Why We Broke Up (24 page)

Take these relics too
. Al just told me where he got them, at Bicycle Stationery, in one of those big baskets they lug out front like some snake-charming’s going to happen. But when he put them in my hands that morning, he didn’t tell me that. There was too much else to tell. He’d been sitting on the right-side bench, our usual spot, which I hadn’t touched since you and I had started smacking my life around. It looked like a relic, too, relicky Al with relicky Lauren and a spot for me grave-robbed empty.

It was a wonder I was there, so lost in quavery thought
that I’d forgotten to enter Hellman the new way, to wave at you shooting hoops and maybe even kiss a little through the chain-link fence like separated prisoners. But there I was, and Al walked to meet my walking. Even after ten days, girls probably do walk different after virginity, just because we think everyone can tell.

“What are these?”

“I swore to Lauren that I’d talk to you,” Al said, “and I know you swore too.”

“What’d you swear on?” I said.

“Gina Vadia in
Three True Liars
.”

“Good one,” I said, although I knew it was just because of the sports car.

“How about you?”

“The Elevator Descends.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah.”

“But you didn’t call,” he said.

“Well,” I said, turning the bundle around in my hands, “I thought I should communicate by postcard instead, but I don’t have any. Oh, look.”

“They’re invitations, I thought,” Al said. “For the party.”

“You’re still,” I said, “helping with it?”

“I don’t think Lottie Carson should suffer just because we had a fight.” He was talking in his perfect deadpan, but his face was wary, almost desperate. Behind him Lauren
walked slowly backward away, watching us both like we were a dangerous climb. “Look at them.”

I flipped through without untying. “Wow, volcanoes.”

“Perfect, right? Because of her in
The Fall of Pompeii
?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, if we’re going to honor her right.”

“Yeah, thanks. Ed and I were saying that we should invite her first, make sure she doesn’t have other plans. I want to take her flowers, do it in person.”

“Really?”

“Well, I’m nervous about it,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just write a card.” I swallowed a long slow swallow of nothing. “Thanks, Al. These are cool.”

“Sure. What’s the use of friendship?”

“Right, OK.”

“Listen, Min.” Al put his hands so deep in his pockets I thought I’d never see them again. “I don’t think you and Ed—”

My hand closed on the postcards. “Don’t, don’t,
don’t
say anything about Ed. He’s not whatever you think he is.”

“It’s not that. I don’t have any opinion of him.”

“Please.”

“I don’t. That’s what I’m saying. What I said, the things about him I said—what I’m saying is that there’s a reason I said them.”

“Because you don’t like him,” I said, never in the world
thinking I would talk in this tone to my friend Al. “I get it.”

“Min, I don’t know him. It’s not about Ed is what I mean.”

“Then what—?”

“There’s a reason.”

“Well,” I said, sick of this shit, “then tell me the reason. Stop secreting around about it.”

Al looked behind me, at the ground, everywhere else. “I swore to Lauren I would tell you this,” he said quietly, and then, “
Jealousy
—OK?—is why.”

“
Jealousy?
You wish you played basketball?”

He sighed. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said, “and it would make it easier.”

“I’m
not
. Ed—”

“—is with you,” Al finished for me, of course. The school got wider, the whole place. There are so many movies like this, where you thought you were smarter than the screen but the director was smarter than you,
of course
he’s the one,
of course
it was a dream,
of course
she’s dead,
of course
it’s hidden right there,
of course
it’s the truth and you in your seat have failed to notice in the dark. I could see them all, every reveal that ever surprised me, but I could not see this one, or know how I could not have known.

“Oh,” I said, or something.

Al gave me a smile of,
what can you do?
“Yeah.”

“I guess I
am
an idiot.”

“One of us is,” Al said simply. “There’s nothing idiotic about not thinking about me that way, Min. Most people don’t.”

“That girl in LA,” I said. “Oh.”
Of course
, again. “Whose idea was that?”

“That movie
Kiss Me, Fool
.”

“But that’s a terrible movie.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work, making that up,” Al said. “You didn’t get jealous.”

“She sounded nice,” I said wistfully.

“I just,” Al said, “described you.”

Then
where were you
, is what I wanted to say,
all my lonely times
, but right next to me, I knew, was where. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would it have mattered?”

I sighed shakily at the end of my rope. I said a thing, made some noise, in order not to say
probably
.

“Well, I’m telling you now, I guess.”

“Now that I’m in love.”

“You aren’t,” Al said, “the only one.”

It was a true heart he had, Ed.
Has
, still, leaving to pull his truck around so I can finish. But that morning—November 12—I didn’t have a place to put it, I could hardly hold these postcards of old dangers and disasters. I was blinking, I knew, too many times. In a sec the bell was going to ring.

