Summer Apart

by Amy Sparling

  I remember this last year while I was in college. Park’s visits—Park’s lips on mine—Park being my favorite part of every day.

  And then I remember the photo of him and that other girl. His cruel words when he said that he’s the kind of person who dates around.

  Why should I trust a person like that?

  Anger fills me from my toes to my head. My car keys wait in my pocket, ready to take me away from what will only be heartbreak if I stay any longer.

  “I’m leaving,” I say, before I can talk myself out of it.

  “What? You can’t go.” Park steps toward me but I back away and grab my keys. “Becca, please don’t go. Let’s talk.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” I say, clenching my jaw to avoid crying. “You can’t tell me that you date around back at home and then, in the same day, say you’re in love with me. You just can’t do it, Park.”

  “Becca, it’s not like that.” He reaches for me but I jerk away and walk toward the stairs.

  “Oh it is like that,” I snap. “It became like that the moment you dated another girl. You wouldn’t date other people if you truly felt that way about me.”

  He draws in a deep breath and his eyes go wide and I can tell he’s trying not to yell or freak out or something. “It’s not like that, Becca. Please let me explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain. Look, I liked you a lot. You liked me. But this thing we have now,” I say, gesturing to the air between us, “This is toxic. I can’t let you hurt me anymore. Tell Bayleigh I’m sorry but I have to leave.”

  “Becca, please.” His words are a pleading and I have to look down at the stairs to avoid meeting his gaze. I know if I look up at him, see his gorgeous eyes and the way he stares at me as if I’m the only important thing in the world—I’ll crack. I’ll come running back up the stairs and collapse into his arms.

  And that would be great for just tonight. But then he would go back home and it would all end in heartbreak.

  I stop four steps down and turn back, but I don’t look at him, not as his face. I stare at the motocross logo printed on his jacket and say, “I should have listened to Jace a year ago when he told me to stay away from you.”

  And then I fly down the remaining stairs as fast as I can, walk across the scary parking lot to my car and never once look back.

  Chapter 10

  An entire week passes and I don’t drop dead from a broken heart. It’s kind of crazy because I spend most of my nights lying in bed with my chest hurting so badly I fear that I’ll never fall asleep and even if I do, I worry that I won’t wake up the next morning.

  But then somehow I do fall asleep and I do wake up and start my day all over again. I’m starting to wonder if people even need a heart to survive.

  When the second, and then third week since that night with Park passes by and I’m still not fully recovered from the constant pain in my chest, I start to wonder if should write into a medical journal and tell them of my findings.

  Woman with severe case of heart break has somehow survived three weeks without talking to the man who broke her heart.

  Doctors have better things to worry about than my pathetic love life, but still. Why hasn’t the pain gone away yet?

  I keep telling myself that I’m over it. That I’ll find a new guy and he will actually live here in Lawson and we’ll be able to hang out all the time and he won’t be famous and he won’t be a player. That could totally happen, you know. It happens to girls all the time.

  When it’s been four weeks since that night with Park, I’m starting to believe some of the things I tell myself. I start thinking that yeah…maybe I could be happy one day. Maybe I could meet someone new and have a fun life with him. I think I’ve finally spent enough time away from him, that I might actually be in the healing process now.

  Of course it helps that Park hasn’t sent me a single text since that very night, nearly an entire month ago.

  But I won’t dwell on that.

  Who am I kidding? Of course I’m dwelling on that.

  I walk into work for the third day in a row without my cell phone. Yep. I left it at home, on purpose, so that I would be able to live my life with a clear head and so I wouldn’t be stuck constantly looking over at it, wondering if I’ll get a text from him. My obsessive phone checking has become embarrassingly pathetic, so to remedy the situation, I’ve just completely cut myself off of it.

  “You’re being an exceptionally great employee,” Ollie says this morning after delivering my donut holes and coffee. He had walked in to me not only sweeping the floor of the lobby, but mopping it as well. “Are you working hard to avoid some kind of life problem?” he asks.

  I roll my eyes. “Stop being so intuitive, boss.”

  He nods as if I’ve just told him everything he needs to know. “Well I’m here if you need to talk, but if not, I’m totally on board with your newfound love for your job.” He snorts to himself, probably thinking it’s hilarious that I’ve finally started working hard instead of hardly working these last few weeks.

  I’m grateful for the work though. It’s the only thing that keeps my mind even remotely off of Park. In fact, I wore my shortest jean shorts today and my cutest purple C&C T-shirt, topped off with hair that I actually took effort to wash and flat iron and a face full of makeup.

  Yep. I’m trying. Trying. Just like in the good old days when I decided to reinvent myself as a new Becca who was outgoing and flirty and fun. It had worked back then, and it’ll work now. I just need to put a little more effort into my looks, smile more so I don’t come off as some kind of antisocial troll, and get my flirt on with every hot guy that walks through the doors.

  I will be over Park in no time.

  Chapter 11

  It’s not my fault that no hot guys came into the BMX park today…

  And the next day.

  And the day after that.

