Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak

by Adi Alsaid

  And by party I mean stand near Iris and Cal all night and joke about whatever came up and look out at city lights twinkling in the Manhattan night while a few people around us talked and shot the shit with their preferred subgroup and some of them danced a little bit.

  “How would you guys define party?” I asked. I was on my nth cup of tequila and grapefruit soda.

  “A festive gathering of people, usually to celebrate a specific occasion,” Cal said.

  “Okay, Merriam-Webster. Now using your own words. Also, I meant the verb. Like, someone saying, ‘we’re going to party tonight!’” I added a wooh for effect.

  “Hmm.” Cal thought for a little bit.

  Iris peeled the label off a beer bottle. “It means dancing.” She’d asked Cal if he wanted to dance several times throughout the night, but he said he wasn’t feeling it. Since then she’d been eyeing the improvised six-person dance floor inside the apartment with a palpable sense of longing.

  “Not a universal definition, but respect for working in that subtle dig.” He rubbed Iris’s back. “I’ll dance with you later. Right now I’m feeling more of a buzzed stupid conversation kind of partying.”

  Iris rolled her eyes, then put her beer down on a nearby charcoal grill, which was already a graveyard of abandoned bottles and red plastic cups. She kissed Cal on the cheek. “Well, I’m not. Lu, care to join?”

  “Sorry, I’m with Cal on this one. To party is to banter while buzzed.”

  “Lame.”

  We watched her go back inside and join the modest dance floor with three other girls and two guys who were way more skilled at moving their bodies than I would ever be. I looked around the terrace, trying to come up with more definitions. Another summer thunderstorm was brewing in the distance, lightning flashing in the clouds on the horizon. “Thanks for inviting me to this. I needed it.”

  “Oh yeah?” Cal said, taking a pull from his whiskey ginger. “To celebrate finishing your column?”

  I drank to buy myself time to come up with a good answer. “I don’t know. I just like spending time with you guys. It’s been an easy part of my life at a time when life isn’t so easy.”

  Cal frowned. “Sorry if this sounds flippant or naive or presumptuous, but what in your life isn’t easy?”

  I stared into his eyes for a moment, then took a sip. “No, it’s nothing. Nothing that I’ll have to move to Kenya to escape from anyway.”

  Cal laughed. “Okay, good. And I’m sure this goes without saying, but just because you’re done writing about us doesn’t mean we have to stop hanging out. You know that, right? We like hanging out with you too. I’m gonna need a friend to help me take my mind off the heartache of my oncoming breakup.”

  His words brought to mind my conversation with Pete. I took another gulp. Drown, stupid sorrows, drown. I winced, then turned to Cal. “I feel like we haven’t put this party-definition thing to rest yet.”

  “You’re right. I think we should take a piggyback lap around the party, I hear it’s a great brainstorming activity.”

  “Come on now, we’ve done a piggyback joke today already. Don’t get lazy on me, Cal,” I said, giving him a little hip bump, trying real hard not to leave my hip on his. Then I had to add some more liquid to my sorrow pool. “Broaden the definition. Regardless of how someone chooses to party, what’s a definition that’s all encompassing, whether it’s dancing or buzzed banter or yelling ‘woooh’ repeatedly.”

  Flashes of lightning made us pause for a second. A few people at the party oohed, but most didn’t seem to notice. Monica was on a lounge chair making out with the girl with the blue hair, and there were a few other hookups happening. Most everyone was just kind of standing, talking, laughing, drinking, sitting, not drinking.

  “I guess I’d say that to party is to live in the moment,” Cal said.

  “Hold my drink, I have to throw up on you.”

  “Yeah, I’d like that stricken from the record. Permission to rephrase?”

  “Granted, but do it quick, my stomach is lurching.”

  Cal laughed his rising-bread laugh, then took a seat on the ground, resting his back against the wall and stretching his legs out in front of him. He patted the floor next to him, and I was more than happy to oblige. We were at the far end of the terrace, with the railing at our left, the inside of the apartment at our right, and the whole party in front of us.

  “I think the true meaning of partying is...” He gestured vaguely with his hand, then dropped it into his lap. “I was going to say ‘living in the moment’ again. It sounds so lame, but I think it’s kind of true. Parties aren’t necessarily about celebrating life or anything like that. I mean, some of them are. Birthdays and New Year’s are quite obviously a celebration of still being alive. But, parties in general, their biggest goal is to provide enjoyment, right? To be aware of the joys of the moment.” He brought his drink up to his lips. “Whether it’s in the form of a chemical buzz, or...” he pointed at Monica “...the chance of meeting new people you can create a bond with, or...” he motioned toward the mini dance party “...letting loose with your body...”

  “That’s a weird way to say ‘dancing.’”

  “Those are all acts of enjoying the moment. Forgetting the not-easy parts of life in the company of others, just for a night, just for a few hours.” He crossed his legs at the ankles and leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes glimmering with joy and alcohol, and I want to say “moonlight,” but it was overcast to the point where the city lights were reflecting off the clouds and the shimmer in his eyes probably came from a nearby lightbulb.

