Page 107 of Getting Over You

“Well, for starters, she planned a birthday picnic for you guys in the same spot your fling started. Real sentimental. And then—”

My stomach bottoms out. “Oh, god. What did I do? What did I say?”

Rory purses her lips, thinking. She crosses the room, sitting on the end of the bed. “You got really mad about the picnic,” she murmurs. “That’s what EJ said. He said you told Gigi she doesn’t… You told Gigi she doesn’t matter to you. She’s gone now, though. She left this morning.”

I blink. “What do you mean, left? Where is she?” My heart sinks to my toes, blood turning icy. “Where’d shego?”I take an unsteady breath, chest rattling. My head is spinning.

“She went back to Connecticut. I took her to the airport this morning.”

Then I lose the contents of my stomach onto my bedroom floor. When I think I’m done heaving, I sit up, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“You’re a disaster,” Rory tells me. Her face pinches. “And you are cleaning that up.”

“Don’t I fucking know it.”

As much as I don’t want to, I force myself to shower. The water pounding against my skin makes my body ache, and the pounding in my head has evolved to a constant, incessant force against the back of my eyes.

I pull on jeans and a T-shirt, and then hear Eddy’s voice, gravelly, through the walls.

“My boy!” he says, meeting me halfway as I walk into the living room.

“Hi, old man,” I say through as much of a grin as I can muster. “How you doin’?”

“Never better,” he tells me. “Cancer isn’t all bad. Worst part is the dying.”

I cough back a laugh. “Jesus, Ed.”

“It is what it is, kid. Gotta embrace it.”

“He’s coping much better than me,” my mom says from behind him. She’s so petite—about half the size of me and two times as small as EJ. Her facial features are just as mousey as the rest of her, so we clearly didn’t get most of our genetic traits from Mom. But the eyes, both of us definitely did.

Hers sparkle with joy. “Caderade,” she sighs into me as we hug. “Baby. How are you?”

“Hanging in,” I say. “You?”

“Thankful for a break.” She takes a breath, peering at Eddy. “It’s been a whirlwind this summer.”

“The only one who thinks this mess is a whirlwind is you,” Eddy tells Mom. “I’m fine. I’m ready to be put in the ground, you know?”

“Edward,” my mother sighs. “My god. You aren’t even terminal. Stop acting like you’re going to drop dead.”

“I think you need to stop acting like I’m gonna drop dead,” Eddy sneers. “You countin’ down or somethin’? You know my fortune’s all tied up.”

“BecauseI’mthe one interested in your tattoo empire,” Mom tells Eddy with a roll of her eyes. “Sure.”

The eye roll gets me, and my mind goes to Gigi right away. As if she knows, Mom says, “Where’s that girl you’ve been telling me about?”

My jaw pulses. “Things didn’t work out,” I mutter.

Mom frowns. “Too bad. I would have loved to finally meet the girl that’s taken over my son’s heart.”

“Yeah, I would have liked that, too.”

“When were you going to tell me you’ve been telling Mom about Gigi all summer?” EJ asks as we walk home from the seafood restaurant Mom insisted on.

I look back, seeing Eddy and Mom a ways away, caught in conversation themselves. “It wasn’t pertinent info to you,” I tell him.

“And it is for Mom?”

---