the Art of Breaking Up

by Elizabeth Stevens

  I took a breath, but it didn’t feel right. I let out a breath, but it didn’t feel right. Either not enough air was getting into my lungs or not enough was leaving it.

  As though someone else had suddenly taken control of my body – or maybe I was having an out of body experience – I watched myself unlock my phone and pull up my messages. I found Wade’s contact and my fingers just started typing.

  Norah

  My parents are putting off getting a divorce until Christmas and they don’t know I know.

  I hit send and let out a big breath.

  The big breath was easier.

  The jittery, tight, nervous feeling in my person eased.

  A whole slew of emotions hit me, but strongest of them, at least in the short-term, was relief. It was out in the ether. I felt like some of the burden had been lifted. Not shifted, because I honestly didn’t care if Wade never read the message, or he deleted it, or if he never replied. Just saying it might have made it feel more real, but it also made me feel less alone with it.

  Chapter Nine

  I was still lying on the bed, trying to get the motivation to get up and actually do my homework, and I’d just stopped wondering whether I was going to get a reply from him when my phone buzzed on the bed beside me.

  Wade

  That sucks. But they’ve gotta do what’s right for them.

  I re-read it what felt like a million times.

  “Have to do what’s right for them?” I muttered to myself for about the tenth time. “What does that even mean?”

  My fingers hovered over the keyboard as I tried to work out what to reply to him.

  But nothing.

  I had no idea.

  I started typing a few different things, but deleted them all. They either sounded stupid or I had no idea where they were going.

  The next thing I knew, I was pulling on shoes, picking up my car keys and heading to the front hall that was conveniently located between Mum’s study and the lounge room.

  But Mum wasn’t in her study.

  “Changed your mind about the cheesecake, kiddo?” Dad asked.

  “I’m just popping out for a bit, okay?” I said to my parents.

  So focussed was I on finding out what Wade had meant that I pretty much ignored the fact my parents were on separate couches, their noses buried in their phones while the TV played on monotonously in the background with some reality show they both hated.

  “Sure, hun. We’ll see you later,” Mum said, her eyes glancing at me for a split-second.

  “No ‘don’t be too late’?” I force-chuckled; it was a school night after all.

  “Didn’t think you would be,” Dad said as though that answered it.

  I nodded and tried to feel less worried and more appreciative of their new relaxed approach to parenting. “Okay. See you later, then.”

  I buried myself in my coat and bundled myself into my car.

  On auto-pilot, I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going or what I was doing. All I was thinking about were answers.

  So when I found myself parking outside Wade’s house, I was only mildly surprised, but also so hell bent on discovering the meaning that the whole SOILED thing went out the window and I was determined to get answers in person.

  I strode up Wade’s front path, memories nudging the edge of my mind. Memories I firmly pushed away. I didn’t want to remember all the times Lisa and I had been here, all the laughter and fun and just really good times we all used to have together. Those days were long gone.

  The front door opened and a surprised face greeted me.

  “Norah Lincoln?” she asked with a smile.

  I nodded. “Hi, Michelle.”

  “What a surprise to see you after all this time,” Wade’s mum said, but I could tell she was pleased. “I thought Wade had systematically booted all the good people out of his life by now. I’m glad he hasn’t.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, it was all too weird and confusing. “I was just wondering if Wade was home and I could talk to him?”

  Michelle nodded. “Yeah. Of course. Wade!” she called back into the house.

  I heard his far-away. “Yeah?”

  “Someone’s here to see you.”

  “Who in the hell would be coming to…” he started as he thundered down their stairs. He paused when he saw me, seemingly caught between a smile and his best ‘kangaroo caught in the headlights’ impression. “Norah.”

  I inclined my head. “Wade.”

  “Well,” his mum said. “On that note, I’ll leave you to it.”

  She spared us both a smile, then disappeared into their living room.

  “You know, if you wanted your needs met, there are easier–”

  “What the hell does this mean?” I interrupted, brandishing my phone at him.

  Wade just chuckled and closed his front door behind him. “How about we go get something to eat?”

  “There is no way in hell I’m going out with you.”

  “Well, you’re not yelling at me in front of Mum so I’m taking you out.” Without waiting for an answer, he popped his head inside, called, “Norah and I are heading out for a bit,” closed the door again and started walking to my car.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him, my feet following him autonomously.

  “You want to talk, then we’re going.”

  There was a very large part of me that was screaming we certainly weren’t going anywhere with the arsehole. But there was also the matter of his easy confidence – the kind I felt like I was missing in my life – that just had me unlocking the door for him.

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked him.

  As he climbed in, he threw me a grin and said, “Surprise me.”

  My auto-pilot still firmly in place, I did what we would have done back in the day and headed for McDonalds. As we pulled into the carpark, I heard him laugh.

  “What?”

  “I love how cheap a date you are.”

  “This is not a date, Phillips.”

