Page 5 of You Started It

“What about winter formal?” I know it’s pathetic of me to ask, to even use sex to get him back, but I’m desperate. He’s slipping away. My anchor. My everything.

“The winter formal plan is off.” Ben pauses and takes one last look at me and my room, like this is the final picture of me he’ll have in his head. “Hopefully we can be friends someday.” He forces out the world’s phoniest smile before opening my door and leaving.

Friends? Someday? This isn’t Ben. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. For the last three years it’s been Ben Cameron and Jamie Taher-Foster. Why do the men in my life keep leaving me? What am I doing wrong? Not only am I unfriendable, but apparently, I’m unlovable too.

CHAPTER TWO

It’s been just over twenty-four hours since Ben dumped me. I haven’t left my room or bed since it happened, except to use the bathroom. A lot. I’ve decided to torture myself by scrolling through three years’ worth of pictures, zooming in on Ben’s face, trying to determine if he was ever happy or just faking it all this time. But all it’s doing is making me feel worse. Am I supposed to delete all my photos of us?

Wait, what if Ben has already erased me from his socials?

“Are you decent?” Amo Eli asks from outside my door.

“Yeah,” I respond from bed, forcing myself to put my phone down as my uncle enters my den of heartbreak.

“Where’s Benjamin?” Amo Eli asks, his eyes darting around my room. “I was worried I’d come in here to find the two of you macking.”

“Amo, if you’re going to insist on speaking like you’ve stepped out of a sitcom from the nineties, could you at least get the terms right?”

“What? Mackin’ the ladies—it’s, like, kissing and…other things.”

“No. Mackin’ is like flirting, obnoxiously, trying togetwith the ladies.”

“And what else?” he asks, now seated on the edge of my bed.

“What else, what?” My face scrunches up as I try to both read my uncle’s expression and find a polite way to get rid of him.

“What are the other meanings of the word ‘macking’? You know you want to tell me.” He places a hand on my leg, shaking it. Just like that, I lose my cool, bursting into a fit of tears. “Habibi, what’s wrong?” he asks, scooching closer. He lays his bear paw hands on my arm, which I’m using to mask the tears.

“Nothing. Except everything. My life as I know it is over!”

“It can’t be that bad,” he says, moving my arm away from my face. And there it is—a pitying look. I guess I’d better get used to receiving those now that I’ve been dumped.

I sit up and draw my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “Ben broke up with me.”

“Hmar,” my uncle says, his upper lip raised like he’s a matador trying to intimidate a bull. As much as I appreciate him taking my side, calling Ben a donkey isn’t all that helpful. And even if he is a donkey, he’s my donkey. Or at least he was. “Do you want to tell me why?”

“Not really.” I size Amo Eli up and, unfortunately, am unable to stop my face from reacting. “Going somewhere?”

“You don’t like my outfit?” He pulls on his bright pink polo and runs a hand over his teal shorts.

“It’s just a little casual.” It’s loud is what it is. Doesn’t quite go with the pickle-up-his-butt persona and minimalist home decor.

“We’re going to a clambake. Sort of a ‘goodbye to summer’ party. You want to come?” he asks, his brown eyes open wide.

I can think of a million things I’d rather be doing than hanging out with my uncle and his boyfriend. They’re in the lovestruck phase, where everything they do or say is adorable to one another. I hate it. Ben and I were never that mushy. Well, Ben wasn’t. I tried to suppress those giddy feelings. He didn’t really believe in public displays of affection, which made the few times he held my hand in public special.

“I’ll pass. But thanks.” Wouldn’t want to get in the middle of someone else’s flourishing relationship.

First, it’ll be overnight visits. Then Eric will start moving his things in gradually. Next thing you know, my uncle will be sitting Mom and me down before saying, “Here’s the thing…” It won’t be long before we’re left to figure out a new plan.

“What about Mom?” I ask. “What’s she doing tonight?”

“She’s giving the salon a deep clean and restock for fall.” He leans in. “Between you and me, your mother needs to get a life. So back to Benjamin. What happened?”

I get up and start picking all my discarded clothes off the floor. “He wants to break free. Experience senior year without ties or binds to me.” I aggressively collect my clothes until there’s a huge pile against my chest. “As if three years together, planning and building up to this moment, means nothing to him. He got a taste of what it’s like to be ‘one of them.’ A person who goes through life without goals and a ‘let’s see what happens’ mentality. He’s not cut out for that lifestyle. He needs grounding. He needs structure. Heneedsme,” I say, standing in front of my uncle and dropping the pile while pointing to my chest.

“Sit.” Amo pats my bed and I grudgingly sit next to him. “You remind me a lot of your mother, you know?”

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