Page 12 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

Auntie Lena looks entirely too intrigued. She eyes me like a mother, which I guess is appropriate, since she has long felt like the closest thing I’ve got.

Don’t get me wrong. I in fact have and know my mother, but after my parents’ divorce, I ended up in this shop the same way everything else does – forgotten, unwanted, desperate to belong – and Helena Berryhill never questioned it. She let me hang around like one of the stray cats she lovingly feeds in the alleyway. After closing time, she would drop me off at home the evenings my mom couldn't find the time to pick me up, and they would make the emotionally avoidant smalltalk of sisters that had long ago lost touch. It was always so strange to see them together: Lena in her classic, simple style, with a Julia Roberts smile and Audrey Hepburn capris, and my mother in the overdone makeup and feathered hair of every soccer mom in the ‘90s, a look she adopted when she married my stepdad Eric, moved us into his two-story house in the suburbs, and threw herself headfirst into getting motherhood “right” the next two times around.

I love my aunt in a way that I’ll never be able to adequately express. I love that she never tried to change herself for anyone else. I love that she didn’t talk shit about my dad every chance she got. I can’t say I’m especially thrilled, though, that she can always see right through me.

My expression sours.

“There was no sex,” I say flatly.

Both of them seem to deflate a bit at this.

“What’s the point of being successful if you’re not even going to enjoy it?” Meg says in an accusatory tone.

“I enjoy myself plenty,” I defend. “But seriously, he’s trying to take everything from me, and all you care about is sex?”

“Wait, I think I’m missing something. What’s he taking?” Auntie Lena asks.

Meg fills her in on the details while I pluck a pair of wedges off the rack and go find Kamille, who is trying on sunglasses near the front register, like a girl after my own heart.

“What about these?” I ask her, dangling the shoes from my fingertips.

“Those are cool,” she grins, pulling off a pair of cat-eye rims and replacing them carefully.

“They’re your size.”

I love the look on her face when she takes them from me, plopping into the nearest armchair to try them on. They’re seventies wedges: sassy enough to make her look young, but quite literally old enough to make her feel older. She strikes a pose with her gangly limbs, almost matching my five seven height, despite being in middle school.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“Amazing,” I say. “Like you could take over the whole world.”

“You always say that,” she laughs.

“Well,” I shrug. “When are you going to start believing it?”

Kamille is the oldest of four siblings and lives with her grandmother. I can’t pretend to understand the dynamics of her life, but I get the feeling there hasn’t always been a lot leftover for her, and I know that feeling like the back of my hand. Maybe this is why we fit together so well. I could sense it the moment I met her, looking awkward and serious at a Girls Going Places event three years ago, and I knew we were going to click.

No surprise: we didn’t immediately click. I earned the first sliver of Kamille’s trust when I kept showing up for our sessions even though she told me she was too old for all of this and the whole thing was pointless. I won the next bit when I gave her a journal with sparkly pens and told her that her thoughts and words were important, even if she didn’t want to share them with me or anyone else. But the day we really clicked was when I took her to the symphony. She’d never been to the theater before, and her eyes were wide as she listened, and she told me she’d never heard music like that in person before – the kind you can feel.

In the end, it wasn’t her awkwardness or seriousness that won me over. It was that familiar, independent, determined spark.

“How much are they?” she asks now.

“I’ve got it,” I say, waving my hand. “We never celebrated that year-end report card, remember?”

This is always the same conversation we have at Nine Lives. I don’t want her to think that everything comes easily, but I do want her to understand that those very rare Sometimes when you can get Exactly What You Want really do exist. I need her to know that good things don’t only get doled out to everyone else, that they find us all every now and then.

At least, I’m holding out hope that they do.

“Plus, you’ve got music camp coming up,” I add. “You still need an outfit for the end-of-the-week concert, right? I thought I saw it on the packing list.”

“Yeah,” she offers, glancing away.

“What’s that look?”

She shrugs a sharp shoulder. “I don’t know if I want to go.”

“To camp? You talked about it all year. They only picked the top musicians from every school. You earned this.”

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