Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak

by Adi Alsaid

  “Shut up,” I laughed, which made my face hurt more, which made me tear up again.

  He took a seat on the edge of the bathtub this time, a tube of Neosporin in his hand. I watched him unscrew the cap, studied his fingers for the first time, followed them down to the sinewy length of his arms, faintly muscular despite his thinness. “Neosporin is the greatest thing on the planet,” Cal said. “It’ll make your face all better.”

  “Maybe we should put some on your face too, then.”

  He laughed and shook his head, then squeezed some of the ointment onto his finger. Then he paused and looked at me. “I’m sorry I slammed you into the ground.” His eyebrows arched at that perfect apologetic angle, and I almost felt bad for how bad he felt.

  “It was a stupid idea and you shouldn’t have suggested it,” I said. “But I agreed to it. Don’t feel bad.”

  “Okay. I’m probably going to feel bad anyway, but I’m glad you don’t hate me for it.”

  “No, I don’t hate you. I actually had a really good time with you tonight. Before you assaulted my face.”

  He smiled, then brought his finger up to my cut lip and spread the Neosporin. Goose bumps tingled down my arms, and I tried not to shudder, though I wasn’t sure if pain or relief was to blame. He had a light touch, caring. Was Iris constantly being touched like this? Constantly cared for, treated as precious, goose bumps tingling down her arms?

  I braced myself for the familiar feeling of my cheeks reddening, but maybe they were already too red from the booze or the pain. Cal kept applying the ointment with a natural tenderness, and when he touched a spot that hurt, I reached out and put my hand on his leg, squeezing his knee. “Ow,” I said, to distract him from what I was doing, or maybe to distract myself.

  The atmospheric pressure in the bathroom increased.

  Okay, I don’t really know much about atmospheric pressure and how it works, or if it could shift based on the feelings of people in a room. But something increased. “So,” I said, trying to get that something to return to normal. “I have a question. About you and Iris.”

  “Shoot,” Cal said, still dabbing gently at my scrapes.

  “Why break up? Why not let the relationship run its course? If it ends, it ends. But why force it?”

  I take back my previous statement about atmospheric pressure not being affected by feelings. Because oh boy did that room get tense.

  Cal didn’t respond for a moment, his eyes clouding over with what could have been sadness or focus or just too many drinks. “I told her whatever I could so that we would stay together as long as possible.”

  Now it felt like there was a full-on storm brewing. Like, if for some reason my dad had a barometer in the bathroom, it would be going berserk right now. It’s amazing the impact words can have on the feeling inside a room. For a moment it even felt like we should switch roles, like I should be tending to his wounds, instead of the other way around.

  “I want to interview you,” I blurted. Cal stopped for a moment, and we made eye contact. The house was so quiet otherwise, no city sounds like I was used to, the constant whir of life outside. Once the words were out it was all I wanted to talk about. “Iris seemed hesitant but maybe you could convince her that it’s okay. I just think you guys have something special worth writing about. I could do it without your names, but I’d rather be allowed in.”

  Cal bit his lip while I talked, saying nothing, his eyes reddened by the beers and lack of sleep.

  Maybe those same things were responsible for me continuing to talk. I told him about my writer’s block, about eavesdropping being the only stand-in for writing since my breakup. Then I told him that I’d eavesdropped on their conversation outside The Strand. As soon as I said it, I braced myself for him to run out.

  “That’s why I found your wallet. I was there. But I swear that’s just a coincidence. I am no creepier than what you’ve seen in person.”

  Thankfully, he laughed that comment off, which made me want to confess even more. So I told him about the scholarship too, and how I was probably going to lose it, since I didn’t have a single thing written yet.

  He paused, which confirmed my immediate fear that I’d unloaded too much and he was seconds away from sprinting, leaving a cartoonish human-shaped hole in the bathroom wall.

  “I’ll talk to Iris,” he said, and I was shocked I’d ever felt fear that he would run.

  We went to my dad’s backyard with full glasses of water, sobering up, looking out at the leaves rustling lightly in the night breeze. Every now and then we turned to look at each other, maybe to check that we hadn’t fallen asleep, maybe for other reasons, and we’d break out in laughter that we’d try to contain. Mostly, though, we were quiet. I tried not to think of the pain radiating from my face, tried not to think of anything at all. I just wanted to stare out at the dark with Cal, and watch the night cement itself into the past.

  16

  PROBABLY SWITCH GAMES

  On the train back to the city, I took a window seat. My laptop was open, but any sentences I attempted sputtered halfway through, like cars breaking down and dying along the side of the road.

  Cal was sitting next to me, his head lolling as the train rocked. Jase sat across the aisle, staring at his phone, every now and then casting strange looks my way. My face had healed surprisingly well, considering it hadn’t even been a full day. Much better than I thought it would. All hail Neosporin.

  Dad had wanted to rush me to the ER first thing in the morning, but I’d managed to calm him down, insisting that at the current rate, my face would look better than new in a matter of hours. My story had been that I had slipped on ice on the sidewalk. It was an awful excuse, because summer. But I spun a masterful tale about a careless restaurant and a very narrow cold front caused by an AC unit pointed in the wrong direction, and my dad had ended up calming down. Instead of going to the emergency room I had spent the rest of the day thinking about stuff other than my face.

