Page 62 of Exes and O's

As I draw over the heart eyes, transforming them into innocent, totally casual circles, I remind myself I’m attracted to Trevor purely on a physical level only. It’s just a minuscule, microscopic, basically nonexistent crush. If I repeat that enough times, it must be so. Besides, Trevor Metcalfe doesn’t do love.

“We live together as platonic friends.” My tone is clipped as I press down a loose corner of one of the succulent leaves where the glue didn’t hold.

When she scrunches her nose and asks whatplatonicmeans, I’m reminded I’m speaking to a nine-year-old, despite her disgruntled-adult vibes. Time for a crash course in the bleak reality of love.

“Platonic means strictly friends. No romantic feelings. At all,” I explain, holding the booklet of construction paper to obstruct her view of my flaming cheeks. “Do you have any friends who are boys?”

She smothers a cutout heart with white school glue. “My best friend Dylan is a boy. He’s not cute. And he only shares his snacks with Sally.” She grimaces, apparently displeased with this Sally person.

“Aw, give him a break. He’s probably in love with her.” I let outa nostalgic sigh, abandoning Trevor’s card to start on Crystal’s. “My first crush, Daniel, gave me butterflies. Every year on Valentine’s Day, I’d give Daniel the biggest, most extra card. He’d give me a full-size chocolate bar when everyone else got minis.” If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.

Daniel and I had an adorable meet-cute on the first day of kindergarten I’d be proud to tell my grandchildren about. He was wearing denim overalls and an oversize red ball cap, which I later learned covered the botched bowl cut his mother had given him. He was sitting in the sandbox, ugly crying and being an overall miserable little twat.

Daniel never grew to like other kids. I didn’t mind his antisocial tendencies in the slightest, mostly because I did enough talking for the both of us. It also meant I had Daniel all to myself. We bonded over our shared love of boxed sugary snacks, reading all the books we could get our sticky hands on, and a morbid obsession with pretending to be ghosts in his attic. We were inseparable, so much so that Mom and Dad referred to Daniel as the son they never had.

Bypassing the cootie stage entirely, we graduated to awkward, prepubescent hand-holding and close-lipped pecks by age ten. According to my doodle-filled notebooks and diaries, I was the future Mrs. Nakamura. It was destiny, or so I thought, until Daniel’s parents took a grand dump on my life plan and moved the family across the city partway through middle school. We sent emails back and forth for a year and a half, but their frequency fizzled the longer we were apart. We lost touch entirely by high school.

Angie isn’t buying it. “Butterflies?”

“Imaginary butterflies. Inside.” I point to my stomach. “Imagine a bunch of butterflies fluttering around in there.”

Angie giggles and scrunches her tiny nose. “That would tickle.”

“Exactly. That’s how it feels when you like someone. Like all the butterflies are flapping their wings inside of you, ready to spread their wings and soar.” I probably sound like an old kook, but Angie seems to understand.

“Why didn’t you marry Daniel?” she asks.

I woefully explain how he moved away and how I’ve been unable to locate him since, which is unfortunate given he’s the lone ex left on my list. Far too many hours have been logged searching all the variations of Daniel’s name I can think of, with zero success. I’m beginning to wonder if he was the unfortunate bystander of a Mafia hit and had to go into witness protection.

“I get the butterflies around Matty. And Oliver,” Angie admits shyly. She tells me all about Matty and Oliver, two boys in her class who are “cute” for different reasons (one is a bad boy who gets a lot of time-outs; the other is a dependable nerd). She reminds me of my young self, hopelessly rotating between crushing on literally every boy in class.

“Exactly my point. Attraction is key. I’m not attracted to your uncle Trevor,” I point out. “I mean, he’s handsome, but not my type.” My eye twitches again. I’ve lied to a child. A hospitalized child waiting for a heart transplant, no less. I’m officially going to hell, and my permanent residency is well deserved. At the same time, coming clean about my crush would only result in a myriad of questions, all of which I can’t answer. The last thing I want to do is explain to a nine-year-old that her uncle has deep-rooted commitment issues.

Angie gives me a sassy head tilt. She knows I’m full of shit, but she’s allowing me to live in denial. Bless.

“Why? Has your uncle said anything about me?” I ask, pretending to be wholly focused on Crystal’s card. I cut out a little container of protein powder and writeI’m WHEY into youalong the top.

A devious smile spreads across her tiny face. “He says you have the worst singing voice he’s ever heard. He likes to talk about you.”

I lurch forward in my chair, ready to demand a play-by-play of the entire conversation, start to finish. Context is key. But I manage to rein it in.

“My mom calls Uncle Trevor a spinny door.” She twirls her finger around in a clockwise circle.

“A spinny door?” I repeat, rifling in Angie’s pencil case for the glitter glue.

“Like the ones downstairs that spin around. Because of all his girlfriends,” she says matter-of-factly. “He has lots. But he doesn’t let me meet them.”

I laugh, realizing she’s referring to the revolving doors in the hospital lobby. Angie’s mom isn’t wrong about Trevor having a revolving door of women. Though in his defense, he hasn’t brought anyone home since Gabby over two and a half months ago—back when my feelings toward him were simple and not a chaotic shitstorm. Now I’d rather undergo an unnecessary rectal exam before hearing him and a random rocking each other’s respective worlds through the tissue-thin walls of our apartment. And still, emotionally unavailable men like Trevor are to be regarded as potentially lethal plagues, to be avoided at all costs.

“So, Angie,” I say, clearing my throat, eager to change the subject from Trevor’s sex life to my main objective—party planning. “Is Rapunzel still your favorite princess?”

Distracted by the glitter glue, she nods, slightly less enthusiastic than the last time she told me.

“Do you want to dress up like her for your birthday?” I ask, spreading glitter glue over Crystal’s card.

Her brown eyes light up for a split second, before darkening in disappointment. “Marissa says I can’t be Rapunzel because I’m not blond.”

My heart aches at her admission. Whoever this Marissa is, I want to give her a piece of my mind.

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