Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak

by Adi Alsaid

  “I should have told you not to trust his piggyback rides,” Iris said, joining me at the counter. “I’ve seen him drop glasses of water he was holding with both hands. He should not be trusted to carry a human being, ever. If he ever gets married, we’ll have to warn the girl not to go for any of that carrying the bride nonsense.”

  Cal laughed, and I heard the rattling of Pete pulling out the stool to take a seat next to Cal. “So, what are you guys up to?” Pete asked. He was making a concerted effort to be normal, I could tell. If this were me, or random people he didn’t care about, he would have cracked a joke, or settled deep into himself without attempting to interact.

  “Researching spaghetti Bolognese recipes,” Cal said, taking up his phone again.

  “Lu, we should call your mom and tell her to join us.” Pete turned to Iris and Cal. “She makes the best spaghetti.”

  “Do it,” Cal said, still looking at his phone. “I want mom-quality spaghetti, not whatever spaghetti-like food we’re about to come up with.” He sighed as he scrolled, his glasses reflecting his phone screen, his pretty eyes narrowed behind the lenses. “Reading some of these recipes is like doing AP Physics homework. Blanch the tomatoes? Mince the garlic? Reduce the sauce? What are these words? What kind of magic spells do chefs use?”

  “You guys want me to help? I’ve picked up some stuff from my mom over the years.”

  “Actually,” Iris said, “I’d rather you didn’t help. I want to learn, and I do better if left to my own devices.” She stood up and grabbed one of the saucepans hanging over the stove, then started filling it with water. “I mean, if you see us doing something incredibly stupid, stop us.” She chuckled warmly, and I found myself thinking: like bread baking. That’s what her laugh sounded like to me, tasty and nourishing. Which made me think, somewhat sadly, of Cal’s doughy laugh, and how perfectly suited they were to each other.

  Cue the fun cooking montage.

  Except, instead of a fun montage of us getting flour on each other’s noses and making an eggy mess while laughing, it was me and Pete sitting at the kitchen island, watching Iris and Cal work through a fairly simple online recipe. Cal dropped half an onion on the floor, and some of the sauce bubbled over onto the counter, but there were no shenanigans. I kept my notebook within reach, since my reason for being there was ostensibly to take more notes for my column. Instead, I watched them cook. Cal would look over at Iris’s chopping/mincing garlic technique and imitate it for the onion he was attempting to dice. She watched his oniony tears and then dropped her knife, walked over to him, and moved him away from the cutting board by placing her hands on his hips and gently repositioning him farther down the counter. They blended blanched tomatoes with basil and then Cal stuck a spoon in the not-quite-sauce, tilting it to taste-feed Iris. She looked into his eyes as she tasted, thought for a second, then announced she had no idea if it was any good. Both of them burst into laughter which did not include me or Pete.

  God, how does anyone leave a relationship when they have that? Even if love itself is gone, how do you step away from that? How does happiness dissipate from something that looks so effortless? Was that what Leo and I’d looked like?

  The four of us ate in the kitchen, since Iris’s dad was still watching baseball on TV and the twins were still screeching their way through some indecipherable game which involved the dining table. Somehow, Iris’s mom managed to eat, continue to work on her computer, and keep the twins from wreaking complete havoc. Iris and I sat on the bar stools, while Pete and Cal stood next to each other and across from us, leaning over their plates as they ate.

  “So, Pete,” Iris said, adding some more parmesan cheese and a tablespoon of red pepper flakes to her pasta. “What’s your story? Are you a writer like Lu?”

  “Nope, I’m just a cinema employee. We met when we started working at the theater, and I haven’t been able to rid myself of her yet.”

  “Rude,” I interjected. I knew he was kidding, of course, but there was something to the comment that felt a little passive-aggressive. Aggressive-aggressive, maybe. Or whatever it is you call a comment that isn’t meant to be cruel but just sort of strikes at your insecurities.

