Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak

by Adi Alsaid

  A few moments later our dad showed up wearing his typical khaki pants and royal blue blazer. He gave us one of his patented awkward hugs, Jase first and then me. It started as a side hug, then about a second into it he decided it was too impersonal and went for the full hug. But he assumed that as teenagers we’d be embarrassed by it, so he did it halfheartedly. I missed the hugs we used to get. The ones that felt like he’d spent the whole week missing us. Then he asked about the train ride, like he always does, despite the fact that we have never once answered in an interesting way.

  “It was okay,” Jase and I both said. Dad picked up my duffel bag but made Jase carry his own, and then we walked toward his car. I kept expecting him to purchase a midlife-crisis sports car, but it was still the sensible sedan he’d had for years. My dad was too broke and responsible for a midlife crisis, it seemed. It would have been sweet to have him unexpectedly fall into some college-tuition-level dough, but apparently Dad was “happy at his position,” which is adult for “I have failed to buy into the American ideals of always wanting more money.”

  We went out for dinner at the one Filipino place in town—Dad’s ongoing way to either poke fun at Mom’s Italian food obsession, or his way to keep close to her, I’m not sure. These dinners usually consisted of Dad catching up on our lives at school, but because it was summer both of us had very little info to provide.

  “How’s the writing going, Lu? Is there any more paperwork I need to fill out for the scholarship?”

  Ugh. I hadn’t even thought of the scholarship in a while. For the past week, whenever my panicky thoughts came, they were still all about Hafsah and blank pages, and they’d been quickly repressed by good cheer and fantasizing about how incredible my eventual Iris and Cal column would be. “It’s, uh, yeah. Going well. I pitched this idea for a series to my editor, and she was really into it.”

  “Taking initiative, way to go. When’s it publishing?”

  “Er.” I stabbed at a comically large piece of chicken adobo and shoved it into my mouth with a little side of rice. “Shmomoni shmoon,” I said.

  “Dad, she’s so weird,” Jase said. “You think I’m kidding, but this is how it is, like, all the time.”

  “Right.” My dad smiled politely. A lifelong academic, he was thrilled for me when my writing led to school opportunities, especially since his lack of tenure meant he had no sway and no money. He loved hearing the details of Misnomer, the process I went through with Hafsah, how many views each of my columns got. He especially loved hearing about my scholarship. The writing itself he never really asked about. It probably made him uncomfortable. And I don’t really have any complaints. I think I’ve used the word boner two or three times throughout my career. “Well, I’m proud of you, hon. Do I say that enough?”

  “Shmo shmuch,” I said, still chewing.

  “Good. Just want to hammer that point home. I couldn’t be prouder of all you’ve done, and all you’re going to do.” He smiled, and I think I may have seen a tear glimmer in his eye. Which meant that for the rest of the evening—as we finished our meal and headed home, sat in our usual spots in the living room, tried to remember whose turn it was to pick a movie to watch, went about watching that movie, talked about it when the credits rolled, talked about plans for the next day, said good-night, and finally went our separate ways—I was screaming internally, watching my life teeter on the brink of some nameless abyss, all of it about to fall apart.

  15

  ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE

  The next morning I woke up to an email from Leo. Well, I woke up to the desire to pee, but then when I got back to bed I checked my email and saw Leo’s name in my inbox for the first time in weeks. And right next to it was the subject line: Do you know that I still... And then the character limit cut it off so I couldn’t see how the sentence ended.

  It’s a terrifying thing, seeing an email from an ex. Especially when you were kind of managing not to obsess about them lately. Kind of. I stared at it for a long time, wondering if I really wanted to read the message. All day, really, I’d look at my phone and wonder how the thought ended.

  Hey, Lu, do you know that I still inexplicably hate sea salt and vinegar chips?

  Hey, Lu, do you know that I still really like Nic Cage movies? All of them. A lot. Anyway, have a good day.

