The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C

by LeighAnn Kopans

  “You know, you could call him by his name. We had a beer once. He’s a good guy.”

  “Oh, fuck.” Rion said, pushing a half-black hunk of hair away from her eye. She was trying to grow it out since she’d chopped it off, half because she didn’t want to pay to have it done, half because she liked it when he grabbed and tugged while he was fucking her.

  Amy’s texts read exactly like she talked. “I know you’re busy, and if it’s not too much trouble, would you mind coming to get me? It’s not an emergency but I can’t stay here. I’ll take you to dinner to make up for it…”

  All this was broken up into several texts and before she even finished reading them, some otherwordly reflex had Rion out of bed and pulling on sweatpants before she gave it a second thought. “I have to go.”

  “What’s going on? Is she okay? Family emergency?” Rion’s heart did a little flip at Crash’s concern for her roommate, a girl he cared about strictly because of her association with Rion. Maybe when her poor dead hermity heart thawed out a little bit, and she made sure her roommate was okay, she’d sit down with Crash—while they had clothes on—and tell him how she felt. But right now, she had to leave.

  Crash turned lazily into the sheets. “What do you want me to do about the house? I’m gonna sleep in. I have to drive my car back anyway.”

  “Key underneath the iron frog in the garden around back,” Rion called as she grabbed her purse and shoved some clothes into a duffel. Where the hell were her shoes?

  “Hey, Ri?” Crash called when she was nearly out the door. She ran back to her bedroom, still decorated in broody purple and a small collection of stuffed animals she’d decided to keep past 9th grade. The last normal year.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re a good friend.”

  Rion’s heart swelled, and she scolded herself to keep her emotions in check. Not that that would help her overwhelming need to touch him again, just one more time. She got in close, pressed her hips to his, gave him a long, soft kiss. He smacked her ass when she pulled away, and she grinned.

  Just as she crossed the threshold of her bedroom door, staring at the dusty living room and thinking maybe she and Crash would clean it up next time they were here, he called to her again. More softly this time. “Babe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  He’d done it on purpose. When she was running out, and couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t have any hard conversations, couldn’t keep her emotions from spilling into her smile. And for the first time in a very, very long time, she decided not to fight it.

  “Love you too.”

  Then she was gone.

  “You’re damn lucky my hometown is only half an hour from Mister Ginger’s,” Rion said, smiling as Amy hustled from the converted farmhouse into the car. It was only when she took a seat and sucked a truckload of snot back that Rion took a good look at her and saw her green eyes on fire, ringed with red. “Oh, shit,” Rion said. “What did he do to you?”

  She sniffled again, brushing her fire-orange waves away from her face only to have them drape back. “More like what did I do to him. Can we just get out of here?”

  Rion felt a surge of love for Amy. Poor girl had been trashed by one boyfriend already this year. She didn’t really need any more shit from another one. “Did he piss you off? Sleep with someone else?”

  Amy pulled a half-used Kleenex out of her sleeve and Rion nearly gagged. “Girl, I love you, but use a new tissue, okay?”

  Amy nodded, rummaging in her purse for another. “Don’t you have any of that insane music you mix or whatever?”

  “I don’t have any sad lady tunes, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Pissed off, mostly.”

  “That’ll work just fine,” Amy answered, sniffling again.

  Rion pulled up one of her most recent mixes, a dark electronic with a driving beat layered over it, morphing into an electric guitar that spun off into long, languid chord progressions before ebbing away. Amy stared out the window until the song had gone quiet. Rion listened. Something about mixing music and listening for the subtle cues, that exact moment in the song when it was ready to change into something new, higher, better, had made her a better listener to people, too. Amy’s sniffles had nearly stopped and her breaths had become more even.

  Now she just looked out the window, letting her forehead rest against it as Rion’s beater car roared down the highway toward school.

  “I feel bad taking you away from Crash,” Amy said, her voice measured and low. Probably trying to keep herself from crying again.