  But I didn’t say anything else, not wanting the conversation to turn toward me and Pete. I wanted to sink into Iris and Cal, in all of their Iris-and-Cal-ness. We all fell quiet, slurping at our pasta in our different ways.

  Iris’s parents brought the twins by the kitchen to say good-night to Iris and Cal, then told us we could use the living room if we wanted.

  Cal stood first, clearing our plates and rinsing them off. “You guys up for a movie?”

  “You don’t have to do those,” Iris said. “Just leave them in the sink.”

  “It’s okay, it’ll make your mom happy,” Cal said. I checked the time on my phone, and even though my mom had been in I-miss-our–umbilical-connection mode, I thought to myself that I had plenty of time to get back home and see her. Plus, Pete’s departure was only a few weeks away, and I hadn’t yet cashed in on those pity points.

  “I’m up for a movie!” I said. I looked at Pete, giving him a look that I’m sure conveyed that I wanted him to stay too.

  “I dunno,” he said, looking away from me. “I have to open tomorrow.”

  “Dude, our shift starts at ten, and it’s only 7:30 p.m. That’s practically the afternoon.”

  “Seven o’clock is definitely not the afternoon,” Pete said. “It’s evening.”

  “Maybe in this prudish country. I have it on good authority that most countries don’t consider night to have fallen until at least 8:00 p.m. Or, you know,” I said, gesturing to the open blinds in the living room, where the floor-to-ceiling windows showed a beautiful pretwilight skyline, “until it’s dark out.”

  We looked at each other for a moment, trying to communicate through eye contact the way most best friends have attempted. This took place through a series of eye widenings, squinting, and eyebrow movements. And we clearly had zero clue what the other was trying to say, because we both ended with our heads tilted and our foreheads creased with furious confusion.

  “Well, I’m up for a movie if you guys are,” Iris said, pushing away from the island. “My mom’s a huge movie buff, so we’ve got a crazy collection. Some of them are even hard to find on the internet.”

  So, Pete and I may have failed at the silent eye-convo thing a second earlier, but we did get the same thought at the same exact time. “Troll 2!” we shouted, then realized there were two seven-year-olds probably trying to sleep and we shouldn’t be assholes, so we cringed.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But please tell me you have Troll 2.”

  “What’s Troll 2?” Cal asked from the sink, setting plates into the drying rack.

  “Legend has it, it’s one of the worst movies ever made,” Pete answered.

  “It’s so hard to find online unless you pirate it, and we’ve been holding out hope that we could watch it legitimately. And this night has been lovely and all, but literally all of my nights that don’t end in watching Troll 2 are a complete failure and add to the general meaninglessness of my life.”

  “Wow, that’s a little heavy,” Iris said. “Fortunately...”

  * * *

  Four hours later, we’d watched Troll 2 twice back-to-back, and my whole torso was sore with laughter. Iris hadn’t quite made it through the second viewing, and was currently curled up on the three-seater, her feet just barely resting on Cal’s thighs.

  Pete was yawning too, looking at his cell phone in a super obvious way that made it clear he wanted us to leave. I’d barely even bothered checking my phone since the break between viewings, and then it was just to tell my mom that I’d be home late (and a few follow-up texts to convince her not to disown me and that I still loved her).

  “I don’t think I understood any more of it the second time around,” Cal said. His hand was resting
on Iris’s exposed calf, fingers lightly rubbing up and down. I wondered if Iris could feel that in her sleep.

  An idea crept into my mind. “There’s only one possible thing we can do, then.”

  Pete lolled his head in my direction. “Please no.”

  Cal, though, was nodding vehemently. “Yes.”

  “Too much Troll 2,” Pete moaned.

  “No such thing,” Cal and I said at the same time.

  * * *

  The end credits rolled again. Pete was snoring now, and Iris was so deep into her REM cycle that she hadn’t even flinched when Cal and I burst out laughing yet again at the scene where the kid stands up on his chair in the middle of dinner and pees directly onto everyone’s food.

