Page 76 of Problematic Summer Romance

“My question is: Do you think it’s because you’re older, and wiser, and more experienced? Should I be looking into dating older men?”

“Don’t. No older guys. They’ll only take advantage.”

“Notallolder men take advantage,” I contradict him. “I recently hung out with this ancient guy who wassupernice—”

“I know him well, and he’s a shithead,” he interrupts, harshly. A littletooharshly. “Goddammit, Maya. Just find a twenty-year-old.Anytwenty-year-old.”

I don’t know why, but it feels, just a little bit, like he’s running an ice cream scooper in the inside of my stomach and tearing out its lining. “Is that what you want?” I ask quietly.

“No. It’s not what I want, because—I don’tcare, Maya. It’s not my business who you date, fuck, hang out with. All I care about is your well-being, and I havealready jeopardized it once.”

The last couple of words are as close to yelling as he’s ever gotten with me. It makes my heart weigh a million pounds, how much he does, in fact, care. How misguided he is. How stubborn about the boundaries of the life I’m going to live, about the shape my happiness is allowed to take.

I am, I realize, on a bifurcating road. I could pursue him. Keep flirting with him. Tell him that I like him for a million reasons that have nothing to do with his age, or his money, or his looks. Try to get him to accept that he likes me, too. And when I inevitably fail to get through to him, lose him.

Or I couldhavehim. Not to the extent I want him, but…

It’s a no-brainer, my choice.

“Yeah, okay. Yap yap yap.” I force myself to sound bored. “One can’t even pretend to be a femme fatale anymore.”

I feel the confusion over the line. “What?”

“Listen, I was kidding.”

“…About?”

“I was just trying to get back at you for leaving me alone in your room. But…” I swallow. “You were right.Areright. You’re a million years older than me, and it would make things soooo weird with Eli, if I were to develop any kind of long-term crush on you. And, here’s the deal, I really do like sex. Which is the reason why I don’t want a thing with someone who lives on a different continent.”

He is silent. For a long while. Until he says, flatly, “Trouble.”

I laugh. “Yup, that’s me. Here’s the deal, I have no use for you as a boyfriend. I do, however, need a new friend, given that three of my old ones are on thin ice. Can you get over the fact that I’mstupidly beautifuland be that for me?”

“Depends. What kind of friend?”

Just a friend I can talk to, I think. But say, “Can I call you and laugh theatrically at every single thing you say when Georgia and Alfie are in the kitchen making dinner?”

“Maya,” he says, reproachful.

“What?” I reply, defensive.

“I’m disappointed you have yet to do that.”

Alfie comes tome on a sunny morning, several weeks after we broke up. I’m at the library, finishing up the bibliography for my thesis. He sits next to me, takes a deep breath, scratches the back of his head.

Uh-oh, I think.

“I’m sorry,” he says, wooden. “I was a dickhead. I acted…Harkness was right. I knew what I was doing was wrong. But I was halfway in love with Georgia before even realizing it.”

I fold my arms. Watch him sweat a little. Where my feelings should be—sadness, rejection, anger—I only find tumbleweeds. I’ve moved on from this guy way too quickly.It’s okay, I never really loved youis something that I could say, and it would be the truth, and maybe it would hurt him as much as he hurt me. But I no longer care about him enough to seek any kind of vengeance.

I do have a question, though. “Before you broke up with me, did you and Georgia…?”

After a moment, he nods. I’m not even surprised.

“Did Rose know?”

He nibbles at the inside of his lips, and I know this boy’s tells. I already have my answer. “She saw us once, and…She said she wanted nothing to do with it, and that she was going to pretend to have fulminating amnesia.”

---