Love and Other Train Wrecks

by Leah Konen

  AMMY

  5:03 A.M.

  I STRETCH OUT ON THE BED, LUXURIATING ON THE rock-hard mattress, the scratchy linens, and gaze at the flecks of the popcorn ceiling, completely relaxed. Every muscle in my body feels both alive and calm at the same time.

  I lift my fingers to my lips, almost checking to make sure that last night really happened.

  But it did. It all happened. And I don’t care about my stupid vow and everything I told myself I believed about romance.

  I don’t care about any of it at all, because I only care about this.

  I feel good. This feels good. Better than anything has in a really long time.

  I try to imagine this morning and what it will bring. The two of us finishing the drive, finally getting to where we need to go, in a different place completely from where we were when we started, and I’m not only talking about geography.

  How much time do we have left together? I wonder.

  Will he want to see me again?

  That’s when the door opens, and the smile on his face answers my question. He crosses the room in a few quick strides and jumps into the bed, moves to kiss me again.

  I lean back, hold a hand between our faces.

  “Do you have a mint or something? I’ve got morning breath.” I know this whole waking up next to a boy thing is romantic and all, but I can’t exactly get in the mood when I can still taste the Cheetos from last night.

  He smiles. “I don’t care about that.”

  I smirk. “I do.”

  “There’re Altoids in there,” he says, pointing to his messenger bag, which is leaning against the opposite bed, from another time—another world—where we weren’t exactly planning on sleeping next to each other.

  Or maybe we were.

  Even then, maybe we were.

  I lean over, not even bothering to get out of bed, and Noah gives me a flirty smack on my butt.

  “Hurry,” he says.

  “Relax,” I call over my shoulder.

  I support myself with one hand on the floor, and with the other, I unzip the front pocket.

  I dip my hand in and immediately feel the smooth tin.

  But as I pull the pocket farther open, I forget about mints, about my breath, about everything.

  Because there, among the slick receipts and folded-up sheets of paper, my eyes catch on something . . . that can’t be.

  Something . . . insane.

  My heart races, and I squeeze my eyes shut and then I open them again, hoping to make it disappear, but it doesn’t work.

  It’s still there.

  She’s still there.

  I set another hand on the floor, launch myself out of bed, pull out the photo, and stare at it.

  “What?” Noah asks. “What’s up?”

  There she is. Real. In front of me. On a glossy Polaroid image, with a hot-pink feather boa around her neck and a top hat on her head.

  Laughing.

  Smirking.

  Goofing around.

  With him.

  Is this some kind of sick, insane joke?

  I stare at her, willing her to disappear. My hands begin to shake.

  I turn around slowly, the room already beginning to spin, the world already different, like it’s shifted on its axis—all in a millisecond.

  I feel almost like I might throw up or I might fall down, but when I see him, those feelings go away.

  I feel like I might scream instead.

  He looks up at me, and his smile fades as soon as he sees my face.

  “What happened?” he asks. “Are you okay?”

  And then his eyes catch the strip in my hand.

  And he knows.

  NOAH

  5:08 A.M.

  “ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME?” SHE ASKS. HER FACE IS red, and the way she’s standing above me, fuming, it’s like she’s a giant.

  I feel like I felt all those times that Rina told me I had to do this or that. I feel small. Helpless.

  But it’s not the same, I know. It’s not the same at all. This time, Ammy is right.

  I stand up, fear invading my whole body, from my head right on down.

  I glance quickly at the blanket, the blanket that held us together not that long ago but what now seems forever ago, crumpled on the bed.

  “What happened?” I ask again.

  I already know. I don’t want to believe it, but I know.

  She steps closer. Raises her voice. “Are you fucking with me?” she asks again, the photo strip clutched in her hand.

  Her eyes are starting to well. Damn it.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head and walking around the bed to be close to her again.

  I want to hold her. I want to tell her that it was all a big mistake.

