The Romantics

by Leah Konen

  “This is the guy who stole your girlfriend, right?” Sammy asked.

  He didn’t answer, and she turned her gaze to the TV. “Getting out your aggression through video games?” She rolled her eyes. “Nice.”

  Gael put down the controller. “Don’t tell me, you’re anti–video games? How original.”

  “So it’s cliché to dislike things that are proviolence and antiwomen?” she retorted. “Umm, hello, gamer gate.”

  Gael had gotten the video-game lecture ad nauseum from his mother. He didn’t need to hear it again. “I know, I know,” he said. “But this one has morals. I killed that guy, but I’m going to pay for it later. I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

  Sammy raised her eyebrows at him and tilted her head to the side. “Really?”

  “Really,” he said.

  “So you’ll, like, go to jail?”

  Gael shook his head. “Probably not. But I’ll pay for it. Don’t worry.”

  She uncrossed her arms, let them hang at her sides, gave him a small smile. “So are you going to tell me about your ex-friend barging in, or are you going to debate me on the value of violent video games? If it’s the latter, please know that I will most definitely school you.”

  Gael hesitated. He and Sammy’s conversations had always been fairly surface level. The thought of pouring out his relationship drama to someone in a stable long-term thing—someone who hadn’t been dumped publicly and who hadn’t entered into a pseudo-relationship with someone with such big issues around not being alone that she had to make rules about not dating for a month—well, it felt a little pathetic.

  Then again, it would be nice to be able to talk to someone. Especially someone who wasn’t the cause of the whole thing.

  He flipped off the TV. “I’m kind of all over the place this week.”

  “Umm, shouldn’t you be?” she asked, turning her body to him in a way that made him feel, suddenly, like he could say anything. “Because having an ex show up at my birthday dinner would definitely send me into a tailspin of anxiety.”

  Gael laughed. “If that wasn’t enough, Mason just followed me home to tell me he’s in love with Anika and ask my advice.”

  Sammy gasped. “He said he was in love?”

  Gael shook his head. “No, but he might as well have. He obviously cares about her.”

  “And you still love her?” Sammy asked, settling down to sit on the floor, back against his wall.

  (I could see what Gael couldn’t, that Sammy was hoping he’d say no. She told herself that it was because Anika was a narcissist, and Gael deserved better. But I had an inkling that wasn’t the whole story. And my inklings are pretty spot-on.)

  “Actually, more and more, I don’t think I do.” Gael took a deep breath. “I guess it was easier to just think of them cheating as this super-shitty thing, and if they really care about each other, it feels less shitty. I don’t know.”

  Sammy narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s going on here?” she asked. “There is no way that Gael Brennan would just be all Dr. Phil about this. What are you not telling me?”

  Gael blushed. “I think I might like someone else,” he said.

  Sammy paused. “Really?” she asked cautiously. “So soon after Anika?”

  Gael stared down at his hands, then back to Sammy. He was embarrassed—he knew he sounded foolish—but he’d already told her this much, he might as well tell her the whole thing. “I randomly met her walking home from my birthday dinner, and then out of the blue I just kissed her—it was crazy—and we’ve hung out twice since then, but on Tuesday she told me that basically she’s fresh out of a relationship and doesn’t want to date anyone this month.”

  Sammy laughed. Or, he wondered, was it more of a scoff? “Wow, a whole month without dating someone. What a sacrifice!”

  Gael scooted back on the bed and crossed his arms. “Real easy to judge. It’s not like you’ve had loads of time to deal with being single.”

  There was a brief pause, but Sammy just pressed her lips together and stood up. “I’m just saying, maybe two people who are obviously hung up on other people shouldn’t just jump into something because they ran into each other in the street.”

  Her words were bold and strong, like bitter, burnt coffee. “But what if there’s a reason why we met,” he asked, a little vehemently. As he racked his brain for a way to support his case, his eyes landed, once again, on her shirt. Bingo. He nodded to it. “Like in Casablanca. Ilsa and Victor running into each other again.”

  Sammy laughed, then shook her head. “And if you remember the ending, it didn’t work out.”

  “That’s only because it was in war-torn Morocco,” Gael said, his voice gaining strength. He may have been badly and obviously rebounding, but he could at least make his point with movies. “Anywhere else and it would have.”

  Sammy rolled her eyes. “Life isn’t a rom-com. Much as I love them, they aren’t real.”

  Gael momentarily forgot his point. “You love rom-coms?”

  “I do,” she said, her shoulders relaxing a bit. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  Gael laughed. “No, I just expected someone who was obsessed with French lit to have a bit more sophisticated movie taste.”

  “Hey,” Sammy said. “I’m not that big of a snob.”

  Gael found that debatable, but he let it go.

  Sammy shrugged. “I’m just saying, timing is important. And maybe two people who both have really recent baggage shouldn’t rush in.”

  (She was right, of course. Hence the need for my job.)

  “So you’re telling me you didn’t rush when you met John?” Gael asked indignantly.

  “What are you guys talking about?”

  Gael and Sammy whipped around to see Piper standing in the doorway.

