“It’s your fault because you know you’re hurting people and you just keep doing it.”
His tongue slides across his bottom lip. “Is that so?”
I look away, and he steps closer, leaving just a few inches between us. His hair falls into his eyes, and I have to stop myself from brushing it to the side. I am keenly aware that I am now the girl in the stairwell with Emory Underwood.
He is the worst sort of guy to have a crush on. And yet I revel in every second I’m here with him.
“Seems like you enjoy hurting girls,” I say. He lifts a lazy eyebrow, and I continue, “I feel sorry for any girl who gets close to you.”
“And I feel sorry for a girl who wastes four years of her life on a guy who will only break her heart anyway.”
I swallow and stare at the black Chuck Taylors on his feet. “That was low, asshole.” The lump in my throat swells to a familiar size and every bad, dark thought about Nate comes back into my heart, tearing me open again. And again and again. A tear rolls down my cheek, and the two-minute warning bell rings, and I desperately want to walk away from Emory, but my feet are stuck on this narrow stair ledge.
“Hey,” he says softly, his head bending to meet my gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—” His thumb is on my cheek, and he wipes away the tear, replacing it with the tingle of his skin on mine. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
I shake my head, finding the courage to look up. “You’re not sorry,” I say, grabbing his arm and pushing him away. I turn back to the stairs and take them two at a time. “You don’t know me, and you don’t know Nate. We had something special, and you’ll just never understand it.”
“I do know you, Isla.” He meets me at the next level, stepping in front of me so I can’t go anywhere. There are a few students near the fourth-floor landing, rushing to their next class. We’ll both be late if we don’t leave now.
“You don’t know me at all,” I say with a shaky sigh.
He shakes his head. “You think you’re not like the girls you see me with.”
I nod sarcastically. “Well, that part is right.”
I move to the left, and he moves too, blocking me. “You’re one of those girls who thinks she’s a special snowflake. You think the rules of casual dating don’t apply to you because you’re worth it—you’re the kind of girl a guy can settle down with, or at least that what you’ve told yourself. But you’re not special, Isla.” He shrugs apathetically and gives me a somber look. I should punch him in the stomach, but I’m frozen in place by his words. “I mean, sure, you’re beautiful, and that gives you an advantage, but you’re still just another girl. Guys don’t care about snowflakes because they aren’t looking for one. They’re just looking for someone to keep them happy until a shiny new replacement comes along.”
“You’re such an asshole,” I mutter.
He nods, pressing his lips together. “Probably. But at least I’m not trying to be a special snowflake.”
My legs find the strength to move, and I shove past him and into the hallway. “That’s a stupid analogy. I’ve never even seen snow, much less a snowflake.”
“Really?” he asks, sounding genuinely interested in my lack of weather experiences. “That’s a shame. Snow is beautiful, just like you.”
“Stop talking to me. We are not friends.”
He sighs and jogs to catch up with me. “Asshole or not, I’m actually trying to help you. Once you stop thinking you’re the snowflake in a blizzard of other girls, you’ll be able to heal and move on with your life.”
I reach the door to my physics class and feel a sweeping relief as I step across the threshold. Emory’s hand grabs mine and pulls me back into the hallway. We are nearly eye to eye now, standing just outside of Mr. Brown’s physics class. Students sweep by, knocking into my backpack as they slip into class, but Emory doesn’t take his eyes off mine. His hand only squeezes mine tighter as the seconds go by. His clean scent is overwhelming.
“Isla,” he says, taking a breath. “Hate me all you want, but I’m not the guy who broke your heart. I’m the guy trying to help you fix it.”
Chapter Fourteen
After school, I lie back on my bed and take inventory of my life now. If Nate is already moving on, then I’ll be damned if I sit here and let him move on without me. It’s time to officially pack up my old life, toss it in a furnace and start over again, no matter how much the idea hurts me.
I’ll start with my bedroom. There isn’t a single piece of furniture that doesn’t remind me of Nate. From my espresso-stained wooden headboard that used to be white until Nate helped me stain it one weekend, to the dark purple rug on the floor by my dresser—it all reminds me of him. Photos of us line the mirror on my vanity and fill the bulletin board on the back side of my closet door. The canvas image of Audrey Hepburn was a Christmas gift from him two years ago.
The bright red nail polish stain near the windowsill was from the night I was painting my toes, and he barged in my room to surprise me. I’d knocked over the bottle and complained so much that he’d taken me to Sephora the next day to replace the nail polish. My head rolls to the right. The new bottle sits on my nightstand. Everything reminds me of him.
I throw my arm across my eyes and let out a breath. How am I supposed to move on from Nate when nearly everything I own holds some memory of him?
I can feel the tears pooling in my eyes again, and I clench my teeth and sit up in bed, refusing to cry. I am so sick of crying. I’m sick of being hurt. This has gone on long enough. I didn’t ask for any of this to happen, and now I am stuck in my room with no one to talk to, no one who knows what I’m going through.
An idea comes to me, and it’s kind of weird that I didn’t think of it earlier. After school today, Ciara had found me in the parking lot and gave me her phone number, saying to text her at any time. She didn’t even ask about the text we’d all seen in the support group, didn’t waste both of our times with stupid questions like asking how I was doing. She knows exactly how I’m doing.
