When Girlfriends Break Hearts (3 page)

“Hey, Sophie,” Claire said as she came into my bedroom, making me jump up out of my folding desk chair. “Sorry for scaring you.”

I turned towards her, pulling my computer screen closed a bit, trying to keep Claire from seeing the no-no I was composing; I was not in the mood for a lecture, however kind or brief (which were often the type of lectures Claire would give).

“What are you doing?” she asked, popping a Baked Cheeto into her mouth, her thumb and index finger stained a bright, artificial orange. “Looking at porn?” She smiled, holding her snack-size pack of Cheetos out to me. I shook my head.

“Emails,” I said nonchalantly.

“Uh huh.” Her tone was exaggerated and she popped another cheesy snack into her mouth. “You wouldn’t happen to be emailing Brandon, would you?”

Claire knew me like I knew myself—maybe better. We had clicked perfectly during freshman orientation, and we had roomed together throughout our college careers since the second semester. Both of us decided to rush for a sorority during that first month of college and both of us undeniably agreed that the “sisterhood” wasn’t for us. Instead we formed a sisterhood of our own, and by next term we changed dorms and became the best live-ins.
 

Sophomore year we moved from the all-female dormitories to the co-ed halls, remaining double-room roommates, and junior year we got on the on-campus apartment list and found ourselves to be even better apartment roommates. Our third floor, two-bed, two-bath apartment was our home for the remainder of our undergraduate studies at the University of Washington (U Dub). Without a bicker, we shared the cleaning responsibilities, and the cost of everything from the electric bill to the delivered half-Hawaiian, half-extra cheese pizzas during
The Office
nights. And of course if it wasn’t an
Office
night then reruns with TV-on-DVD were always an answer. And failing that, there was always
Sex and the City.
 

As often as we were connected at the hip, we also respected each other’s personal space and privacy, especially when I had a new love interest over for a “study date,” or her boyfriend, Conner, would come over for some “time alone.” Our dorm was tight but our friendship even tighter. Those bonds only solidified when we moved into the apartment together.
 

Conner was over so often it was as if he was a third roommate, but it never bothered me. He made Claire happy and he treated her like a princess, and I considered him to be one of my best guy friends. Sometimes it was like he was “one of the girls.”
 

I loved the time that Claire and I got to spend together as roommates at college, but when it was time to move on and take off the graduation caps, pack up the text books, sign on the dotted job line, and lug out the last cardboard box from our college apartment, I understood that Claire and Conner wanted to take the next step in their four-year-long relationship. They found an adorable three-bedroom house for rent in a genteel neighborhood of Madison Park, just a quick and convenient district away from Claire’s and Conner’s offices.
 

As for my living arrangements after college, I had found a simple one-bedroom apartment for rent, but once Brandon and I became serious I did away with that gig. When Brandon decided to call halt on that, Claire (and Conner) came to my rescue. They invited me to move in to their third bedroom, Claire baked me a welcome cake, and Conner picked up my sofa, mirror and wine cooler. I think Claire was keen to have me move in with her because she missed facial and back rub nights that we’d do in the company of the latest Hugh Grant or Johnny Depp film. I think Conner had his eye on the wine cooler.

My new living arrangement was warm and inviting and probably the only thing going right in my life at this point. Three years out of college and no boyfriend. I had a great job working for a catering and bakery outfit, but it was the same place I’d been employed when I was a student. Enjoyable enough, but I wanted to run my own bakery and café—even if it was just a dream.
 

At least I had my best friend at my side, and now just one bedroom door away. Like old times.

The bummer with that, though, was that she’d catch me doing things I knew I shouldn’t be doing, like writing desperate and pathetic emails to ex-boyfriends.

“Sophie,” Claire said in a motherly tone. She tossed the bag of Cheetos on the desk. “I told you that’s a bad idea.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I need closure. This is the only way I know how to get it. I figure I can send him an email, and if he responds then maybe I’ll get my closure. If he doesn’t, then—”

“Then what?” she interrupted. “Then you’ll email again? And again? Visit him? Try to get back together with him? Do something you shouldn’t do?”