  I’m afraid I won’t ever be able to hold her again.

  She takes a step back, creating more space between us.

  “I should have known,” she says, more to herself than to me. “I should have known shit like this wouldn’t work out.”

  I look around, at our little motel room, our little retreat. All of a sudden it feels more like a prison.

  “What are you, an insane person? A sadist? I don’t get it.”

  I step closer and put a hand on her shoulder. “Just let me explain. Please?” My voice cracks.

  She shrugs my hand off and pushes the strip of photos in my face.

  I don’t even have to look at them to know what they are.

  Rina sent me one last message after we broke up.

  Cassie told me about Bryson’s cousin. I’ve blocked you everywhere. Don’t ever talk to me again.

  Sure enough, she was on lockdown. She didn’t even come up on my Facebook results. I was blocked. Her Instagram and Snapchat and Twitter, all private. She deleted every photo—every moment—we ever had.

  But the worst was I went onto my own networks and saw that every last remnant of us . . . it was gone, too.

  We’d borrowed each other’s computers frequently enough that she knew my password: rinarina103.

  Her nickname, and the anniversary of our first date.

  She’d managed to delete every photo, every status, every everything we’d had together. She’d erased us completely.

  When I told Bryson, he’d said it was proof that she was vindictive, that she wasn’t right for me anyway. But I knew the truth, even then. It was proof that she was hurting. It was proof I’d done something awful by not ever telling her how what she did bothered me, by letting it all build up until I was breaking up with her on my senior trip, throwing it all away in a flash.

  Maybe that’s why I’m here after all.

  I knew deep down she’d never take me back.

  I knew it wouldn’t be good for either of us if she did.

  Perhaps I just needed to apologize, to tell her how much she meant to me, to let her know I was sorry.

  I let my eyes focus on the photos in Ammy’s hand. They’re from my dad’s forty-fifth birthday party my junior year. He and my mom had splurged for a photo booth, pulling out all the stops.

  I dropped my phone in a toilet not two weeks after the breakup, and I’d never been good about backing up my stuff. That photo is the only thing I have left from years of loving her.

  Ammy must see it all in my face. “So you knew?”

  I shake my head. I didn’t. Until five minutes ago, I didn’t think it was possible.

  “No,” I argue. “I had no idea. Promise.” It’s the truth. How was I supposed to know that such a wild thing could happen to us? How was I supposed to know that the world really is that small? Even after the clues, after I saw those socks, after she talked about her stepmom teaching yoga, her stepsister named Kat, even still . . . how was I supposed to know it was my Katrina she was talking about? What are the odds, anyway? Most Kats are Katherines. And plenty of people teach yoga—it’s the Hudson Valley, for Chrissakes.

  Ammy tosses the photo strip out of her hands, lets it flutter to the ground. Rina stares up at us, smiling.
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br />   There’s nothing but anger in Ammy’s eyes. That’s the thing about big eyes. They’re so wonderful when they’re happy, so terrifying when they’re not.

  “Just calm down,” I say. “I didn’t know. Not really.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down,” she says. “Unless I’m wrong, unless this is your freaking cousin or something, and this was snapped at a family reunion, I have every right to not be calm.”

  “Ammy . . .”

  She shakes her head, backing away from me like I’m fire, or I’m poison, or both. Like my sheer presence has the ability to destroy her.

  This time it isn’t a mechanical failure that’s hurting her. It isn’t her messed-up family or her fears about the future.

  It’s me.

  “Don’t ‘Ammy’ me,” she snaps. “Just say it. How in the world do you know my stepsister? I want the whole truth. No bullshit.”

  I take a deep breath. I don’t want to say it, but I have no choice.

  I can hardly believe it myself.

  “She’s my ex.”

  AMMY

  5:12 A.M.

  I SIT DOWN ON THE BED, CRUNCHING A HONEY BUN wrapper beneath me in the process, scooch back against the headboard, and glare at Noah.

