“What’s your point here?”
“What I’m saying is, he hasn’t learned his lesson. He hasn’t gotten better. He shows no remorse. As I said, he’s gotten worse. He parties all the time, and he’s tagged in a lot of photos by women who clearly think they have a future with him. But he just ghosts them.”
“You gathered this all from Instagram?”
She sighed heavily at my ineptitude.
“His friends are active, and thankfully, most aren’t private. Sable posts a lot, and they’re always at parties. And look,” she said, scrolling through a feed I didn’t recognize, faces and smiles foreign to me, “Derek is always with a different woman. So I went to their pages, and that’s how I found out that he hasn’t been in a relationship with any of them. He clearly just hooks up with them and moves on. He doesn’t even care.”
“That’s a lot to assume based on still shots,” I said, taking the coffee but acknowledging I still wasn’t taking the bribe. “Maybe they’re just his friends? Maybe he’s just hanging out? You don’t know he’s sleeping with them and then dumping them immediately. You don’t know if that’s exactly what the women want either. Plenty of people have no-strings-attached hookups.”
Alex groaned, throwing her head back dramatically.
“Why are you defending him now? Where was this forgiveness last night?”
I shrugged noncommittally. “People have messy breakups. Disliking your ex is pretty normal. My parents hate each other.”
“This isn’t about them. Or even you. It’s him,” she said, pointing her finger at me, clearly not taking no for an answer. “Derek Smyth is fundamentally the issue. He’s a heartbreaker. He doesn’t feel bad about it. Because he’s never had to feel bad about it. I, for one, am tired of it. I’ve officially reached my limit. Something has to change.”
I gave in to the donut, knowing I’d need all my strength and energy to keep her from overreacting.
“Alex, how can I get you to stop this? What can I do to end what I’m confident is turning into an obsession?”
She grinned mischievously, and I realized she’d been guiding me to that line the whole time.
“Agree to one teensy thing. One small favor. Then I’ll drop it. I’ll never mention your drumming-piano-playing-womanizing-heartbreaking ex again.”
I took a tiny sip of coffee, keeping my eyes on the chair my dad had kept to spite my mother, and sighed.
“Fine.”
* * *
She’d concocted the plan long before I’d agreed, I realized, once we were in her car, flying down the Interstate at a breakneck speed.
It was the bag of road trip snacks in my seat, a pop playlist already queued, and the change of clothes in the backseat — a dress that left little to the imagination — that really tipped me off. When Alex wanted to, she actually managed to pull off being productive.
“You know he’ll recognize me immediately,” I said, trying to protest again once she careened off the Middletown exit. “And if you have a wig in here somewhere, that’s a hard pass.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’ll be so busy he won’t see you. And based on some of the Insta highlights from that Sable woman, these parties are packed.”
Sable was just one of the many friends that Alex had filled me in during the two-hour drive to Middletown. Apparently, there was also a redhead, Nikki, who was in some sort of complicated relationship with a hippie tattoo artist, Roe. And, of course, Pres, who despite being a part of my life for nearly eight years, was just as untouchable and distant as he had been when we’d first met.
“So he lives with the hippie and Pres,” Alex said as we got closer to campus. I vaguely recognized the area from when we’d dropped Liam off years ago, unsure if he’d ever return.
“And how did you get his address?”
She shrugged. “I told Camille I wanted to send him a graduation card. She thought it was lovely.”
“Alex,” I warned, “you shouldn’t involve Camille.”
“One tiny white lie!” she exclaimed defensively. “Come on, it’s fine. Like you haven’t fudged facts with her. So there was never a time when you and Derek were studying and needed the door closed for ultimate concentration?”
I rolled my eyes and looked out the window.
“Exactly. Sometimes, mothers don’t need to know every detail. And, honestly, I don’t think it was even lying. This is sort of like a gift. I’m sure Derek would love to have more people show up to his party.”
I sighed, already tired of trying to reason with her.
She’d seen on Instagram Derek and his roommates were throwing a house party, a final goodbye to their years at Middletown. Alex was convinced we needed to go to prove her point. I wasn’t sure how this all added up, but by the time I’d questioned it, we were already 50 miles too far out.
And by the time I really started to question it, we were already standing in the middle of an unfamiliar living room on Wedgewood Drive, surrounded by strangers and deafeningly loud music. In my ex-boyfriend’s house.
“This is really weird,” I said over the music, but either my voice was drowned out or she chose to ignore me.
“Look what he calls this party,” Alex shouted in my ear, holding up her phone. She used the floral shop’s account to view Derek’s private account to show his Story of the crowd in his backyard. “The ‘Get Some Summer Party.’ The next shot says ‘or maybe we should call it ‘The Get Laid Luau?’”
I laughed before I realized he was probably being serious.
He wasn’t the innocent neighborhood kid anymore who’d held my hand during Dirty Dancing, slightly nervous about what we’d discover. He was now someone who comfortably wore an open Hawaiian shirt — the dedicated gym routine I’d only supposed about now confirmed — and passed out tropical-flavored Jello shots, according to his Instagram.
“I think I need a drink,” I sighed, my exhaustion inaudible against the pounding music.
As we pushed our way to the kitchen, I noticed an impressive record player in the living room, surrounded by countless vinyls in a bookcase.
“Did you see that?” I asked, nodding to the player as Alex helped herself to the numerous alcohol options on the counter. “Do you think that record player is his?”
She laughed, passing me a Jello shot. “Well, when he came here, he didn’t really have one, did he?”
Weeks after he’d ripped me out of his life that summer, I’d walked by his house to see his car was packed.
He had been preparing to leave, headed to a college he’d never even wanted to go to. And he hadn’t even told me. We hadn’t spoken since the day he’d kicked me out of his room no matter how many times I’d tried.
So when I’d walked by, I’d grabbed his prized record player off the stack of boxes in his driveway, fury overwhelming every other sense of mine.
And I’d smashed it, right next to his parent’s mailbox where the zinnias had wilted.
“You bastard, I hope you’re alone forever! I hate you. I will always hate you,” I’d promised through a scream, making sure every piece of his record player was destroyed, broken shards glittering against the concrete.