when Maria started to cry in the basement darkness, illuminated only by the mounted flat-screen television—Dad finally caved and got rid of that huge cracked cube—I broke. I’ll admit it—I, too, bleed.

Maria cried every night for the rest of the summer. On her last night in Short Hills, I had to force her, sobbing and snotting, out of my garage and into her SUV—she did feel like a linebacker then. She backed down and pulled out onto West Road, stopping at the bottom of the driveway as if she had forgotten which way was “home.” When her headlights vanished in the night, I was left looking out the basement window, my eyes following the faint glow of the lightning bugs patrolling the front lawn, a wetness building in my mouth, my stomach turning.

I rushed to the basement bathroom to vomit; I could still hear her pleas as if they were an echo bouncing off the bathroom walls: “I’ll transfer! I can always transfer, right, Vic? I’ll transfer to Villanova or Rutgers or… or Fordham!”

But we both knew Maria was going to forever remain a Sun Devil, like her father and uncles and the next crop of DiMonica athletes.

I spit out the last bits of puke and wiped my hairy forearm across my lips and chin. I stumbled over to my laptop and googled Arizona State football team, and clicked Roster. I sorted the list of names into position and clicked Tyreek Jackson, the sophomore QB phenom from California and costar of the photograph Maria had posted during her official visit—the fodder that ignited the biggest blowout of the Victor-Maria era.

I got sick thinking about the picture, and looking at his picture—his bright white heart-melting smile sliced across his chocolate milk complexion that belonged on a Hollywood billboard—and thinking about the scheduled parties the softball team had with the football team (and baseball team and basketball team), let alone any random bump-into occurrences that begin in all films taking place on sun-drenched campuses in these United States.

I methodically checked Facebook and clicked on Maria DiMonica in the section that showed the world she was in a relationship with Victor “Vito” Ferraro—a burning, shimmering, warning to the world and freshman ASU baseball players like a firecracker, like a Roman candle.

But soon I wouldn’t even have that one granule of solace, for Maria’s coach, a big dyke stereotype of a softball coach, had forbidden her team from having Facebook profiles after a picture of the star pitcher fellating a bottle of Hayman’s whiskey had been posted from an anonymous account and she was subsequently banned from the NCAA tournament—as if the cogs of Arizona State were conspiring against me.

“Victor?” My mother tapped on the wood while standing in the doorway. “Oh, Maria already left? Why don’t you go take a nice hot shower, hmm? You’ll feel better, my prince.”

Ahh, yes, my mother believed that the scalding hot water from our shower tap melted away all aches, pains, moans, groans, sicknesses, viruses, illnesses, and depressions, as if we had installed into our split-level a panacean fountain from the jungles of El Dorado.

I walked past her and up into the shower, where I wept, and then to my bed, where I wept, and back down the basement steps and into the pullout bed, where I wept as I flipped to a fiery sermon by Tom Jones Cleaver before puking and weeping in the basement bathroom until I didn’t have anything left in my stomach.

I crashed on the pullout bed and gave myself a pep talk.

I won’t lose her. I’ll be perfect. When she needs me I’ll be there for her, and when she needs space I’ll give her that too. I’ll send her cute texts in the morning and before she goes to bed. I’ll be the chivalrous knight she can brag to her friends about (how hard could it be to learn Petrachan sonnets or canzones? It’s in my blood!) and I’ll be the Mongol when she comes home for break—she can brag to her friends about that, too. I’ll work out more and send her pics of my abs and arms, something to look forward to. And when we webcam, we can talk about our day and blow each other kisses—it’ll be like she never left!

I changed the channel; I didn’t want the pastor’s sermon to ruin my (absolutely surprising) buzz, and instead listened to the jingle of Three’s Company, a sitcom that held a special place in my heart.

Text from Maria <3 <3: I miss you already.

I didn’t do any of that shit. Maria and I fought immediately, every day, as if we were on a schedule:

Text to Maria <3 <3: Have fun.

Text from Maria <3 <3: … sarcasm?

Text to Maria <3 <3: No seriously.

Text from Maria <3 <3: Mhmmm

Come on, Victor! How much trouble would it’ve saved you to just put a :) at the end of your damn text!

I know, but as they say: “Hindsight is a real fuckin’ asshole.”

When we webcammed for the first time, it was I, the Mongol, who had to throw his face out of the screen to hide the tears. I’d lift up my sleeveless t-shirt to show my abs and she’d fellate a banana in her thong as I cracked one off, but it wasn’t as if she never left, it was nothing like the real thing. It was empty and pathetic and far from satiating—I needed flesh and throat and black lingerie. I hadn’t even masturbated once we started having consistent sex—I abdicated, I suppose, because Maria didn’t want me watching porn: “I’m your pornography,” she’d say. But this, this tug of desperation squeezed between her workout sessions forced me—yeah, yeah, forced me—to sneak back onto those sites I had last visited in 2006 like an addict crumbling into relapse.

It was during one of these dry yanks that I saw the little pale blue light emanating from Maria’s phone on the corner of her bed.

“Who’s that?”

“Hhmmm?”

“Someone is texting you,”

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