  The feeling of nausea has gone, and all I have is anger—sharp, jagged, seething anger. He’s taken a seat on the opposite bed, and he’s staring at his feet.

  I knew Kat had an ex, but she never wanted to talk about it. And I didn’t want to press her. I was only there for ten days. We became close, but not that close. Not enough to push her on things she didn’t want to talk about.

  “When did you guys break up?” I ask.

  “In the summer.”

  “No, but what was the date?”

  “June eleventh,” Noah says, rattling it off quickly. He’s thought about it a lot. “Why?”

  “My dad moved to Hudson at the end of June. You broke her heart right before all this shit happened. Did you even know that?”

  Noah shakes his head. “I did a summer program before the school year started. I was hardly in town at all.”

  “You didn’t, like, see it on Facebook or something?”

  He shakes his head again. “She blocked me on there. And all her other stuff she set to private after the breakup.”

  He’s not lying. Bea’s stuff is mostly all public—it’s where my mom gets about half her info about the family—but Kat’s is not. I had to get approval from her on everything. I’d thought it was kind of weird for a wannabe actress to be private everywhere, but I thought it was just her way. Kat’s unique. Whatever she does, it somehow seems cool.

  “Where were you in August?” I ask. “Were you back in Hudson then?”

  His eyes lift to the ceiling, like he’s thinking, and then land back on mine. “For the first few weeks, yeah. Why?”

  It’s crazy to me that he was in Hudson when I was in Hudson. That we could have run into him in town—or at Target—and Kat could have pulled me aside and said “That’s my ex” and “He’s the worst” and “He dumped me totally out of nowhere and then hooked up with our friend’s cousin three days later” and then I would have seen him approach me on the train, and I would have said “This seat’s taken,” and I would have texted Kat: Girl, you won’t believe who I just saw on the train. . . .

  But none of that happened. No hints on social media. No late-night gossip sessions about her ex. No accidental run-ins. The normal order of things wasn’t followed.

  And now here we are.

  I know it should be different. I know that it would be better for Kat, for everyone, probably, if I’d known Noah’s name, face—anything.

  But at the same time, this tiny, awful part of me is glad that I didn’t. Glad that I had last night.

  I instantly feel sick.

  “Did you know last night?” I ask, my voice no longer a yell. I’m exhausted suddenly. Spent.

  He stands up, moving toward my bed, but I shake my head, making it clear that that’s not okay. Not now. Not with all that I know. I point back to his bed. He sits down again.

  “I didn’t know until just now,” he says. “I didn’t know until I saw you holding that photo.”

  “Right,” I say, staring him in the eye, daring him to look at me. “Then why do you look about a million times less shocked than me?”

  Noah looks down again and presses his hands onto his knees, so hard his knuckles turn white. In another world, I would have wanted to help him. Manage the anxiety, ease the pain. But we’re not in that world anymore. We’re in this one.

  Believe me, I’d give anything to be able to go back to the world of last night. Just like I’d give anything to go back to the world before my dad left. Or the world before that Thanksgiving. Or any of the worlds that were easier than this one, the one I’m in right now. In a shitty motel room with a boy I thought I cared about—a boy I did care about.

  A boy I’m not supposed to care about. At all.

  He looks up from the floor and back at me. “How could I know?” he asks, his voice pained. “How did you not know? Didn’t she ever tell you my name? We only broke up a couple of months before you came to visit.”

  “She didn’t say anything more than that she had an ex and didn’t want to talk about him,” I say. “Maybe she talked about you to Bea, I don’t know. But not to me.”

  From the look on his face, I can see that he’s been operating under the idea that even if she didn’t talk to him, he still meant enough to her to talk about him. I can see how much it hurts him, and it makes me feel bad.

  I shake my head viciously, because he can’t have it both ways. He can’t be all sad about her and all into me at the same time. “You looked at me weird last night when I said her name,” I say, staring at him. “You knew. You knew the truth, and you kissed me anyway. You let us have last night, even though you knew.”