  Chapter 12

  Maybe it is my fault that there isn’t a single swoon-worthy guy in the entire town of Lawson, Texas. You’d think it’d be the guys’ fault, right? That they’re not tall enough, or their hair is stupid, or they smell like the B.O. of someone who hasn’t showered in months.

  And although those guys exist, there’s usually other guys to balance them out. Hot guys, cute guys, older hot guys that you know you’d never be able to date but oogling them from afar doesn’t hurt anything.

  But, as I said—those kinds of guys no longer exist and it’s all my fault. Because once you’ve fallen for Park, with his muscular chest and strong arms and his cute but sneaky smile and his hair that swoops over his eyes and makes you want to touch it…

  Once you’ve fallen for Park, every other guy in the world is ugly in comparison.

  I actually keep up the charade of trying to look cute for a good two weeks. I wake up early and fix my hair, paint my nails, actually shave my legs every single day, wear makeup—all of it. But all it ends up doing is leaving me exhausted before nine in the morning and making random guys hit on me throughout the day. And trust me, as much as I thought I wanted random guys to hit on me, once it actually happens, it’s just gross.

  They aren’t Park and they won’t ever be.

  On a Friday night that was particularly filled with terrible pickup lines from guys I wasn’t interested in, I tell all of this to Bayleigh. She listens patiently to my insane ramblings and then sighs into the phone. “Becca, maybe you should just try to settle. Stop trying to find someone better than Park, and allow a guy to get close to you. You never know, one of these new guys might be the one and you’ll miss it if you shut him out.”

  I sigh back to her, louder and longer. “Settle? I can’t believe you just told me to settle. You’re supposed to tell me to follow my dreams and shoot for the moon and crap like that.”

  “No, that’s what a fake best friend would do. A real one would tell you the truth. And the truth is that, well I’m sorry to say it Becca, but I think you’ve just romanticized Park so m
uch that you only think no other guy is as good as he is. And I think you’re wrong. I think you just need to give other guys a chance.”

  “Wow,” I mutter as my throat begins to feel dry. “That was harsh.”

  “It really isn’t,” Bayleigh says in a softer voice. “I love you and I just want the best for you. I liked Park, but if it wasn’t going to work out with him then you have to let him go and stop comparing other guys to him.”

  I roll my eyes even though I know she can’t see it. Of course, the fact that she can’t see it is the only reason why I did it. I’d never roll my eyes at her in person when we’re talking about such an important topic. It’s just…I know she’s right. But I don’t want to admit it.

  “I think I’m going to go to sleep now,” I say. I fake a yawn to help prove my point, but then it ends up turning into a real yawn. I glance at the clock on my nightstand—it’s already past midnight and I have to be at work in the morning.

  “Just think about it, okay? Don’t immediately shun every guy who talks to you. Sometimes you have to get to know someone to know if they’re dateable.”

  “Right, because it took you months to figure out if you liked Jace or not,” I say sarcastically.

  She laughs. “Jace was the exception to the rule. Besides, sometimes I act like he’s perfect, but his snoring right now is making me think otherwise.”

  My sarcastic voice gets even more severe. “Oh, well if he snores then you should probably divorce him. What a bastard.”

  She sighs into the phone in this love-struck way that makes me think she’s probably watching Jace sleep from wherever she is at her house. I would gag if it wasn’t actually the cutest thing ever that they’re so in love.

  “Just think about it,” she tells me before we hang up the phone.

  I lie in bed for another hour, my brain refusing to sleep despite my efforts of closing my eyes and trying to make up things to dream about once I finally do drift off. My imagination is always so much better than my dreams. It’s a shame it doesn’t carry over into dreamland. When I’m awake, I can imagine that I’m tanning on the shores of a Caribbean island with Park by my side, smiling at me. But once I fall asleep, my fantasies turn into nightmares.

  Park still smiles in my dreams, but his smile is always for another girl in the dream. Even in my wildest imagination where I am free to make up anything I want, his smile is never for me.

  Chapter 13

  “Oh my god, oh my God,” Ollie says with disgust as he bursts through the door of his office and storms into the lobby. I’d been playing a game of solitaire on the work computer, and his outburst almost made me knock my cell phone off the counter.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  He holds up two coffee boxes in his hands, making a show of dumping them upside down and grimacing when nothing falls out. “We’re all out of coffee!”

  “Ollie, it’s not that big of a—”

  “Yes, it is,” he cuts me off. “The city planner is on his way over so I don’t have any time to get more coffee and I haven’t had a single cup today. I could probably manage on just one cup, but I haven’t even had that.”

  I close the game of solitaire and turn to face my boss, giving him a look that bosses usually give to their employees. “Ollie, I’m happy to go get some coffee for you.”

  He stops right in the middle of whatever grumbling thing he was saying. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “It sounds like you didn’t think of anything besides ‘oh no, the coffee is out so I’m going to panic!’” I flail my arms around as I imitate his voice and he puts a hand on his hip and then playfully throws an empty coffee box at me. “Fine, Miss Smarty-pants. Maybe I did panic a little. Take some money out of the register and go get some coffee. I can hold down the front desk until you get back.”