  Sammy discreetly wiped her hand under her eyes and then cocked one hip to the side. “Casablanca,” she said. “And the girl Gael currently has a crush on.”

  “You have a crush on someone!” Piper squealed.

  “None of your business,” Gael said, blushing again and feeling thoroughly outnumbered. “And even if I did, Sammy thinks it’s a bad idea.”

  Piper’s eyes volleyed from Sammy to Gael and back again. Then she smiled her wonderful-world-of-Wikipedia smile, the smile of having learned a new, useful fact.

  “Well, all I know is, if Sammy doesn’t think you should be with her, she must have a good reason. Come on, Sammy,” Piper said. “We still have four translations left!”

  Piper stomped out of the room, dragging Sammy by the hand.

  “You’re the boss!” Sammy said to Piper, leaving Gael alone with his thoughts.

  gael’s evening search queries, in chronological order

  5:03 P.M.

  how can you tell if you’re rebounding

  5:06 P.M.

  am I rebounding quiz

  5:15 P.M.

  serial monogamist definition

  5:17 P.M.

  dating a new person after being cheated on

  5:28 P.M.

  what does it mean when a girl says can we just be friends for now

  5:40 P.M.

  famous quotes from casablanca about love

  6:05 P.M.

  dating a college girl while in high school

  6:12 P.M.

  the girl i like doesn’t like movies

  6:29 P.M.

  girl says she likes me but doesn’t want to date for two weeks is she blowing me off

  6:40 P.M.

  is going to a basketball game a date

  6:43 P.M.

  what if I’m alone forever

  a house divided

  The next evening, as Gael prepared to leave the house for his Friday-night pseudo-date with Cara, his mom stopped him in the front hallway.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  Gael reached for the doorknob with one hand and tugged at the logo on his sweatshirt with the other. “There’s a basketball game tonight. I have tickets
.”

  His mom sighed loudly and crossed her arms against her tiny frame. Then she grabbed a trinket from the foyer table, dusted it with the bottom of her shirt, and put it back. “When were you going to tell me? You’re supposed to have dinner with your dad tonight.”

  Gael shrugged. “I already told Dad. He said he has extended office hours tonight anyway, and he’d pick up Piper for dinner after he was done.”

  “Well, you didn’t tell me,” his mom snapped.

  Gael let go of the doorknob and crossed his arms. “I’m telling you now. Plus, the fact that you and Dad suck at communicating with each other really isn’t my problem.”

  For a second, his mom looked shocked at his frankness, but then she shook her head. “You know, you’re really supposed to be hanging out with your dad on Friday nights. You owe it to him.”

  Gael sighed. “So I’m not allowed to do anything on Fridays just because you guys split up?” he asked. “How is that fair?”

  That’s when Piper breezed in, an electric-green tutu around her waist and a toy lightsaber in her hand. She pouted. “You never used to bail out when we had family movie night.”

  She was right. Family movie night had been a semi-religious experience in the Brennan household. Every Friday, they ordered Papa John’s and took turns picking out a movie to watch as a family. Piper usually made them watch either a nature documentary or some tweeny friendship story; his dad gravitated toward modern psychological dramas and underdog boxing flicks; his mom almost always picked something black-and-white and unapologetically optimistic; and Gael felt it was his moral duty as the resident film snob to mix it up. As much as he could while keeping things Piper-appropriate, that is.

  Gael scoffed. “Well, it’s not my fault family movie night is over. I’m not the one who decided to get divorced.”

  His mom’s jaw dropped, and Piper’s chin began to shake. “They’re not divorced,” his little sister said. “They’re just living separately.” She looked like she might cry.

  “I’m sorry,” Gael said, looking from Piper to his mom. “But I don’t know what to say.”

  His mom knelt down to hug Piper. “Just go,” she said. “I’ll take her over to Dad’s.”

  Gael nodded and headed out the door, though the prospect of seeing Cara no longer made him feel better. His family was broken. It was the honest, simple truth.

  No girl was going to fix that.

  after-office hours

  As per usual, Cara was not outside her dorm at their agreed-upon meeting time, so Gael pulled in front of the building and let the car idle.

  His eyes drifted out the window toward the students on campus.

  To the couple walking hand in hand into a nearby dorm.

  To the emo-looking kid bumming a cigarette from a guy in a preppy polo.

  To the girl in neon-orange track pants running faster than he ever would in his life.

  To his dad, following an attractive girl toward Carmichael Hall . . .

  Gael whipped his head back and squinted his eyes. It was his dad, for sure, with his annoying fall knit hat and his corduroy professor jacket and a stupid smile on his face.

  And the girl next to him hardly looked like she could be older than twenty-three. A grad student, maybe, but possibly even an undergrad.

  Gael’s heart started to race. When the secret phone calls started, he’d toyed with the idea that his dad was cheating, but until now, he’d never really truly believed it.

  But why else would he have lied about having office hours? Why in the world would he be going into one of the dorms? They were a good ten-minute walk from his dad’s office. There was no logical reason to be here.

  Unless . . .

  “Jesus Christ!”

  A sudden knock on the car window made Gael jump. Cara was there, staring at him.

  He unlocked the door robotically.

