Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak

by Adi Alsaid

  Starla gave a little chuckle. “Are you kidding? I love having you guys around and not having to talk about myself. You’re more interesting than I am. Plus, I go to therapy once a week, not to mention the therapy sessions forced upon me every six to eight hours when my mom calls to check in on me.”

  “I don’t know, Starla. You have tattoos and have lived like four times as long as we have. You must be interesting.”

  She pointed her index finger at me and mock-scowled. “Check your math, girl. But fine, I’ll say stuff about me first, if that’s what you want. Ask away. But then I need you to open up the way the Red Sea parted for Moses or the way my legs parted for anyone with a pixie cut when I was nineteen.”

  “Wow, okay, that’s already quite a bit of info.” I looked around the theater for a bit, wondering what exactly I wanted to know, wondering if I was just trying to delay talking about myself. I shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I just want to know your story.”

  * * *

  As it turned out, Starla was much more interesting than she’d let on. I don’t know how she’d ever managed to keep this from me and Pete, but she had been married for five years not long after college. Then her husband got sick and his health deteriorated even quicker than the doctors had expected. By thirty she was a widow. She’d had an office job before that, but after her husband died, Starla’s main comfort came in books, so she decided to surround herself with them. Hence, The Strand.

  “Wow.”

  “I see that look on your face,” Starla said. “Save your comments about not being able to complain about your life now that you’ve heard about mine. A terrible thing happening to me doesn’t mean your pain isn’t valid.”

  I stammered for an excuse a little, then, like with every other situation in my life, opted for a stupid joke. “No, I was just wondering if your husband had a pixie cut.”

  Starla laughed, then smacked my leg lightly. “Your turn.”

  I told her everything. How the summer started with Leo dumping me, then my writer’s block, eavesdropping on Iris and Cal, the whole of the past few weeks recounted so easily it was hard to believe that it had all happened to me. Once it was all out, I didn’t know whether I felt any relief, or if I was closer to tears than I had been at the start. “I know this probably sounds stupid and juvenile,” I said, looking down at my lap. “But...I just don’t know how I got here. I don’t know if anything I’ve been through is worth this feeling.”

  At that point Starla put her hand on my knee and raised her voice. “Hon. Wishing you weren’t suffering is a whole other beast than wishing you hadn’t experienced anything good. Just because I will never stop grieving my husband doesn’t mean I’m going to erase our life together. The bad cannot possibly erase the good.”

  She looked around, waiting for the people coming out of theater seven to clear out. “That couple? They have the right idea. A weird way of doing it, but they’ve accepted the bad will come, and that it won’t cancel out what they have. My only surprise is that they didn’t agree to you writing the column earlier.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Starla sighed. “A few years after Larry died, I moved. The memories that I was clinging to at our old apartment had turned more painful than comfortable, so I got out. Along the way I lost a photo album we’d been keeping since we started dating. Mostly of our travels, little paragraph descriptions on the back of each picture. The whole trip summarized into a few lines.”

  “Oof. I can’t imagine.”

  “You can.” Starla gave a tight-lipped smile, then patted my leg. She stood up. “Maybe to a lesser degree, but you understand the feeling, I’m sure. If there’s one possession I’d love to have back from all my life, it’s that photo album. Just because it’s gone doesn’t mean the memories are gone. But having a tangible reminder of something that’s no longer around means being able to return to bygone comforts. It’s proof that what was once gone did exist, however briefly. A reminder that you were granted that time, and that can never be lost. If I were that couple, I’d beg you to write the column.” She gave me another smile, then checked her wristwatch again. “Perfect. Just in time to catch my movie.”

  I stood up too, not wanting to go back to actually working. I wanted to sit there and soak in the conversation with Starla. I was afraid if I moved away from the area, I wouldn’t absorb some of it, whatever it was. The lesson in all she’d said. The wisdom she’d passed on that I was still too hurt and ashamed to fully feel. I wished I’d brought my notebook with me or recorded the conversation. I had the notion that what she’d said deserved its own column too, though I no longer trusted myself with the ability to capture anything of importance.

  “Take care of yourself, kiddo. Don’t let the heartbreaks silence the love.” She reached out and ruffled my hair, then disappeared down the hallway toward the theaters, her bracelets jingling as she walked.

  26

  JUST HOW LOVE KIND OF WORKS

  I spent the rest of my shift deep in my thoughts rather than trying to escape them. When it was over I stood outside the theater and waited for Pete to come out. He had his earphones in and almost walked past me, but then we made eye contact and he stopped in his tracks, pulling out his earphones and wrapping the cord around his phone. “Hey,” he said.

  For a moment, I tried to read whether he was angry. I’d never known Pete to hang on to a grudge for a long time, but I’d never seen him as frustrated as he had been the other day. I’d missed his presence in my life. Our banter, his advice, the mere fact of his company. The past few days had been the most emotionally draining of my life, and I knew that part of that was because he wasn’t around.

  “You were right,” I said, afraid he might walk away before I got the courage to unburden myself. “You were trying to help, and I’m sorry that I was stubbornly resistant to that. I was...” I chewed on my lip for a second, looked across the street at the sushi restaurant, reached for a word. I couldn’t land on one though, and when I looked back Pete was nodding gently.

