The Romantics

by Leah Konen

  And then the show started and the stars came out, thousands of them, more than you ever saw in real life, even in places like Wyoming, where Gael had once been. It was like they were in a giant, turned-over pasta strainer, with countless tiny openings letting in spots of light just for them.

  Gael could hear Anika breathing, but he couldn’t see her. When he turned his head to try, there was only blackness.

  And then the most amazing thing happened, something he never could have planned, the kind of thing Gregory Peck might execute flawlessly, but not him, not Gael Brennan. (I have to say that I love that about my job: watching ordinary guys become romantic heroes, just for a moment or two.) Gael set his hand on the armrest between them, but Anika’s was already there. His first instinct was to pull back, but before he could, Anika flipped her hand over, and her long, graceful fingers wove between his and squeezed.

  The stars disappeared and there was a seductive glow as the ceiling displayed an image of a mammoth red supergiant.

  Gael turned to Anika. He could see her now, her face cast with red, and she was looking right at him.

  By the time their lips touched, it was black again.

  When the show ended and they stepped outside, into the blinding light of the late afternoon, Gael assumed the whole thing would be forgotten. Making out with your crush in the dark was part of a separate universe, a fluke—perhaps it was something Anika wanted to check off her bucket list. (Which wasn’t that crazy of a thought. Anika was an Adventurer2 when it came to romance.)

  But she turned to him, her lip gloss smeared, her cheeks flushed. “Want to go to Cosmic?” she asked. Besides Spanky’s, Cosmic was Gael’s favorite restaurant on Franklin, if you could call it a proper restaurant. The full name was Cosmic Cantina, but when your food was served in a Styrofoam box, it seemed a little silly to use the full name. “The super burrito is calling me,” Anika added.

  “Sounds great,” Gael said, and he held her hand again as they walked back onto Franklin Street, toward the lure of greasy burritos and nachos. In the course of one planetarium show, they’d gone from band hangout buddies to so much more.

  Anika always got what she wanted, whether it was free guacamole on her Cosmic burrito or extra credit on her math test.

  Now, suddenly, she wanted him.

  It made Gael feel both amazing and totally out of control.

  (Worth noting: Everyone gets scared by that out-of-control feeling. And I do mean everyone.)

  Anika’s hand in his felt natural, and the energy between them felt big and important, straight-up literary, like Tristan and Isolde. Cathy and Heathcliff. Romeo and Juliet.

  But the thing that Gael forgot to remember was that, whether the author is Shakespeare, Emily Brontë, or whoever the hell wrote Tristan and Isolde, all of those stories have one thing in common:

  They end badly.

  * * *

  2. Adventurer: One who primarily seeks out a partner for life’s adventures (and misadventures), and who doesn’t feel the need for overly romantic gestures, saccharine phrases, or deep discussions about the future. May result in downplaying more serious emotions or situations in favor of “just seeing where it goes.” May also result in a fun, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants relationship that keeps both partners excited and fulfilled.

  la vie en woes

  “You’re home early again.” Sammy, Piper’s incredibly annoying babysitter, adjusted her thick, rectangular glasses. “I thought you had all kinds of extracurriculars and stuff?”

  It was Monday, almost a week since the breakup, and Sammy and his little sister were perched in the dining room, as was their habit. Piper didn’t even look up from her Elementary French book. “He’s supposed to be in marching band, but he’s skipped cinq fois, counting today.” She didn’t wait for Gael to ask. “That means five times.”

  Sammy smirked. “Suddenly don’t like playing ‘YMCA’ in formation anymore?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Gael said.

  “Why not?” Sammy leaned her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand.

  “Forgive me if I don’t want to tell all my life problems to my little sister and her babysitter,” Gael snapped.

  “Hey,” Piper protested, her short light brown hair swinging back and forth as she shook her head. “She’s not my babysitter.” Indignation was written plainly across her eight-and-three-quarters-year-old face. “I told you she’s my French tutor.”

