Page 49 of Nothing Like the Movies

I wiped at my cheeks and tried sounding like I was fine. “I know everything’s a mess right now, so it’s fine if you want to take a break from us while you’re dealing with all of it. I’ll still be here as your friend, and we can revisit the rest later.”

“No, Liz.” He made a noise, like an unhappy laugh or a groan, and then he said,“No.”

“No?”

“No, don’t you get it?” He sounded upset now. “I need a clean break. Fromus.”

I felt like I’d been slapped when he said that, like a part of me was being ripped away. “You don’t even want to be friends?”

“I think it’s best if we call it done and just walk away.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered. I could forgive him for anythingafter what he’d just gone through, but I didn’t know how he could do this. How he could want this.

He was the center of my world;wewere my center.

How could he be fine with not being in my life anymore?

God.He didn’t want me in his life anymore.

“Is this why you didn’t FaceTime?” I said, hating that he could hear I was crying but somehow unable to stop myself from asking. “Because you knew it’d be awkward as hell when I started crying?”

He didn’t say anything. I waited, but he didn’t say a word.

“Wes.”

“I have to go now,” he said, his voice thick and quiet. “I just… can’t…”

And then I watched through tear-blurred eyes as the call was dropped and his name disappeared from my phone’s display.

“Hello?”Campbell snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Where’d you go, Elizabeth?”

I blinked and felt like I’d just gone back in time. Literally. I gave my head a shake and said, “Ugh—to the bad place.”

“So what happened after that?” Leo asked. “He broke up with you, and then…?”

“Then I bawled my eyes out for a few months and moved on,” I said, as if it’d been that easy. “End of story.”

“What abouthim, though?” Clark asked. “He’s back at UCLA—how did that happen?”

“I genuinely have no idea,” I admitted, really curious about that part of it. “I’ve stayed in LA every summer to work, and my dadcomes to California for holidays, so Omaha is like a former life, in a way. The only person I keep in touch with is my friend Joss, but she pronounced him ‘dead to her’ when he dumped me, so she’s never mentioned him. I literally know nothing about his life after we broke up.”

“I think we should table the questions for now,” Clark said, pushing Campbell out of the way as he stepped forward to lean his arms on the counter in front of me. “I don’t like your face right now. You okay, kid?”

“Of course. I’m good,” I said, grateful for my friends as Clark smiled at me with fatherly concern in his eyes. I was also grateful that I meant it—Iwasgood. It’d been years, Wes and I were different people, and I was fine now.

But I kept thinking about it on my run, the way I hadn’t been fine for a long time after the breakup. I cried a million tears into the Emerson Baseball sweatshirt that I didn’t give back, mourning a loss I couldn’t understand.

It’d been impossible to accept, going frommadly in lovetoutterly aloneovernight.

God, I’d foolishly overthought so many things from that phone call.

He sounded sad. Did his voice crack at the end, just before he hung up? What if this has everything to do with his dad’s death and he still actually loves me?

Maybe I should call him.

I’d deluded myself into believing so many things about that conversation until I went home for Christmas break. Then Ilearned—on New Year’s Day—the real reason why he’d dumped me.

It had nothing to do with his father, or him somehow still loving me, and everything to do with a beautiful girl named Ashley.

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