  He pocketed his phone and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “Have there been developments? Your face looks like there’ve been developments.”

  “Yeah, but I want to do this first. You mean a lot to me, and I’ve always trusted your judgment. I don’t know why I didn’t this time.” I shrugged, less of a gesture expressing my quandary and more to show Pete and the universe that I was really at a loss. A moment passed, during which I was afraid Pete would be thoroughly unimpressed by my apology and decide he was done with me. Traffic rolled by, people entered and exited the theater, a bike messenger sped past behind me, blasting music on speakers rigged hidden within his backpack. “Did you know I think of you as my wise, old uncle?”

  Pete smirked. “That makes a little more sense than it should.”

  “I should have listened to you, and I didn’t. I went further down the rabbit hole with Iris and Cal, and ended up in a sort of nightmare situation that could have easily been avoided if I’d just paid attention to you. If I’d admitted what was going on. If I’d spent the amount of time I normally spend with you so that your wise, old, avuncular qualities would rub off on me and I would stop being such an idiot.”

  Pete smiled, then motioned with his head. “I need to get home soon. Walk with me? Or was that it? Because I’m ready to forgive.”

  Tears rushed to the corners of my eyes again, persistent little fuckers. “I don’t know if I deserve to be forgiven yet.”

  “It’s okay. I was hurt and wanted all your attention. I could have done better too. I could have been more supportive.”

  We started walking down Third Avenue, our gaits slow. Night had fallen already, and the restaurants and bars we passed were filling up. Our shadows stretched behind us as we walked, then receded when we approached the next streetlight, then shifted ahead. “I wasn’t the easiest person to be supportive of,” I said. “I was obsessed, like
you said.”

  I filled him in on what had happened since our fight, my realization that he was right about my feelings for Cal, how I’d missed my deadline again. That goddamn attempt at a kiss, and the look on Cal’s face afterward. Leo.

  “I just kind of lost it, you know.”

  “Oh, I know.” He nudged me with his shoulder.

  We’d walked past at least two subway stations that Pete could have taken to get home, so now it felt like we were committing to the whole walk to his place on the Lower East Side. “At least you don’t have to worry about writer’s block anymore, right?” Pete said. “I kept thinking throughout this whole ordeal that you could easily write, if only you weren’t so tied down to one idea. It sucks about the job, and the scholarship, and—”

  “And the rest of my life falling apart as a result.”

  “Yeah, that. But at least you don’t have to carry this burden of writer’s block around with you anymore, you know. You can just write when you feel compelled to do so, about whatever topic is in your heart.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. We passed by a busy strip of bars, where of course there seemed to be a disproportionate number of couples, people flirting, making out, smearing love and dating and sex all over each other. That was a weird way to put it. “Rub it in, assholes!” I yelled.

  Pete laughed. “Been holding that in for a bit?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  He laughed, and we slowed our gait even more, looking in at bar after bar of people laughing and pawing at each other. “You never talk to me about your love life,” I said. “I don’t wanna just unload all my stress on you and make this a one-way friendship. You can lay it on me too, you know. I don’t even know what kind of people you’re attracted to. I can’t believe I’ve never asked.”

  Pete shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged in the same motion, which I filed away as a really poignant gesture which I wanted to use in some future conversation. “I haven’t really found anyone that inspires that in me,” he said. “Male, female. I don’t know if I really have that same drive you and your readers and the rest of the freaking world have.”

  “Now I get why you suck so much at I Would Bone That Person.”

  Pete laughed. “Yeah, I figured you might have picked up on it by now.”

  “I’m sorry, that was shitty to say. Don’t let me make you feel bad about that. I’m gonna try to be a better friend. Starting, like...now.”

  Another laugh, which made feel like I hadn’t immediately screwed things up again. “It’s okay, I don’t always feel like I want to talk about this. It’s just not something that’s on my mind all the time. I like people, and intimacy. But I don’t find myself wanting anything more than what we have, you know? I don’t need romantic love, or sex.”

  “I wanna say you’re lucky, but I don’t know if that’s a stupid thing to say too.”

  He reached out and gave me a little side hug. “We can go back to our normal dynamic and not talk about me. I kinda like dishing out advice on what to do. Being the wise, old uncle.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But if you ever want to. I’m here, you know. I may suck at it because I’m self-indulgent and self-centered and terrible. But I’m here.”

  He gave me a little shoulder bump. “Thanks, Lu.”

  We walked in silence for a few blocks, or at least the relative silence Manhattan can provide. We weaved through a crowd standing in front of a kebab truck, a group of smokers standing outside a bar, a man walking four dogs on a leash. “So, what are you gonna do next?” Pete asked.

  “Beats me. Any ideas?”

  “You could try to find another writing gig. I bet Hafsah would still write you a decent recommendation. Maybe you still have time to save your scholarship.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know if she will. She might have a soft spot for me, but she won’t abide what I put her through.”

  “Just send in writing samples to other publications, then. Everything that you’ve been through doesn’t erase the fact that you’re still a damn good writer.”

