Page 50 of Lovely War
He looks at me blankly. He must remember. It was the most obvious thing in the world. I disappeared to the bathroom for long periods to cry. I sat at my computer ignoring my work, typing long messages and ignoring everyone around me. I missed deadlines and came in late. I felt like I was walking around with a sign stuck to my back that read,warning: emotional meltdown in progress.
But it’s clear he’s being honest. He doesn’t remember, he’s not pretending for my sake. I exhale. “That’s a good thing, I guess. I thought everyone knew about my hot mess of a love life then.”
He goes still. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Radford, tell me,” he wheedles.
“No,” I say, failing to suppress a nervous smile.
He smiles back. “Come on, it’s Valentine’s Day. In the grand spirit of the holiday, tell me about your hot mess of a love life.”
I let out a theatrical groan. This is dangerous territory, senior year. It’s all mixed up in other subjects I can’t discuss with him. But I need to prove him wrong about me being a stone-cold cynic.How close can I get?How close, to the touchiest subject, without someone getting hurt?
I drain my water glass and order a beer. After the bartender sets it in front of me on a cardboard coaster, I begin. “The summer after junior year, after my Sixers internship ended, I did a summer session in Italy. I had always wanted to go there, and I was so jealous of my friends who did full semesters abroad.”
He nods. He couldn’t study abroad either. Given its status as a winter sport, basketball monopolized the entire school year.
“I’d never had any sort of emotionally intense relationship before.” I make a self-mocking face. “But my first week there, I met a guy.”
“Name?”
“Oliver.” It’s weird to say his name out loud. I haven’t, in the longest time. I don’t miss him, but I used to spend a lot of time dwelling on our history. Before I came back to Ardwyn and this job consumed so much space in my mind.
“He wasn’t Italian. He was British, living in Florence. We met at a park where I was taking pictures. Imagine a movie montage and you’re pretty much there. We clicked right away. We’d take these long walks on cobblestone streets and talk for hours. It was Florence. You don’t have to try to make it romantic; it just is. We found a twenty-five-dollar flight to Paris on a weird budget airline with hot pink planes and spent a weekend there. Eating pastries in the Tuileries and talking about our hopes and dreams.”
I stir the ice in my empty water glass with the straw and sneak a look at him. He’s watching me, listening, with a careful expression.
“I wasn’t naïve,” I continue. “I knew it couldn’t be a long-term thing, and I was fine with that. But then he told me he loved me. And he asked me to be his girlfriend. He said we would find a way to make it work.”
Ben chews his lip.
“At that point I let myself fall pretty hard. He said those things even though he didn’t need to, so I trusted that he meant them. I imagined a future with him. He Skyped mysister with me. We were talking about him visiting me at Ardwyn around Halloween. I even started looking into whether I could get a job working for a pro team in Europe after graduation.”
I shake my head. “I’m sure you can see where this is going.”
His voice is gentle. “Tell me.”
“A week after I got home in August, he broke up with me. Via video chat. I remember the connection was bad so the screen kept freezing and catching my ugly-cry face.”
“He’s the worst,” Ben says.
I feel a smile unfurl on my face. “I don’t think he meant to hurt me. He was just reckless with my feelings. He got caught up in it like I did. It wasn’t until the fantasy was over that reality hit and he realized it would never work. And he was right; I understood that eventually. But it was my first heartbreak—my only heartbreak—and I didn’t cope well. I didn’t sleep, I drank a lot. Slacked off in my classes, couldn’t focus at work. So, yeah. I don’t doubt that they fall into something on this show. Maybe even love. But I think that’s the easy part.”
He’s quiet for a moment, spinning his pint glass in his hand.
“I never noticed,” he finally says. “That you were having a hard time.”
I shrug. “You and I weren’t close outside work. I’m glad you didn’t notice.”
“I’m not.” He presses his mouth shut, a contemplative half smile. “Maybe we weren’t best friends, but I wish—” He runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.”
There was one night, a random sweaty Wednesday at oneof the bars near campus. I was in the bathroom with Cassie, blubbering over Oliver and rubbing the melted mascara from under my eyes, when I got a text message from Maynard that made me leave my phone next to the sink and make a beeline for the bar. I took three shots in a row, bam, bam, bam. Then I tried to convince the band to play “Since U Been Gone,” waving my middle finger at them when they politely declined. Finally, I grabbed a baseball cap off the head of a complete stranger and kissed him next to the old arcade game in the back.
“You never went to the bars,” I say. “Believe me, you would’ve noticed if you’d seen me out.”
His face is serious. He traces a line in the condensation on his glass with his finger. “I had my own stuff going on that year.”