  “Nothing to feel bad about. He’s picking up some art stuff at a specialty shop half a mile from campus today. Day after Christmas sales, I guess. I’ll have plenty of time with him when I get back. Besides, we’re not like that. You know that.”

  “You mean not attached at the hip. Not like me and Matt,” she said, evenly, barely an inflection to make Rion think whether that was something she wanted or not.

  Regardless, Rion was damn glad Amy had said his name because she’d called him Ginger or Marmalade or Fire Crotch so many times it was hard for her to remember what his real name was. “Right.”

  Another half-gasping shuddering breath inward, and Amy’s forehead was back on the windshield.

  “Do you wanna talk about it?”

  This wasn’t a Society meeting, which was where Rion had learned to talk about guys and emotions and hopes this past year. But it was also where she’d realized that Amy was in love with Matt, and where she thought she and Arielle would get to watch Amy deliver the news that the two of them had finally, finally gotten together.

  Amy sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to, but you can.”

  “He told me he loved me,” Amy blurted.

  “Jesus fuck,” Rion said, nearly swerving the car off the road. She almost did it again when Amy turned her wide, scolding eyes on her at the words. “Sorry, sorry. It’s easy to forget when I hear something like that.” But then Rion realized that something didn’t compute. Amy was in love with Ginger, and he’d told her he was in love with her too. So, yay, the do-gooding Christian kids with raging emotion-boners for each other had finally let it all out. Shouldn’t Amy be happy?

  “So what’s the problem?” Rion blurted.

  “That I love him, too,” Amy whispered, turning her head back to the window.

  “Again, still not understanding the problem.”

  That brought on a fresh new wave of tears. “He kissed me.”

  “Yeah?” Rion tried to keep from wiggling with an ‘I knew it’ dance in her seat. “That’s good, right?”

  “It was good. So good I tried to get him to sleep with me.”

  “Holy crap, Amy! I didn’t think you had it in you. I thought you were…you know. Waiting. Again.”

  Amy buried her face in her hands. “Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, I guess not. But, like I said. I tried to get him to sleep with me. He didn’t.”

  “Oh. Oh.” Now it was a little clearer, and Rion’s spirits started to sink to catch up with Amy’s.

  “I was drunk,” Amy groaned, twisting a little to slump back in her car seat. “But I was just drunk enough, you know? Like, everything seemed clearer, and everything I’d ever worried about fell away. And I saw how really, really attractive he is. And then when he kissed me, and we got into it, I felt how attractive he is.”

  Rion laughed. “Well damn. I’m still not understanding the issue. Does good ol’ Rusty Nuts actually have rusty nuts?”

  “We were so close, and then he stopped. Said he couldn’t do this. I had no idea what he meant until this morning, when I tried to remember, and I still wanted to be with him. And I told him.”

  “And let me guess. He’s confused, because he’s been trying to be your boyfriend for months, but you’ve been telling him you didn’t want one, and he loves you too much to fuck you if you’re not together the rest of t
he time. Am I right?”

  “Well he didn’t use the F word. But yeah, pretty much.”

  “So why not be together, Ames?” Rion softened her voice to tell Amy that she really could be honest.

  “Because that’s not the point.” Amy slammed her hand on the door’s hand rest, making Rion jump a little. This girl never yelled. Maybe the fact that she was raising her voice a little now was a good sign. Healthy to get her frustrations out, maybe for the first time ever. ”I have been with a guy basically since it was possible. I have always been defined in relationship to one. Yeah, it was bad being Adam’s future wife for so many reasons. Obviously, Matt is a much, much better guy than Adam is. Better for me.”

  Rion didn’t know exactly what was driving this stunning burst of clarity, but she wasn’t about to interrupt it. She let the rumble of her old trusty Accord down the highway fill the space where Amy was working out her shitstorm of a Christmas. After what felt like an eternity but was really only a minute, she said, “What are you going to do about it?”

  Amy breathed in deeply. “I’m going to get him back. But first I’m going to figure out who I am without him. Without anyone.”

