“Isla,” he says slowly, his lips pressing into a flat line. “Please forgive me. I hate this.”
“Hate what?” I ask, shifting on my feet.
He rubs his eyebrow. “You’ve given me the silent treatment for a week now. I hate it.”
I roll my eyes and turn back to the trail. Doesn’t he realize that ignoring him is the only way I can survive having to see him every day?
His footsteps are heavy behind mine, and he joins me, still holding the paper and pencil. I realize I’m still holding the cache, gripping it in my fist until my knuckles are white. I grab the paper from him and scribble his name quickly, then shove the paper back into the bottle and toss it toward the pile of pine needles.
“Why do you even care?” I snap, throwing my arms in the air.
For a fraction of a second, he almost looks hurt. “Why wouldn’t I care?”
I start walking again, busying myself by looking up the coordinates for the next item on the list.
“You don’t have to forgive me, but I wish you would. I like being your friend.”
I stop, his words a roadblock. “You want to be my friend?” I say, trying out the words on my tongue. Friends. The flutter in my stomach is now something new and inspiring. Maybe I don’t have to ignore Emory forever. Maybe we can just be friends. Like Bastian and Xavier—just another one of the guys in my life.
Emory kicks an acorn across the path, his hands balling into fists inside the pockets of his thin basketball shorts. “Yeah. You’re not like every other moron in this school.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say quickly before I change my mind. This might be exactly what I need. “We can be friends.”
Chapter Nineteen
Being friends with Emory comes easily if you don’t mind standing awkwardly next to said friend while they say hello to every person in the universe. It’s been nearly a week since we made the deal to become friends and every day since then, Emory brings me a coffee and spends first period making stupid jokes while we take notes on Mr. Wong’s lecture. During lunch, we sit together in the support group and in gym, he follows me out to the track to run laps together.
I hadn’t realized there would be benefits to being friends with a guy that can’t compare to dating one. It’s not that I like being single exactly, but friend status doesn’t require the upkeep of girlfriend status. I never have to worry about my makeup being perfect or my hair looking sleek and pretty around Emory. I can make stupid jokes without worrying about him thinking I’m lame, and I never get that cold stab of fear in my chest when other girls talk to him. Because unlike with a boyfriend, Emory is just my friend, and I don’t have a claim to be jealous.
Two guys I don’t recognize jog onto the track and for a second, I think they’re looking at me. But then they say hi to Emory, and he gives them a guy-ish head nod before they take off running ahead of us.
“How do you know everyone?” I ask, incredulously shaking my head as we jog.
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” he says, glancing at me for a moment before focusing back on the rubbery orange surface of the track. “The guy on the left, Josh, used to play little league with me. And DeBraun, on the right, lives down the street. His mom and my mom run some Facebook recipe group. They’re always cooking up stuff in the kitchen.”
“I’ve lived in Deer Valley my entire life,” I say, brushing stray hair behind my ears. “I didn’t know everyone at my old school. It’s funny how we’re just a few miles away but would have never met each other if the town didn’t rezone the school districts.”
Emory shakes his head. “You never know. We could have met at some other point in life.”
We jog in silence for a few seconds and then he slows down. “You know, you’re my first girl friend,” he says, emphasizing the hell out of the word girl. “All my best friends have been guys, and we haven’t really hung out much in the last year.”
“Why is that?” I ask, slightly out of breath from our run.
He shrugs, his eyes looking off into the distance. “They all got girlfriends. Some of them have two or three girlfriends. I guess there’s just no time for the guys anymore.”
“Well, you’ve got me,” I say, thinking back to how little time I spent with my own friends when I was dating Nate. “I promise not to leave you for some girl.”
He looks over and grins. “You’ll find someone soon, snowflake.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think I want to date for a while. It’s too hard.”
“I tried dating too, after my friends ditched me for their girls, but you know where that landed me.” He gives me a sideways smile, nodding when another group of seniors jog past us and wave at him. “What I’m saying is, I really like this thing we have. You’re cool to hang out with. You know,” he says, reaching out and pulling my ponytail. “At least until you ditch me.”
The next day during lunch, I can tell Bastian has something sinister planned the moment I walk into the art room. I barely see the top of his head sticking out over the top of a poster board on his desk. It’s one of those tri-fold boards we use to display presentations, only knowing Bastian, this is not his science homework.
“What’s up, Bast?” I ask, slinging my backpack to the floor next to my usual desk in the center of the room. “Do you have a presentation for us?” I walk back to the pizza table where Ms. Meadows is setting out paper plates and napkins.
“Something like that,” he replies, his words distorted from the marker cap between his teeth. He finishes writing and pops the cap back on the marker, standing to admire his work. “This is more of a project for the support group.”
“He won’t even tell me what it is,” Ms. Meadows says as she takes a slice of pizza. “I’m guessing you kids will either love it or hate it.”
“Probably the latter,” I say with a laugh.
Emory and Sequoia walk into the classroom, and I hand both of them a paper plate from the stack in front of me. “Thanks,” Emory says with that smile of his. I roll my eyes.
“Do you ever get tired of pizza every day?” Sequoia asks, reaching for a slice of cheese.