  Hey Lu, do you know that I still am the most comfortable person on the planet, even though you don’t get to experience it, and probably never will again, since I ended things over four weeks ago and haven’t changed my mind at all? Do you know that I still feel exactly the same way I did the day I dumped you? Just checking. Best, Leo.

  But, out of bravery or fear, I’m not sure which, I left the email in the bold font of the unopened. Which was a pretty freaking impressive accomplishment, because for most of the day I had my laptop and my phone directly in front of me. I needed to write. I needed what I knew about Cal and Iris to come flowing into my fingertips and onto the page where I was at my best. I needed to forget about Leo.

  PETE

  How’s the writing going?

  I needed Pete to shut up.

  In the afternoon, Dad said he had to go take care of some errands, so I had him drop me off at a coffee shop near the university. Watching people flow in and out of a coffee shop usually helped stir my creative juices. I brought earphones with me to help me resist the temptation to eavesdrop, and as soon as I had set myself up, I looked up as many writer’s block cures as the internet could provide:

  Inspirational quotes, advice from some of my favorite authors, ten minutes of freewriting (which resulted in mostly gibberish, but one really great paragraph about what kind of homeless person I’ll be in my desolate future), taking a walk (twice around the block), stepping away from my writing to do anything else (probably hadn’t earned that one yet). Nothing worked.

  The only strategy that felt slightly good was bashing my fingers up and down on the keyboard as if I were killing a whole slew of spiders, and resting my forehead on the table and making slight whimpering noises. Which definitely made me look like the most with-it person at the coffee shop. But it wasn’t quite as productive as I’d hoped. How the hell had I gotten to this point in my life? Why had I even accepted the terms of the scholarship? I should have, like, haggled or something.

  I composed several texts to Iris, begging her to change her mind and let me interview her, but deleted all of them before sending.

  Another ESP-level text from Pete came in.

  PETE

  I think you’re going to have to write about yourself, Lu. Just send something in. It doesn’t even have to include Leo’s perspective, so you don’t have to interview him. Didn’t Hafsah tell you to write yourself into the pieces anyway? Start with yourself. The rest, whether it’s the lovebirds or not, can come later.

  LU

  Your texts are entirely too long

  PETE

  Trying to help. Not sure how else.

  I groaned.

  LU

  I know. Sorry. We’ll talk later.

  I got myself another coffee, used the bathroom, returned to my little self-made hell. It should have been a breeze to write about myself. Just tap into how it felt when I saw Leo’s name in my inbox again.

  I thought about the day after the breakup. I’d had to work at the theater, which had felt like an unnecessarily cruel blessing. I didn’t want to be in public and every moment of it hurt, but I was grateful for all those moments away from my own brain. From the fact that Leo had ended this thing that had been so good.

  I remember scooping popcorn into a bucket for a customer that day, my mind lost in the soft swish of the kernels hitting the steel scooper. It sounded like Leo tossing in his sleep, a sound which I thought was going to increase in my life, not suddenly cease. For good reason too. He’d said the words to me.

  “One day, we’ll be able to do this freely,” h
e had said. It was weeks before the split, an afternoon nap we used to take too many of, forcing ourselves into sleep in the yellow light of day, since our parents didn’t allow sleepovers and we weren’t going to abstain completely.

  He’d said the words into the back of my neck as we spooned, the position in which all the best things get said. “You think we’re happy now, just you wait.”

  “Oh yeah?” I’d rubbed my nose on his forearm to scratch an itch, then let my lips rest against his skin. “How so?”

  “Well, for one, we’ll be done with school.”

  “You love school.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll finally have enough free time to record our R & B album,” Leo had said. “And once it goes platinum, our parents will come to terms with the fact that our adult lives have arrived and they’ll stop freaking out at the idea of us lying down together behind a closed door.”

  “So in this scenario, we are platinum-selling artists and still live in our parents’ tiny Chinatown apartments, but they’re now okay with us having sex.”

  “They’ve matured so much, haven’t they? I’m proud of them.”

