“And she’s ten steps ahead. She’s on a completely other level of manipulation. She’s Regina George in Mean Girls.”
I sigh heavily, thinking of my sister and how she basically lost all of her mid-twenties to the black hole of a horrible relationship.
“Is there anything we can do?”
Luke drums his hands on the table and tightens his face. “I’m going to need more coffee if we’re going to brainstorm this. You down to help me?”
“Whatever it takes, Lucas.” I say his name with a Spanish accent.
“Vos sos mi mejor amiga, Cielo,” Luke echoes. You’re my best friend.
I do love it when he speaks to me in Spanish and calls me Cielo.
We do an awkward hand slap-and-hold sitting across the table from each other. He grins at me through sharp grey eyes and I grin back through my glasses.
For a brief, almost imperceptible moment, I feel a flutter of activity in my body that starts in my fingers and zooms toward my heart.
God, he’s beautiful, a voice inside me perks up and says.
Well, yeah, duh. Tall, big hands, great forearms with those little muscles that seem to poke out of other muscles. That’s what you get from being a baseball pitcher. And jocks might not be my usual type, but I can still appreciate nice muscles on a man.
Like I said, Luke’s the guy who puts you in a great mood just by being around him. In fact, I’ve never seen him worried about anything as much as he is right now, about Ryan.
When we studied abroad together, any time I felt culture shock, or some type of melancholy start to kick in, all I had to do was call up Luke or meet up with him, we’d do something silly and boom—I’d feel a million times better.
But we are of course solo amigos, just like we established when we were studying abroad.
Even if we hadn’t outright established that fact, there’s still no way we would end up romantically intertwined.
Destined for greatness, by this summer Luke will be drafted by a major league team and start working his way up the ranks.
And I have noticed the types of girls he dates, all of whom are nothing like me. He loves girly girls, athletes, and definitely tall girls. Whereas I’m five foot three (after a good night’s sleep) and the closest thing to a sport I do is dance, yoga, and the occasional butt workout in the gym.
So why do I feel all tingly when he calls me Cielo, the Spanish translation for Sky?
“There’s only one way to do this,” Luke says, and I’m glad he didn’t notice how I was just sitting there spacing out. He likes to think quietly, too, and doesn’t mind awkward pauses when we’re together.
“Which is?”
“Have you ever seen the movie Inception?”
“Of course.” I squint. “Wait. You want to incept ideas into his dreams?”
He laughs. “I wish we could penetrate his dreams. As far as I know, that’s not possible. What I mean is we’re going to have to be smarter about this and do it subconsciously.” He rubs his palms together. “How can we put an idea in his head without him knowing? Let’s see…”
He takes a napkin from the napkin holder, and pushes our empty plates to the end of the table and writes, speaking out loud as his pen moves.
“Subconscious methods to reach Ryan. One: music.”
“What will music do?”
“We can play songs about breakups. I’ll start playing that music all week.”
“Oh. Arianna Grande—that “Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored” song.”
“Perfect. What else?”
“Movies,” I say, putting a finger up. “You should watch movies with him about people being in the wrong relationship, then moving on and being happy.”
“Boom. You’re a genius, Sky. We’ll watch movies about moving on. Legends of the Fall is a good one.”
“Oh, Silver Linings Playbook. And don’t forget P.S. I Love You.”
“Isn’t that a chick flick?”
I blush. “What? It’s about moving on. One of the best stories of all time about that.”
He taps the pen against the napkin. “Hmm. I can also bring back some books from the library and put them on the coffee table.”
“I feel like we need a secret code name for this operation,” I add.
“How about…Operation Romper.” He grins.
“Romper? Like the piece of clothing? What’s that got to do with breaking them up?”
“No! I mean the Spanish verb: romper, which means ‘to break.’ Pronounced like rom-pair.”
“Love it. Operation Romper.”
“Shit, it’s later than I thought,” Luke says, checking the time on his phone. “I have to get to an afternoon workout. Let’s meet up at the end of the week and I’ll update you on any progress.”
“Deal.”
5
Skylar
Operation Romper starts while the first week of classes flies by. On Friday afternoon Luke and I have our four-hundred level Spanish class together with Professor Gonzalez, where we are studying today about the conquest of the Americas by Spain.
I see him crossing over into the main campus area, and I flag him down as he’s crossing the street.
I jog—well, sort of slide-walk across the icy concrete since I don’t want to fall—as quickly as I can for a block across campus until I make it to where he’s standing, waiting for me.
It’s well below freezing, the sun is glistening off the snow, and he’s wearing a ski cap to stay warm. I’ve got my giant earmuffs on.
“Agent Luke.” I wink, a nod to the espionage.
“Agent Sky,” he says back to me, and we start walking across the quad, in the direction of our class.
“Any status updates for Operation Romper?”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. For some reason the weight of his palm feels good.
“Updates after class, solider. I don’t want to launch into anything we can’t finish.”
We wink at each other in class. Professor Gonzalez catches us one of the times, and I think he wonders if there is something wrong with us.
Afterward we walk to the library, comically wearing our sunglasses all the way in as we head down to the stacks in the basement—where students rarely go anymore, due to the fact that our entire database is much more easily searchable online.
Much less at the beginning of the term when most students are out partying, not studying.
Luke and I head to a spot way in the corner of the basement of the stacks, where we can easily see if people are coming toward us.
We have to be super careful since Operation Romper is super-secret. If Ryan gets wind of our subterfuge, we’re done for, he’s done for with Jennifer and the only time we’ll hear from him again is two years later with word of his divorce because it will happen, mark my words.
Once we’re sitting on the couch, Luke sighs.
“It doesn’t look good,” he says. “I tried music—I played Adele, and Ryan said the song made him so happy thinking how he’d never have a breakup again.”
“Jesus.”
“I tried movies and books too, and none of it worked. Nothing worked.” Luke facepalms. “This is horrible. I’m starting to accept the fact that my best friend is going to marry a witch. And yes, I said witch, because she’s put a spell on him. That’s the only logical explanation for how starry-eyed he is in the face of a treacherous future.”