“Not yet,” I say, just as Trish knocks into me with her shoulder.
“Hell no,” Trish says, tossing me a wink over her shoulder. “Getting tired of pizza is un-American.”
Her hair is freshly dyed blond again, and she wears black workout pants with a neon green shirt that has the sleeves cut off in a wide circle that shows her sports bra and the cross tattoo on her ribcage.
I lift an eyebrow. “How have you not been pulled for dress code with that shirt?”
“Because the teachers love me,” she says, flashing me a smile.
“Ah, crap,” Xavier says, suddenly appearing next to me at the pizza table. His red backpack is stuffed so full it looks like he’s wearing a turtle shell on his back. I want to lift him over my head and throw him like in Super Mario Brothers.
“What is it?” Sequoia asks, her brows drawing together as we both follow Xavier’s gaze across the room. He looks at Bastian—or the top of his head, rather—and throws up his arms.
“What kind of fresh hell do you have for us this time?”
Bastian rises from his chair, a coy smile plastered to his face. “It’s a growth and development tool, Xavi. Not hell.”
“That means it’s hell,” Emory says. “Remind me why I keep coming to these things?”
“Oh I think we all know why you come here.” That came from Ciara, who stands in the doorway, watching me with a look like we’re a part of the same inside joke. I lift an eyebrow, and she rolls her eyes, then grabs some pizza. Bastian calls his flock to the circle of desks, and we all settle in around him, ready for our lunchtime routine.
Something about the way he brandishes the cardboard stand tells me we won’t have to go around the circle sharing stories today. The side panels are folded inward, so the contents of the display board are a mystery until he chooses to reveal them. Today he means business.
“Good afternoon,” he says, sliding his hands down the folded display board. “Today begins a new chapter in our healing.”
“I know what this shit is about,” Ciara says. I glance over at her, and she stares at the two bottles of nail polish she’s set on her desk. “Homecoming.”
Trish makes a gagging sound and Xavier frowns, resting his chin in one hand, pizza in the other.
“Nope, not that,” Bastian says, puffing his chest out. “Definitely not that. In fact, that’s why we have this new exercise today—to help us put things like homecoming out of our minds.”
“Um, what’s so bad about that?” I ask, raising my hand in the air. “I’ve always loved homecoming,” I say, thinking back to the last few years. From hand-making mums with my mom to spending hours picking out a dress and doing my hair and makeup for the dance. Homecoming is the ultimate show of school spirit. All eyes turn toward me, and it dawns on me a moment too late as a sinking feeling of sadness consumes my memories. “Ah, yeah. I get it now.”
“So what’s the deal?” Ciara asks Bastian. “I’m actually 99 percent sure I have a date to the dance, so I’m pretty psyched about it.”
“I’ll be sitting at home getting wasted on my parent’s liquor,” Trish mutters. “The homecoming dance was my first date with Tamara.”
Bastian clears his throat and pushes his glasses back up his nose. “Cheer up, guys. Allow me to present to you the …” He brandishes his hand across the flaps as he opens them as if he’s presenting an award to all of us. “Habit Breaker!”
Emory snorts in the desk across from me. “I love it,” he says as we gaze at the decorated display board that has all of our names written on it. I don’t need to look at him to know that he’s being sarcastic.
“I’m glad you think so,” Bastian says. “Because you’re the first habit we’re going to break.”
“Damn, harsh,” Trish says between a mouthful of pizza.
Emory folds a slice of pepperoni in half and takes a bite, seemingly unaffected by this news. “Lay it on me,” he says a moment later.
Bastian uncaps a permanent marker and draws a circle around the words he’d written below Emory’s name: serial dater.
“Our notorious serial dater, Mr. Emory Underwood, has struck again, I’m afraid.” Bastian turns to face us as he paces the small area between the circle of desks. I’m reminded of an over-zealous prosecutor in a prime time cop drama.
“Like hell I have,” Emory says, slinking down in his desk as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. “I haven’t dated anyone in a while. I’ve been an upstanding member of this group lately.”
Bastian’s lips press together, and he shakes his head. A flicker of apprehension crawls up my skin, but I shake it away. Emory’s business shouldn’t matter to me. Still, when Bastian taps a finger to his lips, I can’t help but cling to every word he says.
“Apparently, Emory promised to take a girl to dinner for her birthday,” he tells us as a group before narrowing his eyes on the perpetrator. “And when she called you two days ago to confirm, you bailed on her.”
Emory doesn’t even flinch. “That doesn’t count.”
“I’d argue that it does count,” Bastian says. “It absolutely counts. You made a promise for a date and then you bailed, knowing full well that it would hurt her. She told me all about it in biology.”
“And what she didn’t tell you,” Emory says, with practiced slowness in his voice, “Was that she sat next to me in AP anatomy for a good two weeks, complaining over and over and over again about how she had no plans for her birthday and how I should take her out just as friends.” He takes another bite of pizza. “This pity party went on for weeks, Bast. Even during our dissection class, I couldn’t cut open the shark’s brain without her bitching about how boring it would be if she stayed home for her birthday. I had to agree to have dinner with her just so she’d let us finish the group project.”
