Page 75 of The Unraveling

My mom said nothing, only exclaiming as she nicked herself with the knife as she cut the onions.

I shut the front door behind me and stepped out into the lavender dusk and sat on the front step.

“Hey,” I said.

“Uh, hey.”

“What’s wrong?”

He let out a big exhale, and then said, “I didn’t want to do this on the phone.”

Every function in my body froze at the words, knowing exactly what they meant.

“Nick?” I asked, the syllable coming out as a sharp staccato.

“Last night was just kind of weird for me,” he went on.

I was almost surprised he didn’t hear my racing heart through the phone.

“It was weird for me, too,” I said. My tongue wrapped clumsily around the words.

“Yeah, I could tell. I don’t know, Jocelyn.”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

There was a long pause of confirmation and I felt my soul pool at my feet.

“It just didn’t feel right,” he said. “I don’t know what else to say.”

It didn’t feel right for me either, but somehow, even though we were saying the same thing, it didn’t feel like we meant the same thing.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’m actually at practice right now.”

“You’re—you’re at practice, but you, like, stepped away to call and break up with me?”

“Jocelyn, come on. Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?”

I felt clammy all over. I was spinning my anklet around my ankle again and again, the small chain scratching deeper and deeper with each revolution.

“I’ll see you around,” he said.

I shook my head, though I knew he couldn’t see it, and never got a chance to say anything else because he hung up without waiting for a response.

I hadn’t even noticed that tears had begun falling down my face.

The phone dropped from my hand and then so did the heartbreak.

I curled over my bare knees and cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. I was there for a few minutes when I heard the front door open behind me.

“Jocelyn?”

I braced for her to yell at me. For her to tell me to get inside, to tell me she’d been waiting for me. For her to realize what had happened and start lecturing me about how she’d known it would happen all along and how I should have listened to her.

I heard the screen door open, too, then my mom’s footsteps behind me.

I cried harder, dreading whatever was coming.

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