The Break-Up Artist

32

On Saturday afternoons, most kids from Ashland are watching crappy movies on cable, running errands or working. (Maybe a scant few are doing homework, too. Maybe.) None of them are 35,000 feet up in the air lounging in first class, eating Salisbury steak and sipping on free champagne.

Except Huxley and me.

I told my parents I was hanging out with Huxley this weekend. I never specified where we’d be hanging out.

Huxley downs her second glass of champagne and peers out the window, something she hasn’t stopped doing since we crossed the Appalachian Mountains. It’s rare to watch her be so pensive.

“Are you okay?” I smack myself on the forehead. Dumbest question of the day. Let’s try again. “Do you want to talk?”

Worry clouds her face. “I know there’s not much we can do when we get there. I just need to see with my own eyes what he’s doing tonight, if...”

“If he’s having too much fun.”

“If he’s happy,” she says. She glances out the window again. “If he plays football for them, I don’t know if we’ll make it.”

“Don’t say that!” The flight attendant gives me the stink eye while she refills Huxley’s glass. She probably can tell I’m only in first class because of Huxley, not the other way around.

“He loves you. Remember Chris Gomberg’s party?”

She nods yes, but without conviction. “Things will be different if he goes off to school.”

“That’s why you want him to go to Vermilion.”

“I can’t lose him.”

She needs him close, needs the control. But I don’t get why she’s so intent on staying with him after he graduates. She’ll graduate a year later and go off to college and find another boyfriend. Is her senior-year status at Ashland that important?

“Maybe you two should just call it quits now. Let each other start fresh. We have brand-new lives waiting for us once we get out of Ashland.” I take a sip of my champagne. The bubbles tickle my nose, and I let out a Chihuahua yelp. The flight attendant shakes her head at me.

“I don’t want a brand-new life. I like my life with Steve. My parents were high-school sweethearts. They both went to Rutgers, got married right after and settled down back in Ashland. As old-fashioned as that sounds, it’s also incredibly romantic. They knew from the start what mattered the most. I want that with Steve.”

Diane also tried going that route with Sankresh, but it backfired. The only time when the whole high-school-sweetheart story works out is when the two people involved don’t think about it.

“Maybe you’re meant for something different. Maybe that’s not your life. You’re smart, Huxley, and you’re a born leader. Look what you’ve done with SDA. I think there’s this whole interesting future waiting for you. Do you really want to chuck it for the sake of some relationship?”

“It’s not just ‘some relationship.’” She swirls around her glass of champagne, watching the bubbles, so contemplative, as if she’s reviewing the past four years and making her own judgment.

“I began dating Steve for all the wrong reasons,” she says. “I liked him because he was Steve Overland. Now it turns out I actually love the guy.”

And I actually believe her when she says it. She sounds so natural about it, so genuine, like she’s stating a fact rather than proving a point. Unfortunately for her, it’s a fact that she can no longer control.

The warm breeze and amber setting sun of Dallas welcomes us. It makes me question living in a place that has snow.

When I turn my phone back on, I find a pair of text messages waiting for me.

Both from Ezra.

Can you meet up today? We need to talk.

I know how to fix what happened with Val. You’re the one I lurve.

Does lurve count as the L word?

“Why are you so smiley?” Huxley asks me.

I shove my phone in my purse. Heat rushes through me, but let’s just attribute that to the desert weather.

Our cab whizzes down the highway. We pass a steakhouse shaped like a cowboy hat. It’s unabashedly corny, yet endearing. Steve would like it here.

“Who was that?” she asks.

“Nobody.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.”

“I wasn’t smiley.” I can’t enjoy this. Not when every organ in Val’s body beats for Ezra.

We drop our luggage at the hotel. Huxley sprang for a penthouse suite with a living room, kitchen and balcony overlooking the pool.

“My dad had points,” she says.

I unfurl on the king-size bed and unwrap the mint on my pillow. It pays to be Huxley’s sidekick. I sit up, a thought coming to me.

“Why did you ask me to come with you?”

Huxley stops hanging up clothes. How much did she bring for one night?

“I don’t know. For some reason, when this idea popped into my head, you were the only friend I pictured joining me.”

“Really? More than Ally or Reagan?”

“Yes. They would never go along with this. You probably think I’m insane for coming here, but you also get it.”

It’s true, in some odd way. I guess I’m used to scheming, but she doesn’t know that.

“I know I can trust you,” she says.

I gulp down a lump in my throat. “Thanks.”

