“I remember tattoo girl,” Kennedy said with a curious tone that begged for more information.
“Ex-girlfriend.”
“Oh, I’m well aware.”
Kennedy and I had stellar communication our freshman year of college. But the further into college we’d gotten, the busier we’d become, and the less we’d texted each other. Before her call to plan this dinner, our last messages were when she’d wished me a happy birthday in April. When Alexis and I dated, my conversations with Kennedy had dwindled to sparse texts for things like birthdays, Christmas, wishing me luck during international swim competitions, and when something reminded us of each other, usually when our Beyoncé song, “XO,” popped up on shuffle, or when we shared theories about our favorite singers secretly dating. Then we freaked out when leaked texts proved the theories true. Blair Bennett and Reagan Moore were really celesbians, and the confirmation had us talking the most since freshman year of college. But we never talked about our love lives. I didn’t know why she didn’t bring it up, but if it was anything like my reasons, it was too hard to talk about when all I wanted to do—still—was be with her. It was easier to pretend there was nothing there.
“I never saw you as a tattoo type of gal,” she said as her fingers continued swiping.
“Everyone has an exception.”
“And what made her yours?”
Apparently, we were at the point when two glasses of wine loosened Kennedy up so we could get the answers to all our burning questions. The real question was: Without having a drop to brace myself for the worst, was I ready to hear the updates of Kennedy Reed’s love life?
I guess we were about to find out.
I exhaled as I tried figuring out what the hell drew me to Alexis besides her skills in bed and her ability to make me have a painful belly laugh. There was no doubt she was attractive, and now that I thought about it, maybe the fact that she was distant, difficult to read, and anything but supportive made her a challenge. Any person who dedicated their whole life to competing in a sport at the highest level loved the thrill of a challenge. Maybe I also found her convenient since she didn’t beg for time and attention that I couldn’t give, and she was totally happy being my number two in life. We got what we both wanted from each other, someone to fill the void.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. She was just different. Not too needy, which was awesome for me since swimming is very time consuming. She’s hot, hilarious—” I wanted to say a really good lay, but that might have been crossing the line.
Kennedy slowly nodded, and it felt as if she didn’t buy anything I said. “Interesting. And how long did that last?”
“Nine months.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I buzzed my lips and went for another drink. “Yeah. Swimming has been a nice roadblock in my love life. Too busy to maintain a relationship.” I paused. Her curious stare felt as if she was trying getting a glimpse into my mind. “I feel like you’re judging me.”
She threw her free hand up. “I’m not judging at all. Why would I judge?”
“Because my longest relationship has been nine months.”
“Why would I care?”
“What’s your longest relationship, since we’re on the topic?”
She went for her first sip of the third glass of wine, but that didn’t tame the pink in her cheeks. “I don’t know. Like a year? A little more?”
I definitely didn’t expect that answer. “A year? A little more? Geez. I feel like I get nothing out of being your Facebook friend. I would have never known.”
“That’s the point. I don’t want to be one of those people who throws her relationships out in the open. That signs you up for nosy people asking about them when they don’t work out.”
Kennedy hardly did much on social media, which really sucked for me, the high school ex-girlfriend who found her insanely beautiful and still clung to the hope that we would get back together. I really could have used some photo evidence right about then so I could have gauged where I stood with her.
“Okay, who was the girl? Come on, spill.”
My teasing smile washed away when Kennedy’s loosened. To fill the silence, she went for a long gulp of wine.
I could feel our playful banter shift like tectonic plates, and the next words out of her mouth would be the earthquake.
“Well,” she began and paused as if she was trying to find the right words. “I met her in my study abroad program.” She scratched the back of her head. “So, yeah.”
I tried to figure out why the mood changed. Our dinner two years ago was a few months before she left to spend her senior year in France. If she’d dated this girl for “a year or a little more,” that would have made the relationship a pretty recent one, depending on when it all started. Halfway through the year meant they broke up a few months ago. If they started dating in the spring of her senior year, then that would make them still together.
An uneasy burn started in my stomach. “What happened?”
She nervously chuckled. “We broke up about three weeks ago.”
“What? Three weeks?” She nodded. “Wow. What happened? How are you doing? You want to talk about it?”
I really felt for her. Dating someone for more than a year, and they’d just broken up? Even though my body buzzed with optimism, underneath my selfish feelings, I really did hope she was doing okay.
“Yeah, I’m doing okay, thanks for asking. It was kind of inevitable. She lives in Boston doing law school. I’m in the city doing grad school. Long distance is really hard.”
“I bet. I’ve never done it and really have no intention of ever doing it.”
“Yeah, it’s not recommended. She asked me to move to Boston and was shocked when I said I couldn’t.”
“Of course you couldn’t. You’re in grad school.”
“Exactly. There was a lot more to it, but in the end, I broke up with her. There was a lot of crying. She said some pretty hurtful things that I’m still trying to shake off.”
“What did she say?”
“That I wasted the last year because I didn’t want to move in together,” she said, and I could hear her rising anger. “That I never made time for her. How she put so much into the relationship and I didn’t. I don’t even know what that was about. Ever since we got back from France, I went up there every time. She came to Brooklyn once. She acted like her education was far superior to mine and made it seem like she couldn’t be bothered coming to me because of it.”
I frowned, officially not liking this girl. Kennedy always incited something protective in me, the kid version wanting to protect her from mean kids in the neighborhood or at school. She was one of the sweetest, most caring people I’d ever met, and I hated knowing that people took advantage of that.
“She sounds like a pretentious asshole,” I said through my bitterness.
“Maybe that’s what Harvard Law does to a person. Anyway, she’s been a pain in my ass because we still have a few things that belong to each other. So now we’re in this weird limbo of trying to organize an exchange, but on top of all the things she said to me when we broke up, she called me drunk the night before I left to come out here to tell me she slept with someone else. She’s been single for three weeks and already found a rebound. And I’m sure she told me to make me feel like shit, like I should be guilty that I broke up with her. So that’s cool. Ugh, God, if I keep talking about it, I’m going to get angry. I’m sorry.”