  Cal and I shared a look, as if we’d just gone through something life-changing together. Which, honestly, jury was still out on, because maybe we had. Watching that movie with anyone is a life-changing experience.

  That was probably around the time I should have woken up Pete, called a car service or whatever back to Chinatown. Except Pete looked so peaceful snoring with his eyes slightly open and that adorable stream of drool in the corner of his mouth, and I didn’t want to disrupt him. I stood up and stretched, then caught the door that led to the balcony with the corner of my eye.

  “I think I spoke too early. There is such a thing as too much Troll 2.” I tiptoed over to the balcony door, looking out at the buildings across the street, the city lights. I couldn’t see a huge stretch of the city like Iris and I had seen at the Flatiron, but it still felt magical. I looked back at Cal, who was drinking from a glass of water. “You think it’s okay if we go out there for a little bit?” I asked, turning my voice into a whisper. “I think I need some fresh air to recover from that marathon of madness.”

  There were two patio chairs on the narrow balcony, arranged at angles so that they could fit, pointed half at the railing and half at each other. We plopped down after shutting the door gently behind us to keep out the sounds of the city.

  “I wasn’t too pushy, was I?” I asked, stretching my feet out and resting them on the railing.

  “About what?”

  “Forcing everyone to watch Troll 2 all those times. I sometimes get carried away and don’t want things to end, so I force everyone to hang out longer than they want to.”

  Cal chuckled. “I know what that’s like.”

  Most of the lights were off in the building across the street. I hadn’t looked at my phone in a while, and I could only guess what time it was and how much trouble I was in with my mom. She might actually ground me. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, seeing as how I had two and a half days to send in my column and after that my life would be over anyway. My chest tightened with the realization that it was technically Wednesday already, but I managed to quell the panic by turning to look at Cal.

  “Are you talking about paintball teams again?”

  He snorted. “I wasn’t going for subtext on that one.”

  “And yet it snuck in there anyway.”

  Cal put his hands on his thighs, rubbing them up and down as he let out a long breath. “Funny how that happens more and more as the days go by. It’s like everything is suddenly steeped in symbolism. I saw a poster for a missing dog the other day. It said, ‘Missing: The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Us.’” He made a sweeping motion with his hands to show that that was the headline. “Then under that it had a picture of a cute dog, whose name is, get this...”

  “Oh my God, are you about to tell me that the dog’s name was Iris? That’d be some heavy-handed symbolism right there. Like, come on, universe, have you heard of subtlety?”

  “Well, no. The dog’s name was Sir Barks a Lot.”

  I stared at Cal, maybe extending my reaction a bit because he was really nice to look at. “Human beings are the worst.”

  “Yeah, I know. But below the name it said, ‘Without her, love has left our lives.’”

  “Wait, Sir Barks a Lot is female?”

  “I guess. But my point is—”

  “I mean, I respect the refusal to adhere to society’s oppressive gender rules, but that’s really a mouthful of a name. Do they like, call out the whole thing when they’re out looking for her? Ugh, they probably have a really gross, cutesy name that they use more regularly. Something like Barksy. Or Lottie.” I noticed that Cal was staring at me with his eyebrows up. “Sorry, not the point. Yeah, that’s harsh.”

  Cal sighed. “You’re telling me.” He yawned, stretched his arms out, and rested them behind his head. Then he leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the railing, his left shoe resting against my ankle.

  God, how much comfort could come from a touch like that. I remembered all those instances of first contact with Leo. How they lost their meaningfulness after a couple of months of dating, but never their comfort. Never the joy of being touched by someone whose presence you wanted near you all the time. How sometimes Leo and I would be lying down together in his bed, touching almost our entire bodies together, and yet we’d want to get closer and closer. We’d press ourselves tighter, feeling all our skin. Even through clothes, touch was something to marvel at.

