How To Get Your Heart Broken (19 page)

“You don’t have to deal with all of the
uncertainty that would come with a relationship if you end it now.”

“You know what?” I sighed, “Maybe you’re
right. So what?”

“You are your own worst enemy,” she shook
her head. “But I’ll be here when you screw all of this up.”

I smiled, torn between being touched and
annoyed, “This might be
 
the most we’ve
talked all summer without trying to kill each other.”

“Well, you’ve been a bitch,” she smiled as
if it would soften the blow.

‘There’s
the Rachel I know and don’t love,
’ I thought.
But I knew there was truth to her words.

“Sorry, especially about the almost dying
and then‒”

“I know,” she cut in. “You’ll have enough
to be sorry for soon enough.”

“Thank you,” I said genuinely, wanting to
find some way tell her all the things she felt uncomfortable hearing and I felt
uncomfortable saying.

She gave me a tentative pat on the back,
similar to the way one would pet a snake.

But my mind was elsewhere; my stomach had
already begun to turn at the thought of the next conversation I had to have.

---

I closed my eyes, thinking of how Rachel
had been wrong about me trying to avoid all of this. Because it felt good not
having to pretend that it didn’t feel good to lay my head on his lap. The grey
sky had chased away all of the beach goers and in the silence I was left to
focus only on the rhythmic way Jessie continued to run his hands through my
hair, my nerve endings feeling more alive than they had on that racetrack.
 

He hadn’t questioned me, though I’d barely
said anything in all the time I’d been there. I’d miss the silence too I
realized, adding it to my list of one million things I’d been trying to
remember about Jessie and I. But I’d dragged this on too long, and the
anticipation had finally become too much.

“Close your eyes,” I said quietly, sitting
up and drawing my knees to my chest. I grabbed his hand, hoping its warmth
could serve as a reminder of why I had to do this, and somehow give me the
strength to get through it.

He stared at me suspiciously, hesitating as
I waited.

“C’mon! Do you think I’m going to stab you
or something?”

He shrugged, his expression suggesting that
he had considered the possibility.

“Why am I doing this?” He asked after he’d
finally closed them.

“Lauren has a fear of needles; something
about thethought of a tiny stick of medal entering her body scares her to no
end. So she closes her eyes whenever she’s getting a shot, like it makes it
hurt less somehow.”

“So you’re going to hurt me?”

“I’m always hurting you,” I said quietly.

“I’m not as fragile as you think,” he
replied, his voice taking on an overdone masculine tone that made me want to
smile.

“Yeah,” I agreed absentmindedly, drawing
circles on his palm, “I know, but I’m still going to break your heart.”

His eyes snapped open, and I waited for
some form of understanding, but an amused smirk came over his face, “Really?”

He asked playfully, “What makes you so sure
you have the power?”

“Because of the way you’re looking at me,”
I said solemnly.

His cheeks reddened, but he smiled,
completely unperturbed by how vulnerable he was in that moment. “Like an open
book,” I’d said. It reminded of

why we should never have been together.

What was it that Ashton had said?
‘Someone like him didn’t belong with someone
like me.
’ And though every fiber of my being was aware of just how true
this was, it didn’t have the slightest effect on how I felt, and I was once
again overwhelmed by the thought of never being able to share the silence with
him again.

“Eli?” He said, lifting my chin. He wiped
my cheeks as confusion furrowed his brows, probably wondering why I was crying
for the one millionth time in the past few days.

“I love you,” I said to his chest. When I
finally looked up his expression was blurred by the tears that overpowered me
the moment I’d uttered the words. But I could see shock and confusion, and I
imagined the expression that had always made me smile, the one that made it
look as if he was solving a difficult math equation, coming over his face.

“Eli,” he repeated dumbly, and if I hadn’t
been so miserable in that moment I probably would have rolled my eyes, it was
so like him to say the wrong thing at a moment like this. ‘
You’re supposed to say it back you idiot,’
I would yell.

Instead I said, “We were playing a game,
Rachel and I.

We didn’t think of anyone else’s feelings
or consequences…” and then the words continued to stumble from my mouth, each
one tasting like poison as I slowly ruined every possibility I had with someone
that was different, and good. Every possibility I had with Jessie.

It felt as if I was being split in half
again, and while part of me remained on that porch to continue the misery of
explaining to Jessie the ways we’d intended to humiliate him, part of me was
simply a witness, floating above it all and watching our words drift away like
the slow fading out of ripples in water.

Things We Can’t
Take Back

“I’m sorry.” It was barely audible to me,
so I knew they hadn’t heard it, but their expressions told me they understood.

I plopped down without protest as Rachel
and Ash yanked me towards the couch.

“You can’t just run off without telling us
where you’re going, you idiot,” Rachel said. Oddly enough, I could tell she was
trying to be gentle.

“I just went for a walk,” I murmured
distractedly.

I hadn’t realized how long I’d been gone.
I’d been trying to avoid seeing them; I was especially dreading Ash’s pity and
encouraging words. I’d sat in the most isolated corner of the beach,
obsessively replaying Jessie and I’s conversation and wondering,
what next
? I sat there, wanting to be
alone with my own thoughts until I thought of how much time I would get to spend
alone from now on.

Of course it hadn’t gone well. He
hated
me. And I hated seeing the hurt
and betrayal on his face when I told him the truth. It’d scared me when he
yelled because I’d never seen Jessie like that. I hoped it made him feel at
least
a little
better, then it’d be
worth it.