We change outfits, aiming for fun yet not very noticeable, and wash the smell of airplane off our skin. I crank country music on the alarm-clock radio, but Huxley’s not in the mood to laugh. She focuses on getting ready. She’s on a mission.

I release the dead bolt and open the door to the hall, but Huxley shuts it just as fast. She’s nervous as hell.

“Don’t worry,” I say. She’s so fragile and human. Any trace of the ice queen has melted, and I can see the girl I once knew underneath. “We’ll probably find Steve sitting on a bench, bored out of his mind.”

“Thank you for coming with me.” She takes a deep breath, and I can tell she wants to say more.

“What is it?”

“I’m sorry.”

I take my hand off the doorknob. “For what?”

“For ditching you. You were a good friend.”

I don’t have some huge emotional reaction where I grab her for a hug and cry hysterically into her shoulder while music swells. I thought I would if I ever received an apology, as if those words would magically fix the past four years. The damage can’t be undone, but I’m ready to move on.

I open up the door again and give her a reassuring smile. “Let’s go do some spying.”

After walking around campus for a good forty-five minutes, a student in the middle of a Vegan Rights protest sneers and directs us to Sigma Tau Iota, the fraternity of choice for football players.

“Say au revoir to your brain cells,” he said before returning to chanting. (“What do we want? Seitan! When do we want it? For dinner!”)

The frat house could use a paint job, but its majestic front columns and wide balconies give it a powerful aura. This is the place to be tonight, probably every night. Packs of students glom on to every inch of the property, each of them with a red Solo cup in hand. It’s two girls to every guy at this soiree.

The door’s wide-open (well, actually there’s no door), and we join the dense crowd. Sweat beads form on my forehead. This is Chris Gomberg’s party times fifty, except nobody has a history here. People scope out Huxley and me, but not because they know us. There’s no decade-long backstory branded on our foreheads. It’s freeing having a clean slate for once.

We push into a narrow hall and enter the stream of people going somewhere. Huxley looks like she wants to bathe in Purell. I’ll bet more than the heat and claustrophobia, Huxley hates not being recognized.

She peeks into a common room where girls and guys dance on plaid wingback chairs and an antique wood coffee table. My phone buzzes, and I remember that Ezra texted me earlier.

Where’ve you been? We need to talk. Can I see you this weekend?

“No sign of him,” Huxley says.

I can’t ignore him forever. I don’t want to. I don’t want to hurt Val, but this is my life, too. If she’s such a proponent of love and relationships, then she will have to understand. Nobody’s perfect, even best friends. I imagine Ezra and I talking about what happens next, and some more kissing.

I text back: Let’s meet up tomorrow night at 8. I can’t wait to see you!

“Who can’t you wait to see?”

I try to hide my phone, but Huxley’s too fast. I guess since we had a heart-to-heart, she believes she can know every detail of my life now. My face turns redder than a Solo cup as she scrolls through my messages.

“Wow, Rebecca. I had no idea.”

“I’m not a home wrecker,” I blurt out, which makes me sound super guilty. Looking for a distraction, I zero in on the keg and wait in line behind two guys with an aversion to grooming. We use their mushroom-cloud hair as cover in case Steve should come through.

“Do you love him?” Huxley asks, cutting to the heart of the matter.

I search for a definite answer. “I don’t know.”

“I thought you and Val were close friends.”

“We are!”

“Would you throw away that relationship for one with Ezra?”

How is Huxley so good with questions? She doesn’t mince words. Stalling, I glance to my left. A girl sips her beer and makes a stink face, then proceeds to pour out the rest of it on the carpet. I don’t even want to see Huxley’s reaction.

“‘Throwing away’ sounds so harsh. It’s more complicated than that,” I say.

“Not really. You are freely hooking up with her boyfriend. Why should she stay friends with you?”

“Because we’re best friends.” My head spins with guilt. I can’t live in a world where Val and I aren’t speaking. But does that mean I have to stay away from Ezra? I don’t want to live in that world either.

“I don’t know what to do. I can’t be with him, but I want to so badly.”

Huxley sizes me up. A satisfied smile is planted on her face, like she knows something I don’t.

“You don’t love him,” she says matter-of-factly.

Her confident tone ticks me off.

“You two sound like star-crossed lovers, and as you pointed out in English class, that makes you quote-unquote ‘full-on crazy.’ Knowing you shouldn’t be with Ezra makes you want him more.”

I’m shocked that Huxley was listening to me that day, and that she could quote me.

