the Art of Breaking Up

by Elizabeth Stevens

  So, people watch I did.

  That guy from our school was hooking up with that guy from St Pats.

  There was a girl from Richmond trying her luck with another guy from school.

  Erin was flirting with a St Pats guy who was known to finish other people’s drinks.

  Lisa was dancing with a guy who was always so drunk he never remembered who he hooked up with. That or he was really good at pretending he didn’t know people he’d hooked up with at the last party.

  I was starting to wonder if people watching was why I supposedly knew about everyone. That and the fact I apparently had a really approachable face. Kids constantly felt like they could say things to me at parties. It’s how I knew the goss on Erin’s current guy. Someone had told me at a party recently when I was staring at him for absolutely no reason.

  Not long after, Lisa and Erin arrived back for round I’d-stopped-counting-but-maybe-four. Both of them were smiling and breathless and far more on their way to drunk with their Red Bears versus my beers.

  “We swapped details, and he’s going to message me next week,” Lisa said.

  I nodded, surprised that Sir Drunks-a-lot would go that far. I decided not to bring it up with her just then.

  “Hollard long since lost appeal?” I asked.

  Lisa shrugged and looked around. “I haven’t seen him. I’d have thought, if he was… Oh, hello…” Her tone suggested she’d found him. Her words confirmed. “There he is.”

  “He’s not the only one making a fashionably late entrance,” Erin commented.

  “Da-yum…” Lisa whispered like a prayer, and my eyes automatically followed her gaze.

  There was an objective part of me that agreed with her sentiment. Agreed wholeheartedly.

  You see, it wasn’t that Wade was the hottest guy on Earth or anything. He was hot, no doubt about it, but he also had that… That vibe. The body language. The crooked smile. The arrogant ease of the self-confidant. It all came together to make you temporarily wonder if he was the hottest thing since Leonardo DiCaprio (if my mother is to be believed).

  And Wade was at his finest when he wasn’t restricted by such trivial and pesky annoyances as uniforms and school codes.

  His ash-brown hair was artfully messy on top the way he could never be bothered with during the week. He had the kind of arse and legs that looked good no matter what pair of jeans he wrapped them in. That night’s pair were black with ripped knees, which he’d paired with white sneakers, a grey hooded long tee, and a navy blue bomber jacket, sleeves pushed up of course.

  As soon as he’d walked into the room, he was the centre of attention. Kids gawked and called out greetings to him like one word – nay, one look – from him would magically heal whatever malady they’d been cursed with. He was certainly as popular as a faith healer. Shame then he was as trustworthy as a snake oil salesman.

  His eyes scanned the room, but I couldn’t tell who or what he was looking for. I suspected whatever hapless, unsuspecting creature he’d hone in on for the night. As he scanned, his eyes alighted on Lisa, Erin and me. I saw the crooked smile at his lips and he bobbed his head slowly in a single nod.

  It felt like a challenge I had to meet. Something I had to answer. Some occasion I was supposed to rise to.

  Unable to stop myself, I nodded back.

  Whatever my answer had meant to me, he seemed pleased with it.

  As he moved, he disappeared into the crowd. While I released a breath I didn’t remember holding, Lisa and Erin burst into tipsy giggles. I didn’t understand tipsy giggles.

  As the girls and I got another drink, I managed to forgot about Wade somewhat. There was still this niggling feeling. Like something was plucking at the edge of my consciousness the way Lisa plucked at my jumper to get me to stop antagonising Wade. Much like my best friend in that circumstance, I did my best to ignore it as we talked, they danced and I people watched, and we talked some more.

  “Koby says he’s ready whenever we are but no rush,” I said to them at some later point in the evening.

  I looked up from my phone to realise that Erin wasn’t there, but the body next to me suggested Lisa was.

  I turned to see if she’d been distracted by shinier objects than me to find she had. Only the shinier object wasn’t some new guy she was hooking up with. It was some old guy. Not in age. In how long we’d known him. It was Wade. Wade was the shinier object her eyes were trained on like she was still a jealous girlfriend.