  Namely, Cal. His touch. The fact that he got my sense of humor perfectly. That damn doughy laugh. How I hadn’t been able to stop watching his fingers or his eyes as he took care of me.

  How much of last night had been shared, I wondered, and how much had I made up?

  For the life of me, I tried to remember what I had been like with Leo, but it was as if the memories had been wiped out. Or not the memories themselves, since those were still popping up when I didn’t want them to, the good and the bad alike, but who I was during those memories. What I’d actually felt. Had there been this much doubt, this much uncertainty? Had the joy always been tinged by something else, or was that just in the beginning?

  Every now and then Cal’s screen would light up with a notification, bringing to life the picture of him and Iris cheek-to-cheek that served as his background. I watched time tick away in the corner of my computer screen. I didn’t need to read Leo’s email again, its entire stupid contents were probably graffitied somewhere in the folds of my brain.

  Do you know that I still love you?

  What was I supposed to do with that? Return to a boy who’d fled?

  On the train, back at home, at the coffee shop, at home again, I tried to write. Nothing. It was like some force field had been set up on my keyboard, or around my brain.

  PETE

  Dare I ask?

  LU

  Please for the love of god don’t. I’m broken. Will you spare change when I’m homeless?

  PETE

  You’re not going to be homeless, Lu.

  LU

  I certainly won’t be homefull.

  PETE

  That doesn’t make sense.

  LU

  SEE?!? I’m broken.

  PETE

  Want me to come over for a pep talk?

  I sighed and told him that I probably shouldn’t invite any more distractions, and th
at I’d talk to him after I’d sent in the column, or during the end-time, whichever came first. Moments later, another text came in.

  LEO

  Hey can we talk sometime

  So much for avoiding distractions. Something in my chest fluttered, but I didn’t feel the way I might have if the text had come a couple of days earlier. Before, I probably would have called Leo back right away, hoping to get my face on his face as soon as possible. But now my reaction was to let out a quasi-humanoid groan and put my head on my desk again. Which caused me to groan again, this time in physical pain, because of the whole piggyback accident.

  A few seconds later there was a knock at my door. I looked up and saw Jase standing just inside my room. “Mom sent me to check on you. She’s worried about the noises you’re making and wants to know if you’re hungry.”

  “Does she think I’m making those noises because I’m hungry?”

  Jase shrugged, a video game controller still in his hand. “Should I say you’re okay, then?”

  “Sure, just make sure to mention that the fabric of my being is slowly unraveling and I will soon be a pile of mush, vaguely shaped like the human I once was.”

  Jase widened his eyes and stared for a second. “’Kay,” he said, then started walking away. I called after him, sitting up. “Yeah?” he asked, reappearing in the doorway.

  “Don’t say those things.”

  “Yeah, I know. You were kidding.”

  “Oh. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you get me.”

  He shrugged again, the most thirteen-year-old expression there is. “Sometimes you’re hard to get.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough.” He turned to go again, but I called him back one last time. The controller in his hand was starting to shake. Withdrawals, probably. “I’m sorry, I just...” I trailed off, thinking that maybe he was far removed enough from my weird situation to be able to chime in with something helpful. Some bit of unexpected wisdom that would jar me into inspiration and productivity, saving me from myself.

  “What’s up?”

  I turned to my computer screen. My Word document wasn’t blank anymore, just littered with the corpses of false starts and random paragraphs that I didn’t feel brave enough to delete. “What would you do if you were stuck and didn’t know how to move forward?”

  Jase looked down at his feet. “Like, physically? Is it glue? Or did I go into a small tunnel? Because if I was in a tiny tunnel I’d just die. That is the scariest thing I can imagine and screw you for putting that in my mind.”

  “Wow, you are more my sibling than I give you credit for.” I shook my head, tried to put it in a way that Jase might understand. I ran a hand through my hair, fluffing it out the way Iris did. “Okay, so what if you were playing a video game and you were trying to get past this level. And you knew what you had to do, like, all the steps you had to take, the exact bad guys you had to shoot down. But you just couldn’t beat it. And you’ve looked online and talked to all your expert buddies that have advice, but you still can’t seem to get past it. No matter how hard you try.”

  My brother leaned against the door frame for a moment, looking lost in thought. He scratched his chin and made a face like he was hurting a little bit, which momentarily filled me with confidence that my unexpected-nugget-of-wisdom theory might actually play out, because he was looking solidly pensive. Then he shrugged and said, “I’d probably switch games.”

  I squinted at him, trying to find a metaphor in his response. He stared back, jiggling the video game controller more violently now. “That doesn’t help me at all. I don’t have another game to switch to. I could theoretically stop playing altogether, I guess, but quitting in this scenario has intense real-world ramifications.”

  “I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

  “Me neither!” I shouted, returning to my forehead-on-the-desk position a little too violently, sending shooting pains from my scrapes and bruises. And that’s how I stayed for most of the evening. I gobbled down some lasagna Mom made, then went back to my room, slammed my face on the desk, stared at my computer screen, and stewed in my own uselessness.