  Gael couldn’t help but laugh. Sammy had been babysitting Piper after school since Gael started marching band his sophomore year, but last August, when his parents found out that Sammy would be majoring in French when she started at UNC, they offered to pay her more if French lessons were involved. Now Pipes absolutely abhorred the word babysitter.

  Sammy fiddled with a page of her Candide and tipped back in the fancy dining room chair to look him in the eye. “So you’re really not going to tell us why you’re skipping?”

  Gael swore that Sammy hadn’t always been this annoying. They’d always been friendly before. When Gael arrived home, Sammy would ask him a few questions about school and friends and the like, then quickly go back to whatever book she was reading, her eyes jutting across the page behind frameless glasses while she waited for his mom to get home with her check.

  But since she’d started at UNC, she’d chopped off her hair, dyed it dark chocolaty brown, replaced the mom glasses with those of the nerdy-but-still-very-cool variety, and talked incessantly of annoying things like French writers and the “prison-industrial complex.” His mom ate it up, but Gael found her sudden snobbery a bit . . . fake.

  Of course, Sammy had become a lot more annoying now that Gael was coming home earlier. He was forced into daily interactions with an uppity French lit major who thought it was her job to not only take care of his sister but to pry into his life. This hadn’t been a problem until The Ultimate Betrayal. Otherwise known as the Loss of Girlfriend and Best Friend in One. Basically, the end of life as Gael had known it.

  (I know, Romantics are such drama queens.)

  “You can’t skip something that you quit,” Gael said finally.

  “Do your parents know you quit?” Sammy asked. Lately, it seemed like Sammy could go on asking questions forever and ever and ever. It was no wonder she and Piper got along so well.

  “Why does it matter to you?”

  “They have no idea,” Piper chimed in, closing her book and staring at him accusingly with her wide green eyes. She perched her chin on her hand, imitating Sammy’s gesture.

  “Are you okay, though?” Sammy asked, her voice a tad softer. “You don’t seem like the type to just quit things.”

  “I’m fine,” he muttered, avoiding Sammy’s eyes. “Now can you just leave me alone?”

  Sammy and Piper exchanged identical looks. They made an odd pair—the lanky college hipster and her miniature bespectacled minion. Mercifully, they didn’t say anything more.

  True to his new routine, Gael headed for the kitchen pantry and straight to the chocolate stash, which included a trove of fun-size Snickers bars that Anika used to raid. Since the breakup, he’d already discreetly replaced the bag twice. He grabbed three, shoved them into his pockets, and headed to his room without glancing back at Sammy or Piper.

  Back in his cave, Gael closed the curtains that his mom opened every morning and popped a movie he’d seen too many times to count into the Blu-ray player. He unwrapped the first Snickers bar, letting himself forget the past week for just a moment; the crinkly coated paper made a strangely comforting sound, even if the taste of the candy reminded him bittersweetly of Anika’s kiss.

  Gael was a mess of emotions. Sometimes he felt like Anika was dead, like she’d been replaced by some kind of lookalike robot like in The Stepford Wives—the original one, not the shitty remake. Sometimes he felt like he was dead, like all his insides had been erased, leaving only numbness and emptiness. Sometimes he wanted to call Anika and scream. Sometimes he wanted to beat
the shit out of Mason, even though his knuckles were still sore from that band-room punch.

  But all the time, no matter what crazy thoughts took over his head, he really just wanted to disappear. To slowly eat his chocolate and melt into the bed. He realized in horror that even his coping method was pathetic, straight out of a girly romantic comedy. He hated romantic comedies.

  Gael took another bite of chocolate.

  (Another fun fact: Chocolate actually does make you feel better after a breakup, due to the presence of phenylethylamine, the chemical your brain releases when you fall in love.)

  The couple of hours before his mom got home was the only time that Gael didn’t have to pretend to be pulled together. He couldn’t bring himself to lose it in front of her. He’d done enough of that last summer, after his parents broke the utterly confounding news. His mom had alternated between breaking down herself and inviting him to her power yoga classes.