  Wade, of course, had his tongue down some chick’s throat.

  I couldn’t have stopped my eyes rolling had I wanted to.

  “Ugh. What’s that for the night? Six?” I muttered.

  “No. I think it’s the first,” Lisa said earnestly and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at her.

  I looked at her like I thought she needed to check her Maths, despite us both knowing she was better at Maths than me. There was very little way that it was Wade’s first girl of the night. He’d been at the party for over half an hour.

  “Hi,” some guy said with a charming grin and we looked at him.

  He was looking at me.

  I blinked a couple of times, then realised he was hitting on me.

  “Try her,” I told him, pointing to Lisa.

  “Hi,” he said, turning the charming grin on her like he hadn’t just tried it on me.

  Lisa smiled at him. “Hi. Don’t mind her. She’s just giving shrews a run for their money.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her sarcastically and she gave me a sugary smile in return.

  “Shrews?” the guy asked, obviously confused.

  Or lucky enough not to be forced to do ‘Taming of the Shrew’ for English. At least we’d been allowed to do a comparison with ‘10 Things I Hate About You’, so it hadn’t been a total waste.

  Lisa put a hand on his arm. “Why don’t we get a drink and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  I watched them leave with a slight pang of regret. Not because I was rethinking my snub. I wasn’t in the mood for guys of any variety that night. Let alone guys hitting on me. Even for me, I was closed off.

  “Probably should have just stayed home,” I muttered to myself.

  But that just served to remind me what waited for me at home and doubled the pang. Two parents who were barely talking to each other, and certainly not breaking into impromptu dances in the kitchen while Dad cooked, or Mum was trying to do the ironing with a glass of wine. The number of times they’d knocked wine onto someone’s clean shirt made it astounding they’d never learnt their lesson. Needless to say, they’d become total Stain Masters.

  And now I was in an even worse mood.

  I drained my beer and found somewhere to put my bottle.

  The music was suddenly too loud for my ears. The kids were too close to me. It was way too hot. I felt my heart racing in my chest. That hot lump was nestled in the base of my throat.

  Feeling suddenly claustrophobic, I awkwardly pushed my way through the crowd. I didn’t know where I was going or what I was looking for, but I found the stairs and headed up.

  The further up I went, the darker it got. The quieter it got.

  I found myself in a narrow passage and tried to get my breath back. Tried to still the racing of my heart. Slowly, so very slowly, I felt my heart start to slow. My breathing came more easily. More steadily. It was possible to take more than just a shallow breath.

  I rubbed my hands over my eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Well, if it was alone time you wanted, you should have just said so,” came a voice.

  Any other voice would have been more welcome at that point.

  I frowned at him in the near-dark of the passage, not caring if he could see it or not. “Because I definitely followed you up here. I saw you disappearing into the dark with some rando girl and have never before felt such lust that I needed to get in on the action.”

  There was just enough light from downstai
rs to outline his face and I watched the humoured smirk blossom on it.

  “I don’t see any rando girl up here, do you?”

  Now he’d said it, I had to admit I didn’t. There wasn’t even the hint of a random girl up there with us. It was just him and me, cocooned in shadow. It all felt a little too intimate for my liking.

  “How do you know I didn’t follow you?” he asked me.

  I scoffed. “Yes. Because there’d be reason you’d follow me up a darkened staircase.”

  He moved slightly and the meagre light caught a glint in his eyes. “I guess I can only think of one.” I wasn’t sure if he was teasing or if he meant it.

  “You are not flirting with me right now.”

  “Who says I’m not flirting with you right now?” he countered.

  I levelled what I felt was a pretty impressive glare on him. “I don’t really care for this whole answering a question with a question thing you have going on now, Phillips.”

  “Fine, Lincoln,” he said simply. “Maybe I am flirting with you.”

  “Let me guess. Ex’s best friend gets 50 points on your bingo card?” I asked sarcastically, rolling my eyes.