  “Two people, plus food equals date, Lincoln.”

  “We’re only here for you to explain what you meant by your message.”

  He was looking towards the building. “I need a burger and some fries.”

  He got out of the car, leaving me with very little choice but to hurry after him. By the time I joined him inside, he was already ordering. He’d given his order and had already ordered for me; the same thing I used to get when he and Lisa were dating.

  “Oh, limited edition onion rings. Onion rings?” he asked me. Then smirked. “Of course, onion rings.”

  “Are you going to talk to me?” I asked him.

  “When I’ve got my food.”

  We stood around in a silence that wasn’t so much awkward as it was full of expectation. Expectation and all the random beeps and whirs of a fast food burger joint.

  When we finally had our tray, I had to admit I was drooling for it. It had been a while since I’d done a late night Maccas run and it was only just then I realised I’d missed them. Not that I let it distract me for long.

  “Why are we here?” I asked him as he unwrapped his burger.

  “Why are, like, any of us here?” he countered, sounding totally Zen.

  I rolled my eyes. “Why are we at Maccas?”

  “Because I wanted a burger and you’d never pass up free onion rings.”

  He wasn’t wrong, though. If I had a dollar for every time I complained about the late night runs being to Maccas instead of Hungry Jacks so I could have onion rings…

  “Together, Wade!” I said exasperatedly. “Why are we together?”

  “Oh,” he said, stealing one of my onion rings. “You wanted to talk.”

  He said it so simply. Like not only was that something we did, but that he was perfectly happy being there for me in what he perceived as a time of crisis for me. Had I not been witness to his behaviour over the
last two years, I might have fallen for it.

  “I wanted to talk?” I scoffed. “What? Norah wants to talk. Does that get an automatic ‘drop everything’ from Wade Phillips?” It was the most ridiculous idea I’d ever heard.

  He shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  To deny his sincerity any longer was like trying to hold your breath past the point you can hear your heartbeat in your head. “Seriously?”

  He gave me that lop-sided grin of his as he leant towards me over the table. “Norah, how many times I gotta spell it out for you? I. Care.”

  I blinked. “Why?”

  His expression was humour mixed with confusion and just a drop of sadness. “You’re hurting. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because we’ve barely spoken in two years.”

  He shook his head. “Incorrect. We talk all the time.”

  “We trade insults…a reasonable amount of the time.”

  He shrugged again. “Same difference.”

  “So, you’d be more than happy to listen to Kowalski’s problems?” Kowalski and Wade hated each other more than ice hated fire.

  Wade’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “Fuck, no! Wanker can sort his own shit.”

  “Then what makes me so special?”

  His eyes fully lit up as he looked me over. “You’re Norah Lincoln.”

  I frowned. “That’s not an answer.”

  He stuck a fry in the straw of my thickshake. Just the way he knew I liked; sweet and savoury. “Just because it’s an answer you don’t like, doesn’t make it not an answer.”

  It was currently quite difficult for me to reconcile this guy with the one I’d seen parading around the school the last couple of years. This was closer to the Wade I knew of old. But, also not really. Back then, I’d known he’d cared about his friends. He’d always been there for them. While it would have been a little weird for me to go to him like this, it wouldn’t have been unwelcome. I wouldn’t have, because of Lisa. It just would have felt…odd to go to someone else’s boyfriend about my problems. Especially my best friend’s boyfriend.

  Sitting across from him, I couldn’t remember why it would have been weird. He’d been as much my friend as her’s. I’d known he’d be there for me. And yet, it was something I’d never do.

  Sitting across from him, I knew exactly why it was weird now. He was her ex. We hated him. I’d never have contemplated speaking to him if he hadn’t got some inkling there was a problem. And yet, here I was.

  “I’m serious, Wade,” I said gently, trying for once to dial back the antagonism and distrust. “What makes you want to listen to me talk now?”

  He looked at me like I was adorably insane. “I’ve always wanted to listen to you talk, Norah.” His pause was too quick for me to get a word in. “But maybe I also kinda empathise with your particular problem.”

  I’m not sure why I took offence at that. “My particular problem?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. The whole parents splitting up.” He waved his hand in the air. “I might know a thing or two about it.”

  “And does your knowing a thing or two about it explain your message?”

  He grinned and I forced myself not to respond to it. “I thought you’d forgotten about that.”

  I almost had. I’d been so hung up on being out in public with him that I’d forgotten what I’d wanted from him in the first place.

  “Does it?”

  His shrug this time was less cavalier and more hiding something behind the act of nonchalance. “It might.”

  “And are you going to explain it?”

  “Maybe I empathise, Norah? Yeah.”

  “You empathise?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “What does it matter how? I have some idea how you’re feeling and figured it might give you some…I dunno, respite or some shit. We could hang out without any pressure. We can talk about it if you want. We can not if you’d prefer. Ball’s in your court, Norah.”