  I wondered briefly when the next time I would do that with someone would be. Then I thought, in a quick flash, about all the things Leo had said in the last few days. His email, his texts, running into him. What had felt like finality a few weeks ago had suddenly opened up, like a knot coming undone. There were all these loose strings flapping around now, and I couldn’t even see how far they extended, what they might lead to.

  “I can’t believe she’s leaving this city,” Cal said, softly. “She’s gonna miss it so much.”

  “Hey, Cal?” I said, making my voice go soft.

  “What’s up, Lu?”

  “Do you think that, maybe, in the statement you just made, ‘the city’ might be a stand-in for something else? An easier way for you to say a difficult thing? I’m not claiming I have any proof.” I raised my hands up in mock-defensiveness. “I’m just, you know, reading into things.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, then tapped his shoe against my ankle, giving me a smile. It was like we were back in New Jersey, except my face hurt a little less.

  Then the balcony door opened behind us, making me jump in my seat. “Jesus, Pete. Don’t sneak up on a girl after she’s watched Troll 2 three times in an evening. You’re liable to get peed on.”

  His hair was ruffled, his eyes droopy with sleep. “I’m gonna take off, you want to come with?”

  I looked beyond Pete into the living room. The TV was still on, and I could see Iris now fully stretched out on the couch. From the sounds of the city, and the number of neighboring apartments with their lights off, I could tell it was much later than I’d thought.

  I realized that I’d slipped my legs from the guardrail, which meant Cal’s shoe was no longer resting against my ankle. I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t find a normal-human reason for staying.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, standing up. Cal remained seated, looking up at me and Pete.

  “It was really nice meeting you,” Pete said.

  “Back at you. Sorry it was in such a weird setting. We don’t always just hang at home trying to improve our cooking skills. I swear Iris and I are normal.”

  “No they’re not,” I said.

  “Yeah, sorry, man.” Pete ran a hand through his hair, trying to get it back in its usual sweep across his forehead. “I’ve heard too many stories about you to believe that.”

  Cal shrugged. “Fair enough.” Then he held up a hand to wave goodbye, which I mistook for a call for high fives, then tried to play it off like goodbye high fives were a thing I regularly did by high-fiving Pete too, even though we were obviously not saying goodbye to each other.

  “Well,” I said, when the air around us had grown sufficie
ntly awkward. “I guess all good things come to an end.”

  “Jerk,” Cal laughed.

  19

  THE MOMENT THEY FIRST KNEW

  Pete and I entered the nearly abandoned subway station. Two white guys wearing untucked button-down shirts sat on a bench, both looking at their phones. At such a late hour you can reasonably expect at least one drunk person to be stumbling about, or if not that, then at least someone doing something shady. I guess the Upper West Side got less of that though.

  We’d been quiet since leaving Iris’s building, which I’d assumed was a normal 2:00 a.m. silence. But then Pete, apropos of nothing, looked at me with those piercing, soulful eyes of his as if we’d just been in the midst of a meaningful silence. I knew that look well. He was about to say something honest and tactless.

  “You’re getting a crush on this guy.”

  I scoffed and combed my hair back behind my ears. “I got scared there for a second. You went into your nugget-of-wisdom voice. It sounds exactly like your having-an-aneurysm voice, which is clearly what’s happening right now.”

  “You’re denying it?” His hands dropped to his sides.

  “I don’t find the need to deny preposterous statements. If you called me a fish, I wouldn’t really worry about correcting you.” I turned my body away from him, scanning the tunnel for any oncoming trains, even though the signs overhead clearly said the next one would be arriving in thirteen minutes.

  “Fine, deny it. But I’ve got an official prediction for this—it doesn’t end well for you.”

  “What’s the ‘it’ in that sentence?”

  “Your emotional well-being.”

  “And the west will always be at war with the east. Bold pick, Nostradamus.”

  “Don’t get defensive, Lu. I’m not saying anything bad about Cal or you or Iris or any of it. I’m just worried that you’re setting yourself up for more heartache.”