A little of the seriousness fades from Bastian’s rigid psychologist expression. “Regardless, you made a promise, and you should try to keep it. The least you could have done was offer her an apology and try to make things better.”
Emory shakes his head. “That wasn’t a promise, that was coercion.”
“Still, regardless of this current incident, you still have a habit that we need to break.” Bastian turns toward the board and uncaps his marker. “Therefore, I am sentencing you to one week of wearing that same outfit every single day.”
I lift an eyebrow, wondering if he’s joking. His expression remains serious as he leans forward, writing the words on the board below Emory’s name. “You have a problem with dating one girl for longer than a day, so we’re going to break the habit of needing to change things.”
“Fair enough,” Emory says with a smile. “I’ll go along with this plan, but just because I can tell it makes you really happy.”
Bastian ignores Emory’s comments and turns back to the group. “Isla, you’re next.”
My blood runs cold. What could he possibly sentence me to do for a week? “Go easy on me please,” I say.
Bastian’s head tilts to the side. “No worries, Isla. You’ve made such a great improvement lately, so there’s no need to punish you. However … word has it that you’re scared to start dating again, and we all know that dating after heartbreak is the only way to fully heal.”
“Are you making me get a boyfriend?” I say it like I’m joking, but I’m actually a little scared.
“The opposite, actually. Your assignment is to go on a meaningless date. I think a date to the homecoming dance would be the perfect scenario.”
“Nice,” Trish says, nodding. “Can I come too, just to see how terribly that works out?” I glare at her, and she smiles, waving a hand at me. “I’m just playing. You’ll do fine.”
“What exactly does meaningless mean to you?” I ask Bastian, who has his back toward me while he writes my assignment on the board.
“It’s very simple, Isla. You just go to the dance with a date who you don’t have a crush on. That way you can learn to spend quality time with a guy and not make it mean anything. And if he doesn’t call you back the next day, you won’t be hurt. This is all about breaking habits.”
“You’re missing a huge thing,” I say, holding up a finger. “It’s not like I can just snap my fingers and have a date. I kind of need to be asked out first.”
Ciara whirls on me from the next desk over. “Girl, you can ask a guy out. This isn’t the twenties.”
My eyes go wide, and I shake my head. “That is so not happening. I spend the majority of my day making sure I don’t embarrass myself and asking a random stranger on a date would be torture.” I draw in a deep breath and let it out in a huff. “It’s cruel and unusual, Bastian. You can’t make me do it.”
“I’ll take her.”
Emory’s words make everyone else go completely silent. My cheeks flame as I drag my eyes toward him, still questioning if I heard what I think I heard.
“Uh, what?” I manage to say.
Emory shrugs. “I’ll take you to the dance. I’ll pretend to be some guy who doesn’t plan on calling you back the next day. I’m pretty good at it.”
“That’s a really good idea,” Bastian says, pressing the marker to his lips while he thinks. “I think it’s very important that Isla goes on a date for fun, knowing that in the long run, she’s not with her potential soul mate. Isla spent too long thinking that each date with her ex meant forever, and in reality, dating doesn’t always mean forever.”
“So, you’ve got two choices,” Emory says, leveling a coy gaze at me. “You go with me, and we’ll pretend we don’t know each other, or you can find some courage and ask out a total stranger.”
“Or I could just quit this stupid support group,” I mutter.
“I strongly advise against that,” Bastian says.
“Fine.” I sit back in my chair and fold my arms across my chest. Emory plays with the compass bracelet on his wrist, his eyes
never leaving mine. I sigh. “I guess I’ll go on a date with you.”
Chapter Twenty
Mom won’t stop staring at me during Friday’s football game. I’d agreed to come with her to watch the game because it’s an away game that’s a two-hour drive and I didn’t want her driving alone. Her eyesight sucks, and she refuses to admit it and wear her glasses, and I didn’t want her driving at night. At least that’s the excuse I say in my head every few minutes when I find myself asking why the hell I came to a stupid Warriors football game.
They’re playing a small country town with a football team of losers. The score is twenty-one to zero, and I know the win will be a nice recovery after last game’s epic loss to the Wildcats. I’m watching the football field with feigned interest by the time the cheerleaders sprint out onto the field during halftime. Mom is staring at me once again, and I just can’t keep ignoring it.
“What?” I say, giving her the widest eyes I can. “Why are you staring at me?”
“I’m not staring,” she says, squishing up her face in denial.
“You are. I thought you wanted to watch some football, not watch your daughter.”
She sighs and folds the napkin in her lap back into a square. Only my mom is ladylike enough to cover her lap while eating concession stand food. “Honey, I’m just very proud of you for how well you’ve handled things lately.”
“Handled things? Mom, it was a breakup, not a divorce.”
“I know, but it’s still hard. When I asked you to come with me tonight, I wasn’t expecting you to agree.” She puts a hand on my arm and my heartbeat quickens. I really hope none of the people surrounding us on the bleachers are eavesdropping on this conversation. “Life does go on after a heartbreak, and I’m glad you’re seeing that now.”
“Yep,” I say, giving her a smile. “I’m fine, really.”
The Breakup Support Group Page 14