  “Thanks. I’m gonna miss Misnomer though. It’s so...hip. I don’t know if I’ll ever be that hip again.”

  “True. But you don’t need to be hip.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I guess if I’m being honest it just felt good to fake it. I’ll always write for myself. And I’m okay with that because I have no choice but to be okay with that. But the validation feels good. It makes me feel like it’s okay that this is how I process my feelings and the world around me.”

  “Dude, just start a blog, then. Outside validation doesn’t have to come with a paycheck. Hell, I’ll be your outside validation. You have Twitter followers. You have the internet, and you have talent. Forget about everything you can’t control, and just do this thing that comes naturally to you. Everything else will fall into place. Maybe not the exact place you had in mind at the start of the summer, or even a week ago. But there’s no use in worrying about all that. Just, you know, keep writing.”

  I smiled at him. “There’s the Uncle Pete I know and love.”

  We said goodbye with a long hug, and then I made my way back home and ate Mom’s food, and sat with Jase and gave him shit. Mom even joined us on the couch and jumped in on berating him about not contributing to the household. Before she went to bed, she gave me a long forehead kiss and asked me if I was doing okay. I didn’t think I could answer with a flat-out yes, but I nodded my head and told her that I was doing better. “Good,” she said. Then she told me and Jase she loved us and to keep it down, then disappeared into her room.

  We still didn’t talk about love deeply, but we’d established a sort of trail, some stepping stones that might someday lead to conversations about it.

  Jase turned down the volume on the TV, and I sat there for a while longer, feeling the simplicity of that joy. What a marvelous thing it is, to feel like you’ve marooned yourself on an island, surrounded only by worries and regret, most of your own making, then suddenly find that the island is an illusion. That you have people there with you, and that they’re constantly offering lifeboats.

  It still hurt me to think of how wrong I’d gotten things with Cal. I still felt like I wanted to repeatedly hit the undo button on my decisions with the column, just go back on each missed deadline and have a chance to redeem myself. I still felt heartbroken that Leo had left me, and confused about what he wanted us to be, what I should do with his change of heart. But I no longer felt like I was on an island.

  A little while later, I said good-night to Jase, went into my room, and opened up my computer.

  BRIEF CHRONICLE OF ANOTHER STUPID HEART

  Iris and Cal

  By Lu Charles

  July 20

  I would have called bullshit on the whole thing from the beginning if I didn’t see both Iris and Cal get the same look in their eyes. Constantly. When Iris hums to herself as they walk hand in hand, when Cal insists on doing the dishes at her parents’ house, when she underlines whole paragraphs in novels then simply has to voice her appreciation for what she’s just read, and how he’ll stop whatever he’s doing to listen, even if he clearly has no idea what she’s talking about.

  One eighteen-year-old gets that look, you start feeling sorry for them. Two of them give that look to each other and no matter what kind of cynic you are, you start thinking only teenagers really understand love. How insane it’s supposed to be.

  This started out as a plan to profile a series of couples dealing with the question of what happens to a relationship the summer before college starts. When I first pitched it to my editor, it was very timely, since it was the start of summer. Also, I’d just been dumped.

  The weeks have gone by though, and my goal of helping out those couples who might have needed some outside perspective is now mostly moot, as I’m sure most of you have also been dumped. If not, good for you. Or maybe bad for
you, I don’t really know.

  Then I met Iris and Cal. Rather, I should say that I eavesdropped on what sounded at the time like their breakup. They were happy, but worried about the challenges of being long-distance, and how that could mar this wonderful thing they had between them. Iris worried that they were too young to survive it, that four years apart was too much. Cal responded with almost the same thing I responded when I’d been dumped by my ex: “We have love. Isn’t that enough?”

  They went their separate ways. I assumed they’d fallen victim to the precollegiate breakup like so many eighteen-year-olds do. I thought about my ex. I thought, no, it’s probably not enough. Not when you’re eighteen. Then, through a twist of fate in the form of a dropped wallet, I saw Cal and Iris again.

  They were still together.

  With a caveat: they were going to break up at the end of summer.

  Like any good journalist, I became single-mindedly obsessed over this decision, and convinced myself I had to write about them. Mired in writer’s block since my breakup, I convinced myself that they were the only thing I could write about. I had to explore all the nuances of their decision, of their unique relationship, the love that they wanted to hold on to but were okay eventually letting go of. Under the guise of this column, I started spending time with them, eventually forming a friendship based on the mere fact that being in the proximity of their love made me feel better about love itself.

  I kept expecting to see dramatic flare-ups caused by their unique arrangement. I kept expecting their self-imposed expiration date to strain the way they were with each other. But somehow they resisted the dramatic. I saw them both struggle with the thought of losing the other, but throughout the past few weeks, I’ve also seen them dive into their love so deeply that they achieved what we all hope to achieve—everything but the love faded to the periphery.

  Iris has impeccable vintage style, and the confidence to pull off her pinup-model aesthetic. She’s funny and insightful, and knows exactly what she wants to do when she goes to school—she’s already declared as an international business major at Pepperdine, a school she knew she wanted to attend as soon as she saw the campus.