  The corner of Wade’s lip curled and his eyes were full of that wicked, arrogant mischief. “That’s not how bingo works.” He leant his lips to my ear and I ignored how good he smelled as his scent enveloped me. It was achingly familiar and somehow intriguingly foreign. “But if ex’s best friend got me any points, you know I’d get them.”

  I pushed him away with a huff and he chuckled.

  “When Hell freezes over, sure,” I spat.

  “That a promise, Lincoln?” he practically purred.

  “It’s a threat,” I hissed in my most intimidating voice. It didn’t sound all that intimidating.

  Wade just smirked. “No threat has ever been so tantalising, Norah.”

  I had no witty comeback for that so I scoffed in a desperate bid to play for time. Still nothing came to mind so I scoffed again.

  “Rendered speechless by the thrill of the idea alone?” he asked, his voice low, and I wasn’t quite sure if he was still teasing or not.

  For a split-second, I also wasn’t quite sure if he was bullshitting or if he was right.

  I was more myself when the split-second was over.

  “Pfft. No. In your dreams, Phillips. You’d have to pay me to touch you.”

  I regretted it as soon as it was out of my mouth, realising too late exactly what I said. It was, alarmingly, not the first time that week my mouth had popped out with what had been intended to be a far sassier, ruder remark. Only it was far worse than the crotch line.

  Wade, again, was too quick for such a brain fart.

  A slow grin spread across his face. “That could be arranged.”

  I huffed. “That’s gross.”

  He shrugged. “You’re the one who’s given up on their dreams of being an engineer. Each to their own, I say. I’m just supporting you as best I know how.”

  I hated that he knew me so well. “Regardless of what I choose to do with my life, I neither want nor need your support.”

  “Tough cookies. It’s there.”

  “I won’t take it.”

  “You can’t just send it back.”

  “I can. I do.”

  “We only take store credit.” Another shrug, like he thought he ought to be sorry but was very decidedly not.

  “There is nothing in the world I could ever want from you,” I told him scathingly. I felt the hate of my words coming from the very depth of my soul and I didn’t really care for that me, but it was out now.

  He looked into my eyes and, it might have been the beer talking – no, it was definitely the beer talking – but it looked like hurt and self-doubt flickered in his eyes. Then he blinked and there was no question the guy in front of me was the useless, annoying, charming, cocky arsehole I knew and hated.

  “Methinks you doth protest too much,” he said with an evil smirk.

  “Methinks you’re an idiot,” I snapped, pushing past him.

  I cared very little for how boring a comeback that was. I cared very little that he’d obviously won the round of whatever that had been. I cared very little that my heart was doing weird things for totally different reasons than mere minutes earlier.

  As I hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs, I looked back. I almost thought I saw the shadow of Wade still standing in the shadows and watching me, but then someone grabbed my arm and I looked to see Lisa giggling at me.

  “Erin’s sister’s here.”

  I blinked, my mind too busy thinking about what had happened with Wade that it took a second to even begin to try to decipher Lisa’s words.

  “What? Why?”

  “Erin might be a teensy bit ill, so we called her sister to come get us.”

  It looked like Lisa might be going to be a teensy bit ill, too.

  I nodded. “Sure. Sounds good.”

  I had no aching desire to go home, but it beat hanging around at a party semi-shit faced without my friends.

  Lisa and I helped get Erin to her sister’s car out front, with much stumbling and laughing, and my brain finally let go of the whole Wade thing.

  “Bloody hell,” Erin’s sister said as she saw us. “Mum is going to kill you.”

  Erin giggled and hiccoughed. Lisa and I stepped away from her quickly in case that hiccough was going to follow through.

  “Tactical chunders before bed all around!” Erin laughed like she was putting in a drink order.

  I grimaced. Yeah, it was gross and probably bad for you to make yourself be sick, but a sure fire way to pull up better after a night out than letting the booze sit in your stomach all night.