  Before going to bed, as my deadline approached single-digit-hours, I emailed Hafsah. It was the most concise thing I’d written in weeks. I’m sorry. I suck.—Lu.

  * * *

  When I woke up drenched in sweat and dread, I looked at my phone and saw that I had a missed call from the Misnomer offices. A creeping sense of shame oozed down my arms. Yes, oozed. I felt gross with regret. The thought of calling Hafsah back brought tears to my eyes. But I couldn’t just leave her hanging. She’d been the first person who made me feel like I was a real writer. She’d given me a platform, given me readers, given me confirmation that I could really do it, not just for myself, in the privacy of my notebook.

  I took a long sip of water, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Then I sat up, trying to rouse myself into a semicoherent state by scrolling through various social media feeds. I had a handful of texts from last night I hadn’t responded to, but I wasn’t quite ready to dive into that can of worms. After some time, I clicked on Hafsah’s name in my recently contacted list. Each time the phone rang it felt like the breath was getting sucked from my lungs. It rang four or five times, then finally there was that terrible click which told me I was going to have to speak.

  “What happened, Lu?”

  I was instantly choked up, which kept me from saying a single word. I bit my lip and looked out my window, trying to will away the tears. Unfortunately, my blinds were closed, and all I could see were little freckles of gray light, the hint of a cloudy sky. More time than I realized must have gone by, because eventually Hafsah broke my silence.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m gonna find someone else to take over your column. I wish I didn’t have to, but I need someone who’s reliable and—”

  A sob escaped me, taking me by surprise. I hadn’t known it would feel this way, hearing Hafsah say the words out loud. Like I was losing a part of myself. It felt like getting dumped.

  It must have taken Hafsah by surprise too, because her speech trailed off, something which rarely happened. I looked around my immediate vicinity for a tissue, but couldn’t find any. Somehow, Hafsah’s silence only made me cry harder, and I lowered my head, hiding my face behind my hand.

  It hadn’t even been like this with Leo. We’d been in his apartment, sitting on the fire escape like we sometimes did, watching the city while behind us his family argued over the sounds of the television. Leo’d been quiet and distant all day, something clearly off. It had taken him about fifteen minutes of beating around the bush, during which I had plenty of time to prepare for the actual words. When he said we should break up, I’d stood up so that I wouldn’t be able to see him at all. After a couple of minutes, I shook my head, told Leo he was making a mistake, then stormed out, muttering a goodbye to his family, not a single tear shed to show my pain.

  Now I couldn’t stop the tears, and I knew that Hafsah wasn’t making a mistake. I’d messed up, and this is what I deserved.

  “Lu,” Hafsah said, her voice all soft with concern.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed to eke out between my sobs. “You can hang up if you want. I know you’re busy.”

  For a while I assumed she had. I slunk back into bed, not even thinking of my scholarship and my sudden inability to afford college. I was just thinking of my column, and how I’d miss the act of writing it every week. Going to the coffee shop, transferring my thoughts onto the page, tweaking them until they said exactly what I wanted them to say. The stupid, superficial, but absolutely wonderful moment when I’d check Misnomer to see my name up there. The “likes” and comment count rising, people tagging me on Twitter when they shared the column. More than all of that though, I was afraid. That it was gone: my ability to comprehend the world through my writing. That Leo had stolen that away from me too.

&
nbsp; Then there was a loud intake of breath on the phone, and Hafsah spoke again. “One more week, okay, Lu? I love your writing and want you to stay with us, but I can’t stretch it any more than that.”

  My breath caught. “Wait. What?”

  “Just get me anything. It doesn’t have to be what we talked about. But send me something. End of day Friday.”

  I blinked, the tears suddenly stopping. My blinds fluttered with a breeze, which sent a trickle of refreshing cool air through my room. “Really?”

  “Last chance, Lu.” She stayed on the line for a second, then hung up.

  I dropped my phone in my lap and rubbed my eyes clean. Hafsah was too good for this world. I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, telling myself that I was going to take advantage of this second—er, third—chance.

  I started by calling Pete and telling him the news. “I just wanted to let you know I’m not gonna waste this opportunity, and I want you to remind me I said that.”

  “Does that mean you’re done obsessing over the lovebirds?”

  “Probably not, but I’m not gonna try to write about them,” I said. “I’m gonna take your advice and write about me and Leo.” I hesitated, wanting to tell Pete about Leo’s email, but not sure I was ready to talk about it. “There’ve been some developments. I can tell you at work though.”

  “Alright. And can we hang out after? I feel like I haven’t seen you in several millennia.”

  “I don’t think that’s accurate,” I said, the first smile of the morning creeping onto my face. I suddenly became excited about the day ahead. Working and shooting the shit with Pete, having him help me brainstorm, maybe even writing something out at work and getting his feedback. Still on the phone, I double-checked to make sure I had one of those pocket-size notebooks I could carry with me throughout the day, and plenty of pens in my bag.