  Duh, I think. Ollie is the one who taught me how to work the front desk so obviously he can take it over for a little while. There’s a grocery store within walking distance of the shopping center at work, and suddenly taking a break from staring at a computer card game, and getting some fresh air sounds like a great idea. I grab a twenty from the register and practically skip out of work.

  The good thing about all the time I’ve spent away from Park (if it can be called a good thing) is that I rarely check my phone now. Sometimes I’ll go an entire day at work and not even look at it until I’m getting in my car to home. Usually, I’ve only missed a text from Bayleigh or my mom and I can pretty much always count on some stupid Facebook notification. The disappointment in not hearing from Park has slowly gone away, though.

  In fact, I don’t even get that clenching pain in my chest when I look at my phone anymore. That’s how over Park I finally am. Once your heart stops hoping for a text from someone you know won’t text you, you can start calling yourself cured of heartbreak.

  It’s because of this reason that I don’t bother bringing my phone with me on my walk to the grocery store. It’s daylight, and there are people out shopping. So if some crazy emergency happens and someone needs to call 911 to save my life, I can be sure it’ll still happen without me having my phone.

  Something tells me life was easier back before everyone had phones with them all the time.

  Okay, so this is how good of an employee I am:

  When I arrive at the coffee aisle in the grocery store, I don’t even have to stop and ponder which type of coffee to buy. I just head straight to the Starbucks blonde roast and grab two boxes. Ollie is a specific type of coffee drinker and this is his favorite for the time-being. His tastes change, but I know him well. I should totally get a raise.

  I grab a pack of Twizzlers just because I know Ollie won’t mind, and then get into the ten items or less line behind a woman who is buying what looks like fifty cans of cat food. Seriously? Who does that?

  Someone steps in line behind me and makes a little hmph sound. “I’m going to go ahead and assume that all fifty of that woman’s cats are starving to death right now and they’re lives are literally on the line and that’s why she feels the need to hog the express lane.”

  I turn and find a guy smiling at me and I smile back at him. He’s a little older than I am, at about my height. But he has black hair that’s cut short and gelled so that it’s pointy on top. He’s wearing jeans that are all beat up and a dark green button up shirt with a landscaping company’s logo embroidered in the corner. “That’s one way of looking at it, I guess.”

  He nods. “Well the other reason is that she’s selfish and thinks the world revolves around her, and well that reason just pisses me off so I’ll pretend that’s not the case here.”

  “You’re a good person,” I say.

  He leans forward and replies in a whisper. “That’s because you don’t know me well.”

  I laugh and roll my eyes. “I’ve definitely heard that one before.”

  One of the cans of cat food doesn’t ring up properly, and the woman presents a shopping ad to the cashier, demanding that he lower the price. But apparently he doesn’t know how to do that, so he calls for a manager over the loudspeaker.

  The guy behind me sets the two items he’s purchasing—a case of soda and a bag of chips—on the floor with a sigh. “Looks like we’ll be here for a long time. Maybe even years,” he says, holding out a hand to me. “We should get to know each other. I’m Mark.”

  I shake his hand and glance nervously back at the cashier and his manager. I’m pretty sure they can hear us, but who cares. “I’m Becca.”

  “Is that short for Rebecca?”

  I nod.

  “How many people call you that?” he asks.

  “Just my mom when she’s mad at me,” I say. This makes him laugh.

  “Okay then, Becca it is. Well it’s good to meet you.” He gestures to the coffee in my hand. “Looks like we’re both here for some energy.”

  “This is actually for my boss,” I say. “But he’s got me hooked on it too, so I can’t complain.”

  “Where do
you work?”

  I turn around and point to my shirt, where it has the C&C BMX logo really big. “Ahh, you’re an extreme sports chick. Cool.”

  I start to disagree, to tell him I only took the job in order to break out of my shell. But then he wouldn’t think I’m as cool as he does now, so I keep my mouth shut. “I see you work in landscaping?”

  “Assistant manager,” he says. “Pretty good for someone who dropped out of college.”

  I don’t really know what to say to that, so I just smile. Luckily, the woman’s million cans of cat food have now been scanned and bagged and she leaves, making me next in line. As soon as the cashier rings up the Twizzlers, I rip open the bag and start eating one.

  “Bye, Mark,” I say as I grab my bag of coffee and opened candy. “It was nice meeting you.”

  “The pleasure was all mine,” he says, waving.

  As I walk out of the store, I wonder what would become of me if I succumbed to the pressure of college and dropped out after my first year. Sure, my art class was amazing, but there’s so much more to college than just taking the classes that are fun. There’s math and chemistry and history and government—ugh. It’s the worst.

  But I don’t really want to be an assistant manager of C&C for the rest of my life. Of course, art doesn’t need a degree; it only needs imagination. I think of the canvasses at home and the empty shipping boxes that I’m too scared to use. I’m not sure if I’m ready to take the leap into being an artist.

  “Hey, Becca!” I stop on the sidewalk and turn back to find Mark rushing up to me, carrying the case of sodas on his shoulder.

  “What’s up?” I ask, wondering if I left something back at the register.