  Erin’s sister muttered something disparaging and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Yeah, I think I’ll be right,” I said as Erin looked more pointedly at me as though she’d actually been expecting an answer.

  Erin and Lisa sang loudly along with the radio as we headed home. My place was closest and I can’t say I didn’t have conflicting thoughts about that.

  I waved them off and headed up the front path. I slid my keys into the lock and preceded to attempt sneaking into the house.

  “Norah?” I heard Dad say and peered into the darkened living room.

  I saw his form sit up on the couch and, for the first time in my life, properly cursed my lack of sneaking skills.

  “Hi, Dad. Sorry.”

  “No. Uh, not at all. I must have fallen asleep on the couch.” He chuckled, but it sounded hollow and humourless to me.

  I was in no mood to pretend I didn’t know the reason he’d ‘fallen asleep on the couch’. I was too tired and too close to drunk.

  “Sure.”

  “Had a good night?”

  I nodded. “Fine.”

  “Need some water?”

  I also cursed my inability to play totally sober. “Probably.”

  “Go on up to bed and we won’t tell Mum you were past your curfew, eh?” I heard his smile.

  “No words of amodishment?” I paused. “Adomishnent. Amonishment. Ad-mon-ish-ment!” I finally said triumphantly.

  He chuckled. “I was young once. Just don’t make a habit of it. Okay?”

  “Okie dokie. I won’t.”

  “Okay, then. Sleep tight.”

  “You, too.”

  I hurried up to my bedroom and flopped onto my bed.

  When I’d told him I wouldn’t make a habit of it, I’d meant it. But as I was soon to find out, plans and intentions had a nasty way of changing on you.

  Chapter Five

  My phone was dinging with messages from Lisa and Erin the next Friday night, but I had no choice but to ignore them. We were actually having family movie night that night and I couldn’t really tell them that I’d lied the week before. No. Better to message when I was sure they were asleep and feign I had a date that kept me very busy.

&n
bsp; “Norah! Koby!” I heard Mum yell from downstairs and I pushed away from my desk where I’d been pretending to be working on my History essay until movie night started.

  “What?” Koby called back for both of us.

  “Don’t ‘what’ me,” she snapped. “The situation is a little more dire than ‘what’!”

  By the time she’d finished, both Koby and I had left our rooms and were on the upstairs landing.

  Mum came out of the kitchen, supporting Dad’s weight with his arm around her shoulders. Dad’s face was scrunched up and he had one hand on his abdomen.

  As one, Koby and I started racing down the stairs.

  “What happened?” I cried as Koby asked, “Is he okay?”

  Mum shook her head, but she looked more annoyed than concerned. “I don’t know. He’s got some pain. I’m going to take him to the hospital.”

  “Is there anything I can do here?” Koby asked as I said, “I’m coming with you.”

  Mum looked at me, but seemed to think better of arguing with me. She turned to Koby. “Keep your phone on. Get yourself some dinner. Don’t burn down the house.”

  Koby scoffed, “Like I’d ever turn my phone off.”

  Mum’s glare gave him all the ‘not now’ he’d ever need.

  He nodded quickly. “No. Sure. Right. Can do.”

  “Norah, if you’re coming, grab the keys and hurry up.” Mum’s voice was short.

  We bundled into the car and Mum drove as fast as she could to the hospital. About halfway there, the complaining started about how annoying the new one was to get to and how stupid the big cheese grater looked and how we’d already be there if it was still across from Ayer’s House. I wanted to point out that there were more important things going on, but was too worried about Dad to be arguing with Mum just then.

  We got to the hospital, got Dad admitted. Given where the pain was, he was taken right away for tests while I trailed helplessly behind and hoped he wasn’t about to die on me and leave me living with Mum. Which was an odd thought because I’d never really had anything against my mum before. In fact, I’d been closer to her.

  Sitting around in a room waiting on test results was awful, so I volunteered to go and get coffee. On the way back, I paused outside the door to Dad’s room when I heard him and Mum talking in whispers.