“Look,” I said, opening my computer back up. “I just want to try this. If I don’t hear from him in a few days then I’ll think about what to do next. But for now I just want to do this.”

She looked at me with that adoring look Claire often has when she’s sympathetic.

“If you need to do this for you, then okay,” she said. “But don’t do any of this hoping to get back with him. Don’t hurt yourself. He’s done enough of that for you. I say just accept what happened and move on. Let go and move on. He’s not worth your time.”

She was right. That was the worst part. I knew she was right and I was going against her well-advised words. I was writing Brandon because I couldn’t let go and I couldn’t move on. And I didn’t want to.
 
But if I had to move on then I wanted closure…on
my
terms. I had to be in control of my life again, and the only way to do that was by seeing Brandon again and trying to find out why things had happened the way they had.
 

“Claire, I know what I’m doing,” I said. I smiled weakly. “I just have to do this.” I turned back toward my computer, ready to finish what I had started.

She snagged her bag of artificial flavors and headed towards my door, her bouncy, curly golden locks swaying as she jumped up.
 

“I love you, Sophie,” she said. “You deserve a man to love you, but the
right
man. Don’t waste your time with less than what you deserve.” With that she closed my door behind her, leaving me, however much she may have objected, to finish the email that we both knew I should not have sent.

***

“Did you send it?” Claire asked, moving her plastic yellow car piece across the Life game board.

It was Friday night, which most likely meant we’d be calling some pizza or Chinese delivery chain to bring us a sodium-packed and greasy dinner. Which also meant we’d soon be surfing through the Netflix list of documentaries available to watch on the instant streaming queue. The three of us were dorks like that. There wasn’t a Michael Moore or Ken Burns film we weren’t ga-ga over.

“Yup,” I said, walking into the kitchen to grab a crisp bottle of Perrier from the fridge. “Feels good.”

“Well, if you needed to do that, then good for you, Sophie. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Give me a little blue person,” Conner said, holding his palm out to Claire. “I got a boy.”

Claire and Conner were official board game enthusiasts, and now and again they’d sucker me into playing with them.
 

“If he doesn’t answer you you’re not going to go all crazy, are you?” Claire asked. She spun the dial and advanced her car. “I mean, we’ve established that he’s a jackass. He didn’t talk to Conner at all when he went to pick up your stuff. I mean, I’m not surprised since it’s all awkward and everything…Conner being friends with you…and you living here…and he’s my boyfriend and I’m your best friend. But Conner did tell him that what he did was pretty low and all that jerk had to say was, ‘That’s life.’ I mean, Sophie, that’s pretty crappy. He’s seriously not worth any more of your time or thoughts.”

“Claire,” I started, “I know all of this, but the point is that I
need
closure. I don’t know if he’ll answer, and yeah, I’ll be waiting on pins and needles for that email, but I can’t just
not
do this. I have to know why he broke up with me.”

“He’s just a douche,” Conner said in his laid-back-guy sort of way. “Pretty simple.”

 
Cocking my head sideways, I gave Conner a “get real” look. “I know he’s a jerk, but there has to be a reason. He owes me
something.
An explanation of some sort.”

“I agree with you,” Claire said, “but just don’t expect to get one. If he does email you, great. If he doesn’t, don’t be surprised. He’s not exactly mature, you know?”

She was right, as usual, but I was prepared, no matter how painful or mentally agonizing, to wait eagerly for my iPhone to vibrate with an indication that I had an email from Brandon.
 

“Yeah, and it’s Friday the thirteenth,” Conner added. “You know no good comes from that, right? You couldn’t have picked a worse day to deliver that kind of an email to a douche bag.”

I pulled my cell phone out from my sweater pocket. “Chinese or pizza?” I asked, opening my address book. “And I’m asking Claire, not you, Conner.” He shot me a puppy dog look of sadness. “It’s Friday the thirteenth,” I added. “And no good comes from that, right? Looks like you’ll be going hungry tonight.” I smiled. Joking around with Conner was pretty much the foundation of our friendship. At least one man in my life wasn’t a total jerk.