  That’s when I felt it. Or, I should say, that’s when I recognized the feeling for what it was. The warmth in my stomach, the inability to look away from his face, the desire to keep the conversation going all night, the slight appreciation for the fact that Iris had stepped away to dance and had left us alone. Pete was right.

  “Somehow I don’t feel like throwing up anymore,” I said quietly.

  What a realization, to know that you are in love with someone. Even if it was just a crush, even if it was ill-advised, even if it was confusing. It was still some degree of being in love. Cal was appreciative, attentive, shared my sense of humor. He was warm, thoughtful, good.

  He wasn’t a distraction from my heartbreak over Leo. He was the cure. Hell, these were things I missed about Leo that now felt like qualities Cal had in excess. And he didn’t like me only after making the mistake of leaving me behind. He liked spending time with me, he’d just said so.

  I put my drink down on the ground suddenly feeling like I didn’t need it anymore. I could see Iris in the apartment, moving to the music, her hands in her thick, curly hair as she danced. She looked so happy. Like these were the only moments that mattered, not whatever was to come. I wondered if I would have been happy if I’d known the breakup with Leo had been coming. I wondered what would happen on August 4, after Iris had left, after Leo had left, after Pete had left, when it would only be me and Cal together in the city.

  But then I pushed the thought down. I stole another glance at Cal, then watched the partygoers standing around, drinking, flirting. “Do you think you can identify the people at this party who are in love?” I asked.

  Cal made a little humming noise somewhere between a laugh and the noise people make when they want to indicate that they’re thinking. “I dunno. Probably not. Do you think you can?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “It’s pretty easy. All of us here. Everyone, all the time. Just walking around being in love. It’s what people do. We can’t get away from it, no matter how much we try.”

  The song playing on the speakers inside changed to something slow, and the dance party broke away. Iris moved to the kitchen and grabbed herself a fresh beer, apparently forgetting the one she’d set down on the grill. Monica and the blue-haired girl had stopped kissing and were now just
holding each other on the lounge chair. Another flash of lightning overhead, this time followed closely by a loud rumble of thunder. Cal turned toward me and our eyes met, the song getting louder in the background. A few seconds later the first few drops of a light rain started to come down.

  “No complaints from me,” Cal said.

  24

  NORMAL HEART THINGS

  I hadn’t looked at my phone all night, so I wasn’t sure at what time I got home. I fumbled with the key for a little bit, finally creaking the door open as quietly as possible. My mom was asleep on the couch with the TV playing quietly, her phone resting on her chest. I turned off the TV and the floor lamp that was still on, got myself the largest glass of water I could find, and went into my room quietly.

  I took my laptop out of my bag and set it on my desk, opening it up but not moving past the log-in screen. For a long time, I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the screen. I still hadn’t changed the background picture away from one I’d taken of Leo in front of our school. It was hard to reconcile the image I saw with who I was now. High school already felt like so long ago, and so did Leo. Even the breakup felt long ago.

  While I considered whether or not to log in and attempt one last-ditch effort at the article, or at the very least change the background image, my door creaked open. Under normal circumstances I might have jumped in fear or surprise, but I guess my reflexes were mellowed by the night of drinking. I turned to see my mom in the doorway.

  She looked at me for a moment and yawned. “You have fun?” she asked in a whisper.

  “I did,” I responded.

  “Good. That’s the last fun you get to have until you can afford to pay rent somewhere in Manhattan.”

  “Yeah, I figured as much.”

  “I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but Manhattan is expensive. You’ll probably be here until you’ve graduated from college, and had at least two to three jobs. I fully intend to ground you that whole time.”

  I gave her a smile. “Fair enough. At least I’ll eat well.”

  She scoffed and walked over to me, planting a sweet kiss on my forehead. “Suck-up.” On her way out, she paused in the doorway. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” I bit my lip and looked over at the picture of Leo. She stood there for a while, waiting for me to continue, or maybe trying to figure out just how drunk I was, and whether her bit about grounding me until college graduation was hyperbolic or not. “Mom, how highly would you rank love on your list of priorities?”

  She chuckled and walked back over to me, putting her hand on my shoulder. “You’re not just asking to get out of your punishment?” I shook my head, and she sighed in response. “In theory, I’d say it’s the most important thing. But that downplays the complications that surround it. I’m sorry I don’t have a clearer answer for you.”

  “Yeah, I could have used a clear-cut ‘number one.’”

  “Sorry, love.” She kissed my forehead again. “If you need to talk in the morning, please do. I don’t hear enough about your life. You know I want more than just to feed you and complain that you’re not home, right?”

  Then she left my room, leaving me in the glow of my computer again. I stood up from my bed and closed my laptop with a cathartic click. It felt like letting go of a rope I’d been clinging to for way too long, and the relief in my metaphorical knuckles made me want to sing.

  Or maybe that was the booze still in my system. I stumbled to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and came back to my room. I pulled my phone out of my bag and plugged it into the charger, finally looking to the screen to check for notifications, but it had died at some point during the day, so I laid it facedown on the nightstand and slipped into the cold comfort of my sheets. The room was threatening to spin, but I let out a slow exhale, took a long sip of water, and managed to keep it at bay. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I closed my eyes, and allowed myself to dream of Cal.