  “Everything okay?” she asked as she got in the car. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Gael nodded, and then looked quickly back toward Carmichael, both afraid to see anything more and afraid of not seeing anything more.

  His dad and the girl were gone.

  “Are you sure?” Cara asked.

  His face suddenly felt hot, and he thought he might cry, but he forced himself to smile. He forced himself not to focus on what he had just seen. He couldn’t fall apart. Not in front of the one person who hadn’t already seen him at his worst.

  “Just a little tired is all,” he stammered. He shifted into drive and pulled forward before she could ask anything else.

  friend-zone defense

  By the time they were inside the Dean Dome, in their tiny squished seats, Gael’s primary concern was making sure Cara didn’t see that his eyes were still glassy—that he was on the verge of completely falling apart.

  He couldn’t get the vision of his dad walking toward the dorm out of his mind, no matter how much he tried to distract himself with the fast-paced game in front of him.

  The tallest guy on their team sunk a three-pointer, and the crowd roared, UNC’s ram mascot springing into cartwheels while a cheerleader did a back flip. Cara’s rally cry was loud, high-pitched, and long. Her enthusiasm should have been endearing, but Gael only found it grating. Cara jumped out of her seat, but he couldn’t bring himself to follow.

  The opposing team grabbed the ball and was on the other end of the court in seconds.

  “You okay?” Cara asked, sitting back down.

  “Yeah,” Gael lied. Then he whipped his head away immediately and attempted to discreetly wipe the moisture from his eyes.

  Cara either didn’t notice or decided to give him space because her gaze stayed focused on the players below. Gael was grateful for that, at least.

  There was a round of squeaks against the glossy hardwood floor, and the point guard pivoted, evading the guy blocking him, and made a two-point shot for Carolina.

  Gael eyed the 2009 National Championship flag that hung from the rafters of the Dean Dome. His family had had season tickets that year. Piper was practically a newborn, but they’d still managed to make it to almost every game, Gael in his little-kid jersey, shaking noisemakers like it was his job. They’d even been in the Dean Dome to watch the championship game on the Jumbotron as Carolina squashed Michigan State far away in chilly Detroit. They’d followed the crowd of students to Franklin Street, and Gael got to watch a few college kids jumping around and setting things on fire before his mom had said they really should go. The next day, his dad had pointed out that even the president of the United States was a Carolina fan. They’d gotten five copies of the Daily Tar Heel and framed one in their basement.

  None of that would happen for Piper, he thought, because his family wasn’t his family anymore.

  Because his dad had turned his family into something awful.

  Suddenly, Gael was no longer on the brink of tears. Instead, he seethed with anger.

  “Don’t you find it completely ridiculous that they have ‘Carolina’ printed on their butts?” Cara asked, breaking his train of thought.

  Gael took a deep breath and tried to focus on acting like a normal human being.

  “I don’t exactly make a point of staring at other guys’ butts,” he said, forcing a laugh.

  Cara laughed loudly and leaned back farther in her chair. She kicked her feet up, placing her exposed toes dangerously close to the head of the guy in front of them. “You know it doesn’t make you gay just for having eyes,” she said.

  Gael sighed as Cara removed her feet from the chair and went back to a normal sitting position. “All right, all right. I have noticed, and it is kind of ridiculous, yes.”

  Cara wiggled her eyebrows up and down. “Look at you, checking out other guys’ butts!”

  She laughed.

  And so did Gael, his anger dissipating the tiniest bit.

  (I was torn, to be honest. On the one hand, I ached to give Gael some relief from what he’d seen. But on the other, I worried that tonight wou
ld only push him even harder toward Cara, toward escape. She wasn’t right for him, and no matter what was going on in his life, I had to help him understand that.)

  “Thanks,” Gael said. The halftime clock buzzed and the crowd burst into cheers. UNC was up by twenty-two.

  “For what?” Cara asked.

  He shrugged. “For the tickets. For running into me on your bike when I needed a friend.”

  Cara gazed at him a touch too long, but then a guy cleared his throat, and she and Gael looked up. The guy was waiting to get past, and she tucked her feet underneath her seat, letting him by.

  (Just a little thing, but it was important to break that moment, trust me.)

  When the guy was gone, she looked back down at the court, fiddled with her ponytail, wiggled her toes in her Birks. “Should we get some food?”

  Gael nodded. “I can get some if you watch my stuff.” He wasn’t sure if he could stomach food right now, but he could at least try. “I always go for the pulled pork sandwiches here. You want one?”

  “Sounds perfect,” she said. “You da best.”

  I watched with a bittersweet ache as Gael broke into his first real smile of the night.

  a peek into gael’s future

  You think I’m cruel, don’t you? I know you do.

  You’re thinking that Gael has just seen something that would send anyone into crisis mode, and so what if the girl who is helping him through it is not the perfect girl for him?

  You’re wondering whether rebounding really is the worst thing on earth, especially during a time of his life so fraught with pain and heartbreak. He’s a kid, after all. So what if this isn’t the real deal? He’ll have plenty of chances after this.

  And you’re right . . . partially, at least. Lots of people go after the wrong person. Lots of people get second or third or fourth or fifteenth chances at the real deal.