Chapter Three

“You want to take a long jog with me over at Green Lake tomorrow? Get some good miles in?” Claire shouted to me from across the house.

“No, I have to work,” I shouted to Claire from the guest bathroom—although it had now transformed into
my
bathroom, as my Clinique products and random pairs of earrings, bracelets, and hair bands covered the counters and filled the drawers.
 

Claire and Conner had been real sports with homeless Sophie since the breakup with Brandon. Their third bedroom, which had previously been the “dog’s room” for Schnickerdoodle, their Jack Russell Terrier mix that Claire’s bleeding heart saved, had officially become my bedroom, and their guest bathroom had also been stamped as “Sophie’s.” Space had been made in the fridge for the random baked goods I whipped up or the leftovers from my job as a caterer, although I am sure they were always welcome without one hint of a complaint. Though my taste in television shows and films were almost identical to those of Claire’s, without question Conner and Claire were willing to let me surf the channels I liked or pop in a film when I felt the need for some movie therapy. I tried to keep out of their hair and not disrupt their lives too much, but seeing how we were all practically roomies for nearly four years back in college, our new living arrangements were practically old habit.

“Well that sucks,” Claire shouted back in a gurgle, no doubt with a mouth full of toothpaste. “I hate that sometimes you work weekends.”

Working the occasional weekend was part of the territory with my job in the catering and baking industries. My boss, one of the most fantastic caterers and top-notch bakers in Seattle, owned and operated
Katie’s Kitchen
, a company that provided delicious foods, from simple yet savory hors d’oeuvres to full scale, coursed meals for big shot events and weddings, as well as scrumptious desserts and wedding cakes. Katie herself focused primarily on the catering side of the business, trying her hand here and there at the wedding cake portion of the biz. But with her full-time staff and Oliver, a professional wedding cake designer and baker fresh from France, at her side, and me, a baker at heart with a dream of owning her own bakery and café, she could afford to spend her primary focus on the catering, and leave much of the baking and cake design to me and Oliver.
 

Oliver took Katie’s wedding cake recipes and design visions, infused them with his own, and made some fantastic, and delicious, wedding cakes. When it came to bite-sized desserts, cakes, cookies, muffins, petit fours, and of course my all-time favorite to bake (and eat), cupcakes, I was the go-to girl. My job at
Katie’s Kitchen
was very creatively freeing. I had a lot of license to create and concoct. A few of my creations even made it onto the official
Katie’s Kitchen
menu. I could some day own my own café and bakery. Some day….
 

For now, in the midst of my young-life crisis with Brandon and my let’s-crash-my-best-friend’s-home living arrangement, the prospect of giving up safe employment with benefits and health insurance to riskily open up my own business was just not something worth thinking about.

“Have to work and bring home the bucks,” I shouted back to Claire as I spread paste onto my toothbrush. “Got to save for my own business some day, you know?”

I had been saving to start my own business for years, and even through the past three weeks and the whole Brandon thing, I was strong headed enough to know that it was wise to keep on saving.

“Well,” Claire said, her voice closer now. I looked back; she stood in the bathroom doorway, toothbrush in mouth. “We can do it another time. It’s supposed to be really nice the next few days. Unseasonably warm for March.”

“Let’s rain check it for Sunday then. I don’t work Sunday at all so we can go for a morning jog if you like. But feel free to go tomorrow if you want to. Don’t let me keep you.”

“It’s a deal,” she said. “And we’ll bring Schnickerdoodle. He needs to get that energy out of his system.”
 

That damn dog drove me nuts. He was a sweet thing, but like all Jack Russell Terriers, he was a ball of energy that could never be expended. You could run that boy around and around in the park, throw a Frisbee left and right for hours on end, and he’d still run after a tire with more gumption than you thought imaginable. I highly doubted a thirty-minute jog through the nearby park would help burn some of that endless energy, but if it made Claire happy, I could manage an afternoon in the park with her and the tire biter. Besides, I really enjoyed the occasional jogs that Claire and I would take together, especially through one of the conveniently nearby parks in “my” new neighborhood. It was a great way to unwind and, of course, exchange a bit of girly gossip and chit-chat while burning a few shameful calories.