“To Canada?” Rachel asked sarcastically.
“We thought you did something really stupid again. I was going to check the
hospitals pretty soon, seems to be your hangout spot these days.”

I smiled at Ash when she placed a gentle
hand on my back, obviously trying to counteract Rachel’s words.

“Fair enough,” I agreed, unable to protest.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourselves; you’re
better off without them.”

“Them?” I questioned, amazed at how quickly
Rachel had gone back to her normal self.

I raised an eyebrow as Rachel motioned
towards Ash,

“Apparently
Juliash
wasn’t forever,” she said sarcastically.

I stared at Ash, even as she tried to smile
reassuringly at me I knew she was on the brink of tears.

“I guess Jessie told Julian what happened,
he made it pretty clear that he never wants to see me again,” her voice began
to crack at the end, and I discovered that I’d been wrong when I thought I had
no guilt or sympathy left for anyone else.

“Ashton, I didn’t tell him that-”

“I know,” she began reassuringly, “It isn’t
your fault Eli, I got what I deserved. Anyway I have other things to worry
about. I don’t think we were really meant to make it.”

“I know you don’t really believe that,” I
murmured, marveling at the
Freaky Friday
vibe that seemed to possess them. Now that I thought of it, they’d been sitting
together when I’d come in, almost as if they weren’t sworn enemies.

“Maybe that’s my problem. I should start
thinking like you and Rachel. I get why he’s mad, but he didn’t even give me a
chance to explain. It’s like he was looking for a way out…”

It was my turn to place a soothing hand on
her back, but I only extended the silence. I didn’t know what to say either;
there was no comfort to be found anywhere.

“He was,” Rachel said, reinforcing my
suspicion. “Julian never struck me as the commitment type.”

I snorted. To be fair, she’d said the same
thing about Jessie at the beginning of the summer.

“How can you make a judgment like that on
someone you don’t even know?” Ash asked, her frustration evident in her tone.

“It’s a talent,” Rachel shrugged, and I
wondered if I’d jinxed their cease fire before it even began.

Rachel’s words reminded of something I’d
been meaning to ask Ash about for a while.
“Sometimes he seemed so different in your journal than he
did in real life.”

I had confessed to her
a few days ago that I read her diary on more than a few occasions. She had a
lot of questions about it (like if I’d known about her and Julian before the
party. I told her the truth) but she took it pretty well. As relieved as I was,
I knew it was because she had other things on her mind, which made me feel like
I’d cheated somehow.
 

Ash looked away as I
glanced towards her, her expression seemingly more devastated. “Not… all of it….
was real,” she confessed.

“You made fake diary
entries?” I asked in confusion. Maybe I’d been wrong about why she hadn’t been
mad. Had she known what I’d been reading her diary all along? Was she teaching
me a lesson?

My mouth hung
open.
 

“Not exactly…it’s hard
to explain,” she said. Then she sighed, “This is why no one was supposed to
read that thing.”

I breathed a sigh of
relief, dismissing my earlier theory. Ash wasn’t as mentally disturbed as
Rachel and I were.

“Sorry,” I said
sheepishly.

She sighed, “Sometimes
I write out my fantasies…is that weird?”

I considered her
confession. In truth, some things made more sense now; the entries that I
thought seemed out of place and too good to be true or the time he “carried her
away” from the party. Even when her nose wasn’t buried in a book, Ash was still
engrossed in her fantasies.

“Yeah, you’re a
freak,” Rachel said. She seemed to be half-joking, and Ash smiled a little
before she looked down.

“I wanted us to be something more than we
were…I think I was falling for him.” Ash burst into tears at her confession, as
if she was also just realizing the truth of it.
 

Though I still thought she was a
little
crazy, I had certainly known that
feeling, of wanting something more than the reality. In fact, I felt most
people could understand that. So I held on to that, and tried to resist the
urge to bombard her with more questions when she was already so preoccupied
with other concerns.

“I think Rachel is right,” she continued
suddenly.

I tried not to dwell on my disbelief as I
watched Ash turn towards Rachel.

“I thought you just see the bad in people,
but maybe you see them the way they really are. And maybe I see them the way I
want them to be, because I can’t handle the truth… Right?” She questioned after
a pause. “You think she’s right too, don’t you Eli? About Julian?”

I knew this was one of those questions
Ashton asked that she didn’t really want the answer to. And normally I would
lie, reasoning that the truth is subjective and that I was protecting her. Yet
for whatever reason, I found myself unable to follow this routine today.

“
You’re
right, Ashton. You shouldn’t judge people you don’t know, but how else are you
supposed to protect yourself? For what it’s worth, I hope Rachel and I are
wrong.”

She nodded, the disappointment apparent in
her eyes as she began crying again.

“I’m sorry Ash,” I murmured, at a loss for
words.

“No,” she shook her head, “I’m glad you
told me the truth, it’s what I wanted.”

She made me wonder why I’d always felt the
need to spare her feelings. Despite the tears and the total devastation,
something in her words made me think she was stronger than I thought.

“But why should you listen to me? What the
hell do I know?” I asked, wondering how much of what I really knew was really
true if I’d gotten so much wrong about the two people I spent most of my time
with.

The silence that followed my question was
almost poetic, only interrupted by Ash’s sobbing and the annoying beeps that
indicated Rachel texting on her noisy keyboard.