  “Are we still going to college?” At that point we hadn’t talked about it yet, and I’d tried to toss the words out casually, broaching the subject because I was hoping that doing so wouldn’t ruin the moment but only increase its joys.

  “Don’t be silly, we have an international tour to go on. We’ll be spooning in five-star hotels.”

  After a couple of hours swimming in memories like that at the Princeton coffee shop, my dad picked me up and we headed back home. Do you know I still want to go on an international R & B tour with you?

  As promised, Cal showed up at my dad’s that night. He’d texted me to get the address, and told me to pretend not to know anything about the party. By the time he showed I was ready to get out of my head for a bit, to surround myself with the distractions a party had to offer, to stop actively resisting opening Leo’s email.

  Cal knocked politely. He was wearing his usual skinny jeans with a button-down plaid shirt over a plain gray T-shirt. His timing couldn’t have been better, as Dad was busting out the Scrabble. Look, I have nothing against Scrabble. But there’s something despairing about playing it with your family on a Saturday night.

  Dad, bless his optimistic heart, thought I’d invited Cal over to play with us. His face lit up when I introduced them. “I always say this game is best with four people playing,” Dad said, setting down the board on the dining room table. “Maybe you’ll finally lose,” he said to me, winking. Winking is the weirdest thing in the world, and no one should do it, especially not middle-aged men.

  “Absolutely!” Cal said, before I could argue.

  My dad looked thrilled. Jase looked like he did not care how many people were at the table playing as long as the game was over within three minutes or so and he was allowed to return to something with a screen. Cal took a seat, and I just stood there, figuring Cal was buttering up my dad a little, but still not wanting to stay at the house any longer.

  I suppressed a sigh and took a seat, hoping I’d be strong enough to resist opening the email even longer. Meanwhile, Cal made small talk with my dad expertly. Jase played the first word: but. My dad wrote down the score. “At least we have one literate person in the family,” he chided, though Jase didn’t care enough to be insulted.

  Cal laughed politely. He was pretty good at Scrabble but he was much better at putting on the good kid routine. My dad’s not really the overprotective type. Truth be told, he was probably thinking that Cal and I were dating or something, and might have been secretly thrilled about it. I never talked about Leo with my dad, he might not have ever heard the name.

  Halfway through the game I was up by a decent amount, which made everyone think harder about the words they were playing, which made the game go excruciatingly slowly. And that was when I finally caved and opened Leo’s email.

  It was a mistake to do that.

  Hey Lu, do you know that I still love you? Thought maybe you should know.

  I closed the email, reopened it, closed it again. I wanted to throw my phone across the room but also hug it to me.

  For the rest of the game, I had to be reminded it was my turn and played only three-letter words. When we were finally done, I looked eagerly at Cal to make our break, and he seemed to catch on that I was not looking to stick around. He told my dad that we were meeting some friends of his for a movie night.

  “I’ll have her back before midnight,” Cal promised.

  We walked quietly in the warm night, our steps loud on the sidewalk until we turned a corner and hit a strip of college bars that drowned out the sound. “Everything okay?” Cal asked.

  “So, what’s this party we’re going to?” I said, pretending I hadn’t heard him. “Another Scrabble party, I hope.”

  “Funny,” Cal said, nudging me with his shoulder. “Just a couple of guys I went to high school with. Should be pretty low-key.”

  Now, in reality, there was about ten minutes of mild-mannered walking and about twenty more after we walked into the crummy frat house before the party really got going. But in a movie they would have totally smash-cut to the scene I saw not all that much later: a group of dude-bros each carrying a case of beer and an iguana on their shoulders. That’s four cases of beer and four iguanas. For one party. That’s an unreasonable ratio of iguanas to beer, especially in the northeast.

  The music got loud, and by extension so did everyone else at the party. The hot tub in the backyard was uncovered and promptly filled up with guys eager to take their shirts off, maybe in the hope that the handful of girls at the party would too. The other girls at the party seemed just as uninterested as I was in joining a six-person hot tub with twelve dudes in it.