  Not that weekends at his dad’s were any better. Since the separation, his father had begged Gael to join him on his daily four-mile runs—and a family therapy session or two. If his dad knew that Gael’s own romance had fallen apart, he would almost certainly insist upon it. He’d pass, thanks.

  Gael turned down the TV and closed his eyes, hoping against hope to drift quickly to sleep, aka oblivion.

  Every day since TUB (The Ultimate Betrayal) had been a disaster. He had English with Anika, who never failed to shoot him a forced smile. Then chemistry with Mason, where they were lab partners. Gael refused to talk to either of them. In the past week, he’d barely exchanged words with anyone.

  Things were even awkward with Danny. Even though he was Gael’s best friend besides Mason, the dude was gaga for Jenna, and Jenna had long been Anika’s BFF. As such, this had become the unspoken rule among them: Jenna was Team Anika, Danny was Team Jenna, and by the transitive property, Danny couldn’t be on Gael’s side.

  Gael hadn’t ever thought to make friends outside of their little group. He hadn’t hedged his bets, if you will.

  He’d put all his eggs in one basket.

  And those eggs had decided to hook up with each other behind his back.

  in which i witness the unraveling of gael and mason’s bromance

  It’s not like I didn’t have a plan for Gael. I did—believe me on this one.

  It’s just that certain circumstances (yes, including some of my own doing) had made my plan that much more difficult to implement. Not impossible, of course, just . . . tricky. I am very good at my job. At least I was very good at my job before this untimely oversight. But I digress.

  Allow me to introduce a not-uncommon but wholly unpleasant part of the gig: the undoing of friendships. Many have ended over me, or a perception of me, and it always seems so unnecessary. I want to shake people, remind them of the time, not long before, when they were each other’s favorite.

  Anyway, back to Gael and Mason. Not only was the end of their bromance devastating, it was straight-up dangerous. See, real friendship is its own kind of love, which means it comes with its own kind of heartbreak—and Gael had had more than his fair share lately.

  Between his parents’ split, Anika’s betrayal, and Mason’s involvement, Gael was rocking a triple-whammy of heartbreak.

  Which made the following scene, the Friday after the breakup, only that much more difficult to watch:

  “You can’t just sit there and not talk to me all period,” Mason said.

  Gael didn’t look up. He traced over his chemistry notes in pen, eyes flitting occasionally to the eyewash station. He spent a good portion of every period plotting out chemistry-related methods to maim his former best friend.

  “Uhh, dude?”

  “What?” Gael snapped.

  Mason took a deep breath. “I said, ‘You can’t just—’”

  “I know!” Gael said. “I heard you. I’m not deaf. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “But we’re lab partners. We have to, like, talk about measurements and stuff.”

  (It’s worth noting here that, as per usual, Mason was wholly unaware of the assignment while Gael did all of the work.)

  “Yeah, and we used to be best friends,” Gael said.

  Mason put his big hands on the table, squeezing the edge until his knuckles were white. “Are you really going to throw away like a decade of friendship over what happened with me and Anika?”

  Gael looked him in the eyes for once. What happened. Like the two of them had accidentally broken his Bluray player or something. “You’re the one who threw the friendship away by sneaking around with Anika for a week before I found out. Not me.”

  Mason ran a hand through his curly hair and fiddled with the chemistry book he almost never opened, avoiding Gael’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” He said. “It just kind of . . . happened. She—”

  Gael held up his hand. “I don’t want to hear the details, okay?” He shook his head vehemently. “I loved her.”

  Mason’s eyes finally met Gael’s. “You never told me that.”

  Gael crossed his arms. “Because I thought you’d make fun of me.”

  Mason laughed, but it was a sad kind of laugh, a weak one. “I probably would have made fun of you for falling in love after a couple of months,” he said.

  “Well—news flash—you can love someone in two months,” Gael said.

  (He’s right on this one, of course. You can love someone in two minutes. I’ve seen two seconds, on rare occasions.)

  “I don’t mean to be a dick,” Mason said carefully.

  Too late, Gael thought.