Taking great pains not to look at anything Nate-related in my room, I find my purse on the floor and take out my phone, where I’d saved her number.
Isla: Do you have a minute to talk? :)
A few seconds later, she replies.
Ciara: Always.
My sad reflection stares up at me in the phone screen, and I try to type out a reply. I start with: Everything in my room reminds me of him. What the hell am I supposed to do? But then I delete that and start over with: I can’t stand thinking about him. Before I can send the text, my phone rings. Startled, I answer her call.
“Hey, um, you didn’t have to call me. I was just going to vent through text.”
“Are you kidding? Texting is for ex-boyfriends and family members. I’m here for you, girl. What’s up?”
I know she’s just being a good support group member, but my two best friends from Deer Valley only called instead of texting if someone was dying or on fire. Which is to say, never. I slouch forward as I sit on the edge of my bed. “Well … I just got home, and I’m in my room trying not to freak out because every damn thing in here reminds me of Nate. Either he gave it to me, or he was with me when I got it, or he used to play with it in my room.” I glance over at the sand sculpture picture frame on my desk. All of the sand had fallen in its current position on the last time he flipped the frame over. I haven’t touched it since. I don’t think I can touch it again.
“I can imagine,” Ciara says. “You were together a long time. That’s … I can’t even fathom four years. My longest relationship was eleven months and five days, and it turns out Angelo had been cheating on me for the last month before that so …”
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
She snorts into the phone. “No girl, don’t be sorry. This call is about you. My experience in long-term breakups is like, zero, but I’d say it’ll probably be harder on you than anyone else in the group. You’ve been in the longest relationship, but that doesn’t mean you�
��ll never heal. It just means it’ll take longer.”
That’s not nearly as comforting as I think she hopes it will be. “How long? I’m ready to be done with all of this heartache.”
There’s the sound of a door closing on her end of the phone and then she says, “Sounds like you’ve made the official decision to get over him?”
Now I’m the one who snorts. “Seems like he made that decision for me.”
“Yeah,” she says, her voice sad. “So listen … don’t lie to me. Did you reply to him?”
“Hell no.”
My quick reply must please her because she chuckles into the phone. “Good. That’s my girl. Okay, so what’s our plan to get over this?”
“You mean you don’t already have a plan?” I ask, mostly joking, but a little bit disappointed. “I called you to get the plan, not to have to think one up.”
She laughs. “First thing—get rid of all of his reminders. Anything he gave you, toss it out.”
I bite my lip, and when I don’t say anything, she continues, “Or throw it in the back of your closet for now.”
I sigh and stand up, looking around my room. “I guess I could do that.” I take the Audrey Hepburn canvas off the wall and toss it to the back of my closet, right next to where Nate’s old letterman hangs. Then I hide the nail polish bottle in a drawer and roll up the rug, shoving it under my bed. There’s still about a thousand more items to pack up and hide, but already I’m feeling a little better.
“Don’t forget Facebook,” she says, and as if on cue, I hear her typing on a keyboard in the background. “Oh damn, Isla,” she says, tsking.
I stop throwing stuff into the back of my closet. “What?”
“You have like, infinity billion photos of this boy on here.”
My heartstrings twist in on themselves. “There’s no way I can delete them right now.”
“You’re going to have to. How will you date other guys if your social media pages are plastered with this boy’s face … damn. Holy shit.”
My heart speeds up. “What?”
“Nothing. Just … the bastard is sexy as hell. I can see why you’re hurt over him.”
I haven’t been on Facebook in a few weeks, but I know the last thing I uploaded was photos from our trip to the beach at the end of summer. I’d taken a lot of shirtless Nate photos that day. I roll my eyes. “Are you looking at the beach photos?”
Her reply is just a carnal sound. “Mmmhmm.”
“Ugh.”
“I’m sorry. Delete them.”
I shake my head, knowing she can’t see through the phone call. “If I have to see those photos right now, I’ll lose it.”
“Fine, I’ll do it,” she says with a resigned sigh. “What’s your password?”
I bite my lip. “Nate824. Capital N.”
“Yeah, I’m going to be changing that, too,” she says. “How about BadBitch01?”
“What’s the zero one for?” I ask.
“It’s symbolizing your new life. Number one, starting over.”
I smile. “Okay. Change it. And Ciara?”
There’s more keyboard tapping on her end. “Yes ma’am, Miss Bad Bitch?”
I draw in a deep breath. “Erase every inch of him from my page.”
“I’m on it. Now clean out your room and call me in the morning.”
When I end the phone call, I can’t help but smile. There’s no way Nate won’t notice my Facebook transformation. He’ll probably be upset that the photos of him will be removed, and the girls he’s dating now won’t get to see him in his muscled glory. Nate never posted many photos of his own; he’d always relied on me to post things and tag him in it. Now his page will be barren, and he’ll be smacked with a reminder that he threw me away. This shitty day just keeps getting better.