  Rion’s heart ached. She’d been there, when Dad had left unintentionally, and Mom had abandoned her. She had figured out who she was, alright, but it wasn’t anyone she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, alone. How she’d gotten lucky enough to find Crash, she’d never know.

  The rest of the drive back to school was pretty quiet. Amy asked a few questions about Rion’s break, and Rion told her everything, even about Crash making her dinner. Well, everything except the rough and dirty Christmas sex they’d had. Amy may have been newly determined to be her own person, but that didn’t mean she could deal with hearing about blow jobs and finger fucking after a breakup with her not-quite-boyfriend she didn’t even realize she’d had. And right after celebrating the birthday of her Savior or whatever.

  “Hey,” Rion said as they sat in the Northern Slice, the only place that seemed to be open on Francis over break. “Do you need to go to Church or whatever?”

  Amy looked at her blankly, her eyes still bearing a red tinge. “Christmas was yesterday.”

  “Oh. Right. Yeah, of course.”

  “Did you ever go, growing up?”

  Rion shook her head. “I literally have no idea how church works. Actually, I kind of always wanted to go check it out, because the big dark sanctuaries and stained glass windows always seemed so creepy-cool to me. I always thought that even if they were empty and quiet, there was still always a lot going on there.”

  Amy tilted her head, considering that. “I guess that makes sense. I don’t know. I didn’t grow up going to those kinds of churches. Ours were always bright and loud and in-your-face and honestly kind of scary in a different way. Because of the pastor yelling at us about hell and stuff.” Amy tore a hunk of crust off and chewed quietly. “Do you want to go? To one of the old churches? I went to a more traditional one with Matt but never for services. It didn’t even have that much stained glass though.”

  “Well…” Rion took a second to chew too, trying to sort out the weird swirl of conflicts flying around her brain. “I don’t, like, believe in God or anything.”

  Amy shrugged. “It’s just a building. You might find something you like, even if it’s not God.”

  “So it sounds like maybe I can help you on this quest to be your own person. Take me to a weird old church with darkness and maybe velvet seats.”

  The corner of Amy’s mouth quirked up in a smile, and then she pushed out a heavy sigh. “I’m trying to remember which one Matt took me to.” She whipped her phone out of her pocket and Rion stretched across the table to snatch it out of her hand. “You are NOT calling him, Amy.”

  “I wasn’t going to!” Amy insisted.

  “Yeah, right.” Rion peered at the phone. Amy really hadn’t been pulling up his texts or anything. “Do you think you might, later?”

  “I wouldn’t call him,” Amy mumbled.

  “But you might obsess over his texts from the last four months?”

  Amy rolled her eyes up to the side.

  “That’s what I thought.” Rion pulled out her own phone, searched for Matt’s number in the contacts page, and copied the information into her own contacts. Then deleted Matt from Amy’s phone. All of him, even his texts.

  “I’m doing this because I love you,” Rion informed Amy as she passed the phone back, while Rion smiled to herself that she’d freely and easily used the l-word for the second time in one day without her heart freezing up or the world stopping spinning.

  Amy took the phone back and started typing away on it.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m texting Arielle. I think I need a Society meeting, and I can’t wait a week.”

  All of a sudden, Arielle’s face popped up on the screen, and then soon after, Lauren’s over her shoulder.

  “Hey Ames, what’s up? How was Christmas with Matt?” Lauren made a kissy noise in the background, puckering her lips, and Arielle turned to lay a kiss on them.

  Amy and Rion groaned. “Seriously, Ari, PDA.”

  “We’re not in public,” Arielle said, laughing. But then Lauren disengaged from her waist and perched on a full bed several feet behind Arielle.

  “Hey, Pretty Lauren, do you think you could duck out for a few minutes?” Rion looked pointedly at the camera.

  “Rion,” Amy complained, turning red. “Sorry, Lauren, I’m happy to see you, I swear. It’s just that Christmas actually wasn’t so good, and…and…” tears choked off her words.