  “But did she love you?” Mason continued. “Like, did she ever say it?”

  Gael pressed his lips together.

  Mason raised his eyebrows, tilted his head. While he waited for an answer, he drummed a beat on the table.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Gael spit out. “It doesn’t change what you did.”

  Mason stopped drumming. “I know what I did was shitty, but I’m just saying I’ve crushed on the Chili’s waitress longer than you and Anika were ever going out.”

  (As much as I consider myself fully Team Gael in this situation, this was not entirely Mason’s fault. He didn’t understand what—frankly—no one in the world fully understands besides Gael and me: that no matter if it was or wasn’t the real thing, for Gael, it was everything.)

  “You’re an asshat,” Gael said.

  And without another word, Gael went back to plotting chemistry-lab attack methods.

  sleepless in chapel hill

  Now let us return to Gael in his cocoon of despair.

  Our reluctant hero was almost asleep when he heard a loud knock on the door.

  Before Gael could speak, Piper burst in. He looked at the clock on his phone—despite his requests to be left alone, his little sister had given him less than a half an hour of Gael-time before her grand entrance. Apparently, Elementary French was done for the day.

  “It’s dark in here,” she observed.

  Knowing that he would certainly be unable to drift off now, he paused the movie and unwrapped another Snickers bar. “That’s kind of the point.”

  She flipped the light on, blinding him. “Are you going to be in a bad mood on your birthday, too? Because we never go to sushi anymore, and you better not ruin it.”

  His birthday. It was this Friday, and his mom had planned this stupid family dinner at his favorite sushi place. Gael could hardly stomach the thought of eating raw fish with his dad conspicuously absent and pretending it was all okay. He took another bite of Snickers.

  (Side note: Pre-birthday breakups are the worst. Right along with pre-Christmas, pre–Valentine’s Day, and pre-anniversary.)

  “Don’t you have some verbs to conjugate?” Gael asked, changing the subject, as Piper perched on his bed.

  She shook her head.

  “Will you just leave me alone?” he asked. “Please?”

  “You have chocolate in your teeth,” she told him.

  He shoved the last Sn
ickers in, answering his little sister with his mouth full. “Now I have more.”

  Sammy appeared and leaned against the doorway. “Sexy.”

  Gael rolled his eyes and chewed intentionally slowly, which wasn’t very hard between all the peanuts and caramel and chocolate. Sammy just stood there, arms crossed, shaking her head.

  “What do you want, anyway?” he asked. “I was trying to go to sleep.”

  “Your little sister wanted to make sure you were okay.” She tilted her head to the side and gave him a careful smile, and for a second, she looked like the old Sammy, before the cool glasses and big ideas. It’s not like they’d been great friends, but she’d been far less annoying, at least.

  He still didn’t want to talk to her.

  “I’m not,” he said. “Okay? Which should be pretty clear. But now you both have an official answer.”

  “Come on, Pipes,” Sammy said. “Let’s get through the rest of your French chapter.”

  Piper hopped off the bed like an obedient puppy. Sammy put a hand on Piper’s shoulder and knelt down to her level. “Start the next exercise. I’ll be there in a sec.”

  Sammy waited until Piper was down the hall to talk. “You know you can’t go on just wallowing in your misery forever.”

  “Jesus,” Gael said. “You’re not my babysitter.”

  Sammy put a hand on her hip like she always did when she was making a point. “I’m just saying. You have to move on, pull yourself out of it. It’s the only way.”

  “Why do you even care?” he muttered, as he watched the blades of the ceiling fan whir.

  “I’m keen on continuing to earn my fifteen bucks an hour, which I’m guessing your mom won’t be so into paying if she knows you’re sitting here at home every afternoon.”

  Gael couldn’t care less about Sammy’s fifteen an hour. “That’s really helpful coming from you, with your—what—three-year relationship going strong?”

  Sammy drew a quick breath. I could see all the hurt, which was still so fresh, come rushing back. Then her face hardened, and her answer came out harsh: “My relationship has nothing to do with you, okay?”