  Cal and I grabbed some beers, and while I had a strong desire to go off to the corner and watch the madness ensue from afar, Cal ushered me around the party saying hi to a couple people. He was staying with his friends Johnny and Raul, but had clearly made more friends since his arrival.

  It was a distraction, exactly what I needed to keep myself from repeating Leo’s email in my head all night, or even worse: responding. I did not trust myself to say anything coherent or sane, much less something that I would feel good about having said in the morning. My first instinct was to gush back, tell him everything that I’d been planning on telling him at the bench that day, and all those other times before. Then what though? He hadn’t written anything about getting back together. Could I handle another instance of him not showing up, emotionally or otherwise?

  Since I didn’t have that skill some people seem to have for being able to hear things when the music is too loud, I mostly sipped from my beer and nodded while Cal chatted with his friends. I didn’t really drink often, so I tried to pace myself, but when you’re just being quiet and listening as best you can to a conversation that’s being drowned out by a bassline, it’s hard to keep track.

  The frat house was run-down. I’m getting ahead of myself here. It was a frat house. Greek letters were plastered all over the place, numbering almost as many as the stains on the gray carpet. The only person I even slightly knew was Cal, who was still somewhat of a stranger, though one whose love life I felt completely immersed in lately. In the moment that didn’t make any sense to me. There were drinking games to my left, dudes dancing like idiots to my right, and here I was obsessed with a relationship that wasn’t even mine. I looked over Cal’s shoulder as he talked casually with a group of girls, seemingly impervious to the music.

  A half hour into the party I’d reread the email about seventeen times. Do you know that I still love you?

  No, goddamn it, Leo. I did not know that.

  Because he hadn’t talked to me in weeks, and the last time he had, save for one stupid, heart-wrenching exchange when I was at work and he was my customer, was when he told me he didn’
t love me enough to stay with me, in so many words.

  Why now?

  I drank more from my beer and read the email and thought back to our 0.9% of a life together. I thought about how many times he’d said something as sweet and charming as he had in this weeks-too-late email that contradicted all of his actions.

  It was hard to count, because it felt like a time in my life so far-removed from the present, but maybe also because of the beer. But as I stood there in a darkened frat house, surrounded by freakin’ iguanas and conversation, I thought to myself that it hadn’t been enough. And suddenly I was angry. I felt like Leo hadn’t meant a word of his email, but had only missed me for a moment, had only felt the guilt of his actions and thought a stupid confession like that would help.

  I felt like I was a receipt that had stayed in Leo’s pocket too long; proof of something he once thought worthwhile but no longer needed. What I really needed to do was text Pete. He would get me through this.

  Except when I tried to do that, I just ended up reading the email another eight million or so times and stewing.

  I decided to put my phone away and see what else the party had to offer. Wandering away from Cal, I stepped through the door that led outside. Immediately one of the hot tub dudes beckoned me over to the steaming cauldron of germs and general grossness.

  I thought about Cal and Iris at Central Park the other night, thought about how good those months with Leo had been when they were good, and how quickly it had all gone away. Could either of those relationships ever come from me allowing myself to be beckoned into a hot tube by some dude at a frat party? Maybe I’d throw caution to the wind. Just kiss the first cute boy I saw. Not in the hot tub, of course. But some other more presentable cute boy. I looked around the party but my eyes didn’t really land on anyone. My beer was empty all of a sudden, so I put the can down and went hunting for another.

  Oh, look. There was one. Not a beer. A cute boy. He was leaning against the wooden pillar of the little hand-built-patio thing they’d put the hot tub on. White T-shirt and blue jeans, sneakers that had somehow managed to stay clean at the party. He had dark brown skin and a small afro, a silver bracelet on his left wrist. He looked bored, but in a content way. Like he understood boredom was transient and a part of life and he was just patiently waiting for someone to come along and pull him out of it. I could be that person. I’d wait for eye contact and then just strut my little self confidently over there and kiss him, forgetting about Leo entirely. I’d take him by the hand and say something, like... I don’t know. Something really...mmph! It would come to me.