“It’s a lot, I know,” Al said. “And you don’t have to, you know, feel the same or anything.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“Yes, then, don’t do anything,” he said. “That’s fine too, Min. Really. But let’s stop, like,
scowling
at each other and not talking. Let’s have coffee.”

I was shaking my head. “I have a test,” I said stupidly.

“Well, not now. But
sometime
. You know, at Federico’s. We haven’t in forever.”

“Sometime,” I said, not quite in agreement, but Al said “OK” and lifted one foot like he does, balance-beamy, like there was a part of the place we had to be careful on.

“OK,” I said too.

He looked like he wanted to say something else. He should have. I didn’t want him to. It wouldn’t have mattered. “OK, though? Is it?”

“OK,” I said again, and again, and then I said I had to go.

Here we are at the bottom,
almost empty. It’s like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful.

Lauren told me when we hung out that weekend that you must have wanted to be found out, that you wanted it over and that’s why we ended up at Willows after practice. I think and think about it. But what I think is you were just outmaneuvered. I’d seen it happen at games, suddenly the others upon you and the ball gone the sec your eyes wandered, the very moment of distraction. When you were
cocky sometimes it happened, or not enough sleep. “God I need coffee,” you told me, out of the gym. “Extra cream, three sugars.”

I, the idiot, waved at Annette and took your arm to walk you away. “On the way to Willows,” I said.

“What? Not home?”

“Joan’s getting tired of me,” I said. “Plus I want to go to Lottie Carson’s place. Today’s the day to invite her.”

“OK, all the way out there,” you said, “but why Willows? You said you never wanted flowers.”

“They’re for her,” I said. “Then we can have coffee at Fair Grounds while I write to her on one of these.”

“One of whats?”

“Look. Cool, huh? She was in a volcano movie.”

“Where’d you get these?”

“Al got them.”

“So you guys are better now?”

“Yeah, we’re OK.”

“Good. He must be getting laid, he was getting too crazy Todd says, even in class. That girl from LA come out for a visit?”

“Long story,” I said.

You nodded dismissively and then remembered you were supposed to listen to such things. “Tell me over coffee,” you said.

“Flowers first.”

“Min, I don’t know. Flowers? Why?”

“Because she’s a movie star,” I said, “and we’re, like, high school kids.”

“Let’s have coffee and talk about it.”

“No, you told me Willows closes early.”

“Yeah,” you admitted, good at math. “That’s why I said coffee first.”

“Ed.”

“Min.”

We stood cross at one another but knowing, at least me, it was another cute bicker. “You still aren’t wearing the earrings,” you said, like this might get you your way.

“I told you,” I said. “They’re fancy, kind of.”

“That’s not what she said when I bought them.”

“She who?”

“I don’t know,” you goddamn stammered. “The jewelry store lady.”

“Well, they are. We can go somewhere fancy, then I’ll wear them.” This was a hint, I wish I didn’t have to admit, that you would ask me to the Holiday Formal. You hadn’t, you didn’t, you are swine. “Right now, though, it’s Willows. Come on.”

I dragged you, sweaty and wriggling, down the two or three blocks, your legs moving in a choppy tiptoe like you had to pee, some exaggerated dance that still spelled out grace. Your hand squirmy in mine like a caught frog, your
hair needing cutting, your lips bitten and wet. Wish it was the last time I found you beautiful, Ed. I could have let you go then, pushed back your kisses and toppled us into traffic instead of the way you haunt my hallways now. I should have had a feeling right then, in the last crosswalk as the light changed, because instead—

The Willows door beeped open. Inside was a hothouse of choices among which you hemmed and shrugged. “What does it mean?” I asked. “You’ve done more flowers than I have.”

“Um.”

“Though I guess not in a while, huh? These are pretty. Lily.”

“Um.”

“Some of these are so lovely I never should have said the thing about flowers. I should have fought with you and fought with you just to get them.”

“Um.”

“Do you do them in that old-fashioned code, like daffodils mean
I’m sorry I was late
, daisies mean
sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends
, these things here fanned out mean
just thinking of you
? Or did you just have them throw whatever was pretty together?” I was a stupid marionette in there, spritely and thinking I was cute when all the while it was a jerky joke even kids found tedious. “What’s the one for
happy birthday
? Or
please come to our party
? What’s flower
code for
you don’t know me but if you are who we think you are, we love your work and my boyfriend and I have been organizing an elegant affair for your eighty-ninth, please come
? How do you say
make my dreams come true
?”