  In the cruel, cruel morning, my serenity had evaporated and left in its place a headache, nausea, and a drained pool where all of my sorrows were now walking around and making it known that the alcohol had not drowned them even a little bit.

  I reached for my water, but found that I’d drank the entire glass at some point in the night. “Blurgh,” I said into my pillow, which only made my terrible breath waft back toward me, sending my nausea into high gear. “I hate life,” I said out loud, hoping that voicing my opinion to the universe would cause it to make some adjustments.

  Somehow, I managed to stumble out my bedroom to the bathroom across the hall, grabbing my phone from my nightstand before I left. Opening the door led to a barrage of noises: Jase’s video games and the accompanying button mashing and smack talking into the headset, my mom cooking something and the accompanying pans clanking around and blenders going. I swear there was more than one blender going. “Ahhh,” I said, trying to keep this complaint under my breath at least until I made it into the safety of the bathroom.

  As soon as I shut the door though, it felt like the noises all got louder. Maybe I was imagining it, but I’m pretty sure Jase was yelling, “I swear my mom wants me to do this! I don’t know why! I know I’m screaming! Shut up, Jerry!”

  Immediately afterward, there was the hellish sound of someone pounding on the door with the full force of their open palm. “Morning, honey!” my mom shouted at the top of her lungs. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Not great, Mother!” I shouted back, very quickly regretting expending the energy it took to do so. I groaned and turned on the faucet, drinking hungrily from the cold Manhattan water. Mom kept pounding on the door. “Why?” I moaned.

  “This is your punishment,” she shouted, somehow hearing me through the cacophony she was creating.

  I shut off the faucet, then crawled to the floor and curled up into a ball, pressing my cheek to the cool tile, staring through one eye at my phone and yesterday’s barrage of missed notifications. “Why don’t you just ground me?”

  “Because of your speech last night.”

  “What speech?” I felt like crying and puking at the same time.

  “Okay, not a speech. You asked me about how highly I’d rank love on my list of priorities. My guess is you didn’t just pull that question out of nowhere but were asking for a reason.” She blissfully stopped pounding on the door for a second. “As much as I believe you should stay indoors for the rest of your young adult life so that I can keep my eye on you, I’m your mother and want the best for you, and I have a sneaking suspicion you being relegated to this apartment all summer might cause more harm than good.”

  “Wow. That’s actually really cool of you. What’s with the noises though?”

  “I want this hangover to be so traumatic that you think about it next time you drink.” She resumed the pounding while I scrolled past more Leo texts that I didn’t want to think about. “Now take a shower to wash your shame away and come out to have breakfast. I finally made Filipino food like you asked. Dinuguan.”

  “Blood stew? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Hey! Language. And it’s not part of the punishment, it’s actually a great hangover remedy. I’m having fun with your misery, but I’m not a monster.”

  “Where does one even find blood to cook with...?” My voice trailed off. I’d found an email from Hafsah from exactly five o’clock yesterday. I’m disappointed in you.

  “A butcher, dummy.” She pounded one last time on the door, then her footsteps sounded down the short hallway.

  My shower was long and painful and provided almost none of the comfort I wanted from it. I kept wanting to lie on the floor of the shower and just fall back asleep under its wet blanket of warmth, but managed to resist.

  I’d screwed up so bad. I’d lost my column. I was going to lose my scholarship. I’d wasted my summer away being heartbroken. I’d sullied my remaining time with my be
st friend in pursuit of a stupid idea that only resulted in... Well. It had given me Cal. And it was a weird situation, but the only thing that felt okay during that shower were thoughts of Cal. The fact that he was staying. Everyone would be gone, except for him.

  I turned my face into the water, closing my eyes, trying to find a way to make everything okay again. Instead of solutions though, all I got was a montage of the time I’d spent with Cal over the past few weeks. The bench, the subway, the party in New Jersey, the pier, last night.

  What if I didn’t have to make everything right?

  What if I just held on to one good thing the summer had provided for me? This boy who was part of a ridiculously romantic, albeit doomed relationship. What if the reason I’d met him wasn’t to write about him and Iris?

  I opened my eyes again, my heartbeat starting to quicken, a smile managing to break through my hangover’s defenses. A closed window means an open door, right? People say something like that? What if a bunch of facets of my life were coming to an end, but something else was set to begin? A cliché, maybe, but who cares about lacking originality if a cliché leads to joy?

  After I toweled off and ate my bloody breakfast (way too rich for my queasy stomach, but surprisingly tasty), I sat on the couch while Jase played his video games at full volume, trying to think of what my next course of action would be. I wanted to reach out to Pete, but he hadn’t texted me at all yesterday after I left the theater, and I had the sneaking suspicion he wouldn’t be on board with my plan to salvage my summer/disposition/love life/life.

  I brainstormed to the best of my ability under my current conditions. It actually wasn’t all that bad, because at long last I didn’t have the pressure of trying to write. That part was over now. It hadn’t exactly been a quick pull of the Band-Aid, but I no longer had to worry about it. I could let my writing come to me whenever it was ready. The way love did. Or something.