  “And we could use a Society meeting. An emergency one.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course,” Arielle said, her voice dipping into a pitying rhythm. “Society meetings are private,” Arielle explained to Lauren, but she didn’t need direction. Lauren was already gathering up her things.

  “I promised your mom I’d crush her in Monopoly anyway,” Lauren said on the way out. Arielle’s grin was so bright it could warm up the frigid, blustery afternoon. Another weird feeling—Rion was happy for Arielle. Really, seriously happy.

  “Okay, Ames, what’s wrong?” Arielle’s voice softened and her eyebrows pulled together. Rion watched Amy’s pained smile in response, and shook her head at the memory that the two girls had ever been anything but close. “We’re not supposed to have a meeting for another week. And you’re supposed to be taking it easy at Matt’s.”

  Amy’s face crumpled and she squeezed her eyes shut. Rion’s hand automatically lifted to rub her back. “I didn’t even know how I felt about him. You know?”

  “Oh, God. But now you do?” Arielle asked, a hint of hope in her voice.

  “Yeah, but it didn’t really turn out so well,” Rion said as the tears started to run down Amy’s cheeks all over again. She squeezed Amy’s shoulder. “Do you want to tell her, or should I?”

  Amy stumbled into the start of the story, letting Rion pick up when she had to take a break.

  “Well, shit,” Arielle said when they were finished. “Obviously this is our fault. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “What do you mean, your fault? It’s my fault! I was so obsessed with just staying friends with him that we became the best of friends, which I guess in this case is falling in love too. And he saw it, and I didn’t, and now I screwed everything up.” The tears were finally starting to slow, and Rion handed her a rough brown napkin. Amy winced as she wiped her eyes with it.

  “No, it is our fault. Because we knew. We knew from the beginning there was something between you two. And we never said anything.”

  Rion hung her head and twisted her lips back and forth. Arielle was right, but that didn’t change the fact that Amy was backed into a really shitty place with this whole thing. Within ten minutes, Arielle had helped Amy write a self-discovery to-do list—a phrase that only made sense in Arielle’s crazy type-A universe—then promised to come back as soon as she could, and hung up.

  “
It sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?” Rion asked, quietly eyeing Amy’s list, which had normal things like “major” and weird things like “ice skating.”

  “What’s that? The mortification of having a crush on someone and it being mutual and then getting dumped by your non-boyfriend anyway?”

  “Sort of? Really I just mean falling in love.” Rion shook her head. “Jesus, that’s cheesy.”

  The sunshine of Amy’s grin broke through what had been a ridiculously gloomy atmosphere. “So you finally realized you love Crash, huh?”

  Rion shrugged. “It’s whatever.”

  “It’s a big deal. I don’t suppose he told you his real name, did he?”

  “I guess he never told me because I never asked. Anyway, it’s Colin.”

  Amy nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “Okay, how? How could a name make sense?”

  “Well, for starters, it’s one of the few names I can think of that really doesn’t have like a tough-sounding nickname. He seems like someone who wants to hide behind that. If he told you, it means you’re special to him.”

  Rion shrugged like she didn’t care. But that didn’t make too much sense. Crash had always been the one who was trying to get her to let him in, not the other way around.

  “I mean, it’s taken you a little while to see him as anything but a guy you sleep with. Not that I’m judging you,” she rushed to explain.

  “That’s not true!”

  “But it is. That’s not bad. I’ve been through enough stuff myself and paid plenty of attention in Womens’ Studies, so I know. Nobody can fault you for…you know…enjoying yourself with him. But the connection has changed, no doubt. You talk about him more, you know, like a person.”

  “I wasn’t talking about him like a person before?”

  Amy laughed. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well it’s the same way you’ve been with the Society. At first, our meetings were just a thing on your schedule, but now it’s like…you like hanging out with us. It’s kind of sweet.”

  Rion grumbled. “Okay. Well, I do like you. For what it’s worth.”