I put on some music as I tear through my room, packing up things of importance to my old relationship and moving old items to new places to give the room a new feel. My bed is too heavy to move, but I switch my nightstand to the other side and move my desk to another wall. And as much as it hurts, I take down the Warriors football memorabilia. I might have been a proud Warrior for eleven years of my life, but I wouldn’t have cared about our school’s team sports if my boyfriend wasn’t a football star.
As I move throughout my room, I can’t help but think of Emory’s words in the hallway earlier today. As much as I’ve repeatedly told myself that he’s just a player who wouldn’t know good advice if it kicked him in the balls, I can’t shove his stupid terminology out of my mind.
Special snowflake.
He doesn’t even know me and yet he has the audacity to accuse me of thinking I’m special. I mean isn’t that the exact thing that we’re told from children’s TV shows and from teachers and adults for our entire lives? That we’re special, and we deserve love? So who the hell is he to act like that’s a bad thing?
My chest tightens as I recall that moment with Emory in the stairwell. I think of a million witty comebacks that I should have said, but it’s all too late now. Screw him for thinking I am not important. Screw him for being an asshole in the name of trying to make me feel better. If he thinks he can tear me down, turn me into one of those pathetic girls he dates only to discard later, he’s wrong. He is so fucking wrong. I don’t need Nate and I sure as hell don’t need to crush on a guy who gets his kicks from telling girls they aren’t special.
Starting today, I am a new person, and I don’t need anyone who doesn’t need me.
Hours later, when my room is a completely redesigned Nate-free territory, I head to the kitchen and take some leftover dinner out of the refrigerator. Mom sits at the kitchen table, hot gluing green ribbons onto hair ties.
“You feeling okay, honey?” she asks, not looking up at me while she glues.
“I’m great, why?”
She lifts an eyebrow and squeezes more glue onto the ribbon. “You missed dinner earlier. That’s not like you.”
I smile so it shows in my voice. “I was just busy with homework. Don’t worry, I’m eating twice as much now.”
Mom looks up, holding the glue gun over a paper plate. Her brows knit together as she watches me scoop a huge helping of mac and cheese onto my plate. “You seem a lot better today.”
I nod. “I am a lot better.”
“You’re not going to ask me about Nate? If I’ve seen him around school lately?”
I shrug. “Why would I?”
Her lips press together as she watches me with narrowed eyes. She probably expects me to burst into tears again, but I pop my plate into the microwave with a smile on my face. The days and nights of weeping Isla are now gone forever. “Well,” she says with an impressed nod. “Looks like that counselor is helping out a lot.”
More like the support group helped me out. And Emory, in a weird way.
Not that I’ll ever tell him that.
Chapter Fifteen
Trish reclines into her desk chair on Friday at lunch, tapping her hot pink running shoe on the floor as she speaks. Her lips always get pouty when she talks about losing Tamara and today is no different. “She was so gorgeous and had the greatest spirit,” Trish says, her eyes far away. “I already had our entire lives planned out in my head. How could she not see that we’re perfect for each other?”
Bastian clears his throat, donning his professional therapist tight-lipped smile. “Trish, we need to come to a place of understanding that Tamara, though you loved her dearly, has moved on with what appears to be 100 percent certainty. You know that until you get to that place of acceptance, you’ll never be able to move on.”
Trish shakes her head. “I don’t want to get to that place. I want to keep up hope that she’ll come back. And I guess that’s why I’m stuck in this group, huh?”
Bastian looks around the room, at the six of us sitting in a circle of desks. “Can we offer some advice on how we finally learned that someone was over us, and it was time to move on?”
“Ooh, I’ll do it,” I say, sh
ooting my hand up in the air as if we were in a real class.
“Yes, Isla,” Bastian says, lifting an eyebrow. Trish is the third person in the group to share her progress, and I haven’t gone yet so no one but Ciara knows about last night’s breakthrough.
I sit straighter in my desk, and I do not acknowledge Emory watching me from the next desk over. I also tell myself for the thousandth time since lunch started not to put any thought at all into the fact that he chose to sit at the desk next to me. It was a random chance, that’s all.
“So yeah,” I say, casting a sweeping gaze over the group, minus Emory. “I knew Nate was over me when he said he was dating other girls.”
There it is. The first mention of the Text Message of Embarrassment from forty-eight hours ago. Trish watches me with sad eyes and Xavier nods empathetically. Bastian scribbles in his notebook and Ciara shoots a finger gun at me, winking.
“She’s made a ton of progress, guys,” Ciara says, throwing her braids over her shoulder. “I’m happy to report that Isla has wiped her ex from social media.”
“Really?” Bastian says, and the extreme surprise in his voice is a little condescending.
“Yes, really,” I say, rolling my eyes. I leave off the part about how Ciara did all the work for me because I was too weak to do it myself. “All the photos of him and comments and every time we checked in somewhere on date night …” I shrug and mock slicing my throat with my thumb. “It’s all gone.”
“You mean you didn’t leave up the pictures so his next girlfriend can see how much hotter you are than her?” Xavier asks. We all look at him, and he shrugs. “It happened to me. Except … well, it was the other way around.”
The Breakup Support Group Page 10