“What?” Jason yells.
“I’m giving you a time-out,” I tell him. “Come with me.”
He stumbles under my grasp. KK laughs, but I can’t tell whether it’s at Jason or because Caspian is tickling her with his lower jaw.
“Where are we going?” Jason asks.
“My room,” I answer. There’s too much to drink in the kitchen.
“Oooooh. I remember your room.”
I am sure that what he remembers is not the same as what I remember. That’s what made it so hard to break up with him. He is remembering sex and kisses and being together. What he can’t possibly remember is how lonely I still felt. Even when he was there, I kept thinking, This isn’t enough. Because it didn’t stop me from worrying. It didn’t block the intricately self-directed fears from my mind. Sometimes he could distract me…but I always knew it was a distraction. As soon as he left—sometimes before he left—my mind would return to its magnetic north, pointing toward all the things that could and would go wrong.
“I’ve never seen you drink this much,” I say as I steady him through the hallway. “Is this a new thing?”
“Just getting ready for college!” he replies.
There are echoes, deliberate or not, of what I told him when I called off our relationship. I dwelled on the fact that he was going to Boston in the fall and I was staying, as a way of not getting into the fact that we were in different places already. It didn’t seem fair to tell him that I didn’t think he really knew me, because I was the one who’d kept my thoughts to myself. I hadn’t let him in, so I couldn’t blame him for not understanding what was inside. I blamed it on Boston instead.
When he gets into my room, he goes straight for the bookshelf. “Yup,” he says, then takes a collection of Nathan Englander short stories off the shelf. “I gave you this, you know.”
I nod.
“Remember the night I got it for you?”
I don’t. But I tell him I do.
He thumbs through the book for a second, as if our own history is written inside. Then he puts it back on the shelf and looks at me hard.
“Why did you invite me here?” he asks.
“Honestly, to prevent more damage to the living room. No ulterior motive, just interior motive.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t mean here. I mean tonight. What got me back on the guest list?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“URRRRRR,” Jason groans, making a buzzer noise. “Try again.”
Try again?
“Because…it’s been too long. And we’re leaving soon, so—”
“URRRRRR. Not it.”
“What—you don’t think it’s been too long?”
“URRRRRR.”
“What?”
“URRRRRR.”
I am getting more and more annoyed. “What do you want me to say?” I ask.
“I want you to tell me why you invited me.”
“I already told you! It’s because I wanted to see you.”
“URRRRRR.”
“Because you’re my friend.”
“URRRRRR.”
“Stop it!”
“URRRRRR.”
“Because I wanted you here.”
“URRRRRR. Be honest.”
“I am!”
“URRRRRR. One more time: WHY DID YOU INVITE ME?” he shouts.
“Because I felt bad!” I shout back. “Okay? I FELT BAD.”
“DING DING DING!”
“But I also wanted to see you!”
“No, no—don’t cover it up now. You felt bad. And do you think having me here should make you feel less bad? Is that fair? Shouldn’t I, as the brokenhearted party, be the one who gets to determine how you feel?”
“You’re not the brokenhearted party.”
“You dumped me!”
“It wasn’t working!”
“It was! I was just up against too much.”
Now it’s my turn to groan. “That means it wasn’t working!”
“No. It means that your sister was against me and you wouldn’t go against her enough for me to win.”
Yes, Ilsa thinks Jason is boring. Yes, Ilsa always believed he was the safe choice. Certainly, Ilsa was still trying to sell me on other boys while I was dating Jason. She actively encouraged me to break up with him, leaving morning Post-it notes on the bathroom mirror that said Today’s the Day You Get a Better Boyfriend!
But Ilsa was not the reason I broke up with him.
“It’s not that,” I tell Jason now. “It was never that.”
Jason laughs. “It was always that. Whether you see it or not. Your blind spot is five-foot-six tall, without heels.”
“I can think for myself, okay?”
He comes over to me, starts to give me a hug. I don’t fight it, but I don’t really encourage it, either. This is our relationship in one action: He thinks he’s helping, and I think it’s awkward.
“Untether yourself,” he whispers in my ear.
Like—
Like—
Like it’s that easy.
Like he has any idea what he’s talking about.
Like he didn’t want me to be tethered to him instead.
Like I’m not already tethered to everyone.
Only that’s not actually how I see it. It’s not like there’s this cord that connects me to him, or to Ilsa, or to anyone else. No. When I picture it, it’s more like I’m one of those old illustrations of Gulliver, tied to the ground with hundreds of different ropes. Ilsa controls some of them, sure. But others are manned by the friends I care about. Some are staked by strangers I care about, or are tied to the fact that every time I check the news it feels like the world’s going wrong. Tie after tie after tie. And I just lie there on the ground, giving them more time to get more ropes. I rarely struggle. Because the few times I tried to cut the ropes, I ended up cutting myself instead. Which was not what I wanted, either.
Jason doesn’t know any of this. Ilsa would, if she’d only open her eyes. Parker has moments when I think he understands, and other moments when he seems too deep in his own life to be considering mine.
Jason hugs me tighter.
“I miss you,” he says. “I miss this.”
It takes a good minute before he realizes I’m not hugging him back. And even then, he disengages without acknowledging it, acting like we’ve both let go at the same
