp. “That doesn’t make me feel better. Honestly it makes me feel worse. You ruined this for nothing, and I’m not taking the blame.”
He doesn’t move as I walk toward Dad’s car, but I pretend that he’s gone. Dad seems to have extra worry lines on his forehead, so I’m genuinely relieved he just backs out of the driveway. I sneak my phone out of my purse to text James, but I lose track of that original goal because I haven’t looked at my phone in ages, and my screen is lit up with texts from basically everyone in my contacts list. Are you ok? and He’s an idiot! and WHERE ARE YOU??? and I feel like I can’t believe in true love anymore.
“She’d know what to say,” Dad says. “If she were here.”
I blink back tears and don’t say anything. It would be so much easier if he wasn’t right.
My phone lights up again. Text from James: How are you doing, Kat?
I reach for the chain around my neck and pull on the gold monogrammed letters. Mom’s initials in engraved swirls, her eighteenth birthday present from her parents. And I miss her so much it’s like an injury, and while Sofia’s text was overdramatic, I might not believe in true love anymore, either.
But I have a lit-up phone and a dad driving me for breakup steaks. It’s not enough, but I’ll try to pretend that it is.
James shows up early the next morning, dressed in her sleek running outfit. She knows my schedule better than practically anyone, but I still feel like a total slacker because I’m in my pajamas with sleep crusty in my eyes.
“Come on,” she says. “Get dressed. Let’s go get breakfast.”
I make a grumpy sleepy noise, but James just shakes her head.
“Matty doesn’t deserve your wallowing.”
“I’m not wallowing!” I say. “It’s, like, six A.M., you freak.”
“This is the only way we can get Porto’s without waiting in line for an hour,” she says, which is unfortunately the truth. I let her inside and quickly change back into my wallowing clothes, which are fine with James because she doesn’t know they’re my wallowing clothes. Athletes are much more comfortable with stretchy clothes in public, so I’m able to get away with a lot. If we were out with a larger group, someone would definitely call me out on these yoga pants.
The line is fairly short, as expected, and James insists on ordering dozens of pastries in two boxes. I know that one box is for her family and one is for mine, and I know that Dad will smile when he sees the familiar yellow, gray, and white box. Porto’s is a Cuban bakery with rows and rows of sweet and savory pastries and desserts beyond what your mind could even dream up. They’re magically cheap, too; James pays only twenty dollars, total, for both boxes.
“What do you want to do today?” she asks, once we’re seated on the patio with little cups of coffee. I’m still learning to appreciate its bitterness; we both know once we’re done here I’ll walk up the street to the proper coffee shop for something milkier and sweeter.
“I thought you were hanging out with Logan today,” I say. Logan Sidana, James’s boyfriend, is a new freshman at UCLA. He and James have the most mature relationship of anyone I know. By next year she’ll be at UCLA as well, and I already have ideas about anecdotes I’ll tell in my speech at their wedding when we’re twenty-five or whenever.
I’ve actually been thinking a lot about Logan in the last twenty-three hours. James and I were getting ready to go to junior prom last year, and Logan showed up early. He didn’t want to get left out of the conversation, because Logan’s not one of those guys who doesn’t like hanging out with girls. He has two sisters and he’ll compliment your hair or notice if you get new shoes. So he stood outside James’s closed bedroom door, chatting with us while we finished getting ready. James, of course, was ready much earlier than I was, so she joined Logan in the hallway.
Matty’s running late! I’d called when I got his text. James called back a No problem! We have time! but I clearly heard Logan mutter something about that douchebag. I still remember how chilled I felt by his words, because I liked Logan. Everyone at Magnolia Park liked Logan, because he was handsome and polite and ended up giving a valedictorian speech that brought the majority of the audience to tears. And back then I loved Matty—a mere twenty-four hours ago I loved Matty, after all—but I had this deep respect for Logan. So instead of thinking about someone like Logan thinking that my boyfriend, the love of my sixteen years of life, was a douchebag, I decided that was where Logan and I would never agree.
And it’s hard to explain, but something was never the same from then on.
“We’re hanging out later,” James says, and takes a sip of her coffee. “But we don’t have to, if you need me. Or you could come with me.”
“I’m not coming with you,” I say. “You haven’t seen him in weeks. You guys need to make out and stuff. Like, full contact stuff.”
“We’re going to a party,” she says, like a full-blown grown-up. “You could go. You could have one of those ill-advised rebound hookups I’ve heard about.”
“I am super not in the mood for an ill-advised rebound hookup,” I say. “Probably no one will ever touch me again, and I’ll turn to stone.”
James grins. “I’ll check with Logan, but I don’t think that’s physically possible.”