  He shakes his head. “I thought it was a coincidence.”

  “Really?”

  “There were two other Kats in our year alone,” he says. “You didn’t even tell me how old she was.”

  “And how many of them had moms who were yoga instructors?” I ask.

  “I thought it was a coincidence,” he says again. “Even if there was a second where I thought maybe it wasn’t a coincidence, I wanted it to be one. I don’t regret it. Even now. I don’t.”

  “I do,” I snap.

  Noah’s face falls. He shakes his head.

  And then another thing occurs to me, something that’s been bugging me. “Why in the world did you go on calling her Rina?”

  NOAH

  5:16 A.M.

  AMMY STARES AT ME, WAITING FOR AN ANSWER.

  “It’s a nickname,” I say. “I made it up, I guess. I’m the only one who ever called her that.”

  She sighs, and I pull the comforter up around me. I don’t have a blanket on this bed. Mine, ours, is on hers. I stare at it for a second, wishing we could go back to before.

  “You have to believe me,” I say. “I didn’t know. Not really.”

  “But you thought, maybe,” she says. “I saw it in your eyes. And you kissed me anyway.”

  The space between the beds is like a strange wall between us now. “Because I wanted to. Didn’t you?”

  She ignores the question. “Just like you wanted to break up with Kat for barely any reason,” she snaps. “Just like you wanted to hook up with some girl and make it impossible to fix things?”

  My chest aches. She’s right. Goddamn it, she’s right.

  There’s something else, too. Something she’s forgetting.

  “You said you didn’t even know why I wanted to get back with her.”

  She crosses her arms. “Well, that was when I didn’t know it was Kat.”

  I catch her eye. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing.” She lies on the bed, like she’s all of a sudden run out of energy. She stares at the ceiling, like there are some kind of answers up there. She looks exhausted.r />
  “Maybe you should try and go back to sleep,” I say. “It’s too early to drive back. It’s not even light out.”

  She doesn’t say anything. She just flips off the light that we left on last night, grabs the blanket, pulls it tight over her, and turns, her back to me.

  I stare at the ceiling, too, but after however many minutes of debating, I decide I can’t sleep in my jeans, so I get up to head to the bathroom. As I do, I step on a bag of half-eaten Cheetos. It crumples loudly beneath my weight. “Sorry,” I say.

  She doesn’t say anything back. I curse myself for telling her that stupid Cheetos story. And for somehow falling for the one girl in the world I really shouldn’t be with.

  I grab my backpack and take it into the bathroom, retrieve a pair of basketball shorts and a plain white tee. Change my clothes and splash water on my face.

  Then I walk back to the bed and slip under the covers.

  What would have happened if I hadn’t offered her those Altoids? How much longer would it have gone on? I would have continued to think it was all just a coincidence. I didn’t want to see it any other way. I didn’t want to say, “Your stepsister is named Kat? Really? What’s her last name?”

  I didn’t want to open Pandora’s box.

  Would we have gotten all the way to Rina’s house? Maybe.

  Would we have made out all morning? Probably.

  Would I have begged her to give me her phone number and hang out with me the rest of the week? Definitely.

  Would my heart have begun to race as I pulled the red Mustang up to Cortland Road?

  Would I have told myself, even then, that it was all just a big coincidence?

  Until I literally watched my ex walk out the front door and hug the girl I had, in one day, completely fallen for?

  Yes, yes, and yes.

  Would I have hurt Rina even more than I did before?

  Have I already?

  I wish we could pause and rewind. Go back to minutes ago, before she saw the photo, before my look gave me away. I wish we could have just been us. I wish we could have figured out what “us” meant without having to deal with all of this.

  It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair.

  I know what I should do. What I’m supposed to do. I should drop Ammy off tomorrow, a couple blocks away, so Rina and Bea and everyone else never see me.