“Maybe Romeo and Juliet were in love,” I say.

“No. They weren’t full-on crazy, but definitely up there.” Huxley laughs at me, the first time she’s relaxed today. “What drew them together was the excitement of getting caught. That’s not love.”

“Or maybe they just fell for each other under really cruddy circumstances.”

“But what would’ve happened when things calmed down, when Romeo didn’t have to recite sonnets and get in sword fights? What would they be like on a random Tuesday? The couples that thrive on drama flame out the quickest. I’ve seen it a million times.”

I had a bunch of witty retorts, but they all fade away. I’m left gawking at my foamy beer, shocked that Huxley Mapother said something so...un-Huxley Mapother-ish. Do Ezra and I think we’re star-crossed lovers? Maybe that’s part of the excitement I feel when I think about him, knowing that I shouldn’t be thinking about him.

“And also, I have a feeling Ezra is the first guy who was ever into you. Am I right?”

She may be right, but I still find it rude. She reads my clenched expression.

“I thought so.”

He wasn’t my first kiss, though. I made out with a guy at a Model UN convention last year. He was from Ghana—at the convention, not in real life.

Huxley clinks my cup, and we drink. Now I know what sewer water tastes like.

“This is all so new for you,” she says. “I was in your shoes once, and I’m not condescending. I really was. I remember the mouthwash that fell out of Steve’s pocket, and that moment when I knew he was going to kiss me and my life was going to change forever. It’s so exhilarating. I think that’s what you like about Ezra. You like that he likes you.”

I scoff at the remark. “That sounds like Val.”

“Well, that’s why you two are best friends. You’re so alike. Honestly, I’m kind of jealous of the relationship you guys have. I don’t have that with any of my friends.”

“I shouldn’t throw it away.” The epiphany knocks me to the ground. I don’t care that I’m wearing a nice skirt. I sit cross-legged on the grimy floor, much to Huxley’s dismay. She’s right—I fell for the relationship crap, just like Val. Val just vocalizes what I refuse to say. I thought I was stronger than that. I thought I couldn’t be duped.

I’m half relationship zombie.

“I know what you need.” A guy in a baby-blue polo and cargo shorts grabs my free hand and pulls me up off the floor. He yells into my ear. I could get drunk off his breath. “You need. To do. A keg stand.”

“A what?”

“It’ll be good clean fun! I promise,” he says in his Southern twang, which is impossible not to swoon over. It’s the American version of a British accent.

“Um, sure.”

He takes my hand. Huxley clutches my other hand and pulls me away. “No. You’re not doing a keg stand. You’re wearing a skirt, Rebecca!”

We hear a holler loud enough to overpower the noise, and Greg Baylor barges into the far end of the hall. Beer stains streak his Chandler University T-shirt, but he certainly isn’t letting that get him down.

“It’s the beer train!” he says to the three girls behind him. “Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga.”

Huxley and I turn away from him. We push through the tightly packed partygoers, who are magically parting for Greg’s train. We keep our heads down as he gets closer.

He stops at the keg, while Huxley and I flee into the common room. We sidestep around grinding girls and pass a contemplative foursome of wallflowers who came to the wrong place for conversation. Rows of house photos line the room.

In the photos, the boys look like respectable gentlemen. A guy in his underwear and a cowboy hat races past us, grazing Huxley’s boobs.

Pictures can be so deceiving.

We squeeze into a circle three people deep that lines the dining room table. They’re cheering something that I can’t see.

“That was close!” I say.

“If Greg’s here, then Steve has to be close.”

Very close.

Like right in front of us.

In the center of the circle is Steve, taking body shots off two blondes in bikinis lying on the dining table.

He slurps down both shots without looking up and garners whoops and hollers. Some Southern guy even yells, “Yee-haw!”

Steve smiles so wide that his teeth may fall out of his mouth.

“I need some air,” Huxley says.

Flying first class isn’t as fun on the return trip. I can’t enjoy my tortellini centimeters from an ailing Huxley.

I keep thinking about the couples I’ve broken up. I plot and scheme, but I’m never present for the personal anguish that comes with breaking up. I’ve never had to watch it firsthand.

“What are you going to do? Are you going to break up with him?”

Huxley locks eyes with me. Her misery has hardened into determination. “No. I’m going to fight for the guy I love.” She sips on her water. “What are you going to do about Ezra?”

The pilot makes an announcement that we’re getting ready to land. It’s time to reenter reality, and I’m prepared.