  Weirdly, despite sitting at Maccas with my best friend’s ex – a guy I despised – I did feel a whole lot of pressure come off me. It felt like I could worry without having to hide it because he knew about it, but also like, as he’d said, we didn’t have to talk about it either. It was a freedom I hadn’t felt in a while.

  I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to talk about but there was something I wanted cleared up.

  “Why did you say they have to do what’s right for them?”

  This time, his shrug was all avoidance as he looked down and fiddled with a fry. “Because they do.”

  “And breaking up is what’s right for them? Not making it work? Being a family?” My voice fractured but he said nothing about it.

  “Sometimes being a family isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “They’re my parents. Koby and I are their kids. How can they suddenly decide they don’t want to be a family anymore?”

  “I doubt it was a sudden decision.”

  “But they made a promise!”

  “And promises are made to be broken,” he said, his tone growing cold as his eyes whipped up to mine. Then he sighed and swallowed. “Family’s about more than blood, Norah. You’ll still be a family. It’ll just look a little different than the ‘normal’.” He even used air quotes there, right along with his tone of loathing.

  I studied him for a moment, even after he’d looked down again.

  Something about him seemed small and sad. I’d never seen Wade look small or sad. Sometimes, there was this hardened glint in his eyes. Sometimes, he looked like he wanted to be the one unleashing a torrent of mean jibes and hurtful things on someone else. Most of the time, he carried an easy arrogant armour that everything bounced off. Positive or negative, he didn’t let other people’s words or actions have any impact on his own. He smiled through it all.

  A small part of me admired him for that. I didn’t care overly much what other people thought of me. I thought I had a relatively thick skin. But Wade’s put mine to shame.

  I cleared my throat. “Are you okay?”

  He looked up at me and there was that laidback cocky smile. “As fine as ever.”

  For a second, I wanted to ask if his ‘fine as ever’ actually meant he was never fine. But then he looked so truly at ease that I knew I was reading too much into it. Into him. My unhappy was looking for someone else’s unhappy to share the unhappiness together. I’d have to settle for inexplicable understanding and leave it at that.

  “How’s your brother?” he asked me.

  I shrugged. “He’s my brother.”

  “Uni treating him okay?”

  Another shrug. “Yeah, I guess. He never seems to actually be there, though. Like, he’s always at the uni bar or something.”

  Koby was two years older than us and almost twenty, so he’d been the one who’d picked me and dropped me off places in the middle of the night since none of us had been able to drive yet. He’d come on the late night Maccas runs with us and chatted people up while the three of us gorged ourselves. I suddenly realised I’d never really, properly appreciated him until that moment.

  Wade nodded. “Sounds about right. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “The uni bar?” I asked.

  “The freedom,” was his answer after a few moments.

  I scoffed. “Because you’re not free at school?”

  His eyes got that hard glint in them, but there was something in them that made me think he was weighing something up. It was like the hardness wasn’t directed at me – it wasn’t even about me – and he was trying to decide whether he should explain himself.

  “Yeah, well,” he huffed a laugh, but I didn’t hear any humour in it. “It’s hard being the centre of any room you walk into. You know? At uni, no one’s gonna know who I am. Bottom of the rung. Lost in a sea of people with their own problems.”

  “Problems?” I latched onto, skipping over my terribly witty quips about how
awful being popular and liked must be.

  The actual horror.

  I would have been horrified, but I did understand I wasn’t the most typical human in existence.

  “Yeah.” He waved his hand in the air like he was generalising. “You know. Assignment deadlines. Tute readings. Exams. Problems.”

  “Superficial problems?”

  He nodded. “I guess.”

  “Well, what else would you call them.”

  “Simple problems. Good problems.”

  Again, just for a moment, there was something. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was like I saw into a deeper part of Wade – if he even had a deeper part – like the armour was actually just that. Armour. Protecting something vulnerable inside that he didn’t want anyone to see.

  The knowledge it was there tugged on a part of me, right in my soul.

  For that moment, we weren’t The Wade Phillips and proud SOILED founder Norah Lincoln. We were just Wade and Norah. The people who’d been friends for so many years before the legends had been born. I realised it was scarily easy to throw away two years of insults, hurt and bullshit in the face of what might have been really important.

  The second before I was about to open my mouth to say something – anything – to him about it, he threw a fry at me.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  I looked into his eyes a second and wondered if he’d known where that moment had had the potential to go. I wondered if he’d purposefully avoided it. Then, I wondered if I’d just imagined the whole thing. Sitting across from me was the arrogant, cocky, self-assured Wade who walked through the school corridors like he owned the place.

  Whatever I’d thought I’d seen, it was obvious Wade didn’t have any hidden depths. He was just a laidback, shallow idiot who I could feel less shit with for a few minutes. So, I let it just be that.

  “What about me, what?” I replied, throwing a fry back at him.

  “You looking forward to uni?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t aware they had a prostitute degree at Adelaide,” I said sarcastically.