You are not gentle.
After, I take a shower, holding my fist to my mouth so the sobs won’t echo off the tiles. I’m so fucking scared. I pray you won’t have another go at me. If you do, I’ll shatter.
You pull open the glass shower door and step inside, smiling as you dunk your head under the stream of water. You’re acting like everything is fine, like what happened in your bed was us making love. I become Contrite and Subservient Female. You ask me to wash your back. I do. Then you turn around and watch as I wash you off me. The soap travels from my breasts to my hips, my thighs, my feet. Finally, it goes down the drain. I stay in the shower long after you get out. I wait until the water runs cold. Until all of you is gone.
FORTY
I am breaking up with you today.
I am breaking up with you even if you start to cry and your electric-blue eyes turn extra bright, your eyelashes heavy with tears. I am breaking up with you even though I will never again see you onstage, your lips kissing the mic, and think, That’s my boyfriend.
Pull out every trick you have, every sweet word, every wounded glance. Throw me your best excuse, your wildest promise—throw it hard so I can knock it out of the park. Give me everything you’ve got. It won’t be enough to keep me by your side.
“Five words, sweetie. Just five words. You can do it,” Nat whispers. I’m. Breaking. Up. With. You.
She grabs me in a fierce hug, then goes to hide with Lys behind a nearby SUV in the Roosevelt parking lot. She’s promised to break up with you for me if I don’t do it. I gave her permission to drag me away from you, if need be. She would do it, too.
I’ve asked you to meet me in the high school parking lot because it’s a public place. Because I don’t trust you anymore. I’m scared to be alone with you.
I’m breaking up with you right before graduation. Because I won’t let you ruin this day. I won’t let you take one more thing away from me.
I’m going to spend the whole summer with the friends I’ve neglected for the past year. And then I’m going to go to a college far away. And I’m going to find someone I don’t want to break up with.
As soon as we’re over, I’m going to call your mom. If you try to hurt yourself, that’s on you. I can’t carry you anymore. I won’t.
You’re walking toward me now, fedora pulled low over your eyes. You smile when you see me and dance a little jig because this is the day we’ve been waiting for. But I’m going to make it the worst day of your life. I’m sick with nerves. For once, there isn’t a part of me that still loves you, that still lifts a little when you walk toward me with that slacker shuffle. I want nothing to do with you ever again.
“How’s my girl?” you say when you reach me.
I feel the cracks spreading through my heart as it starts to break. You’re wearing the tie I bought you for Christmas—the one with the skull and crossbones. I know you love it. I know you’re wearing it for me. And it’s so weird, the you that I used to love superimposed over the guy who pushed me down on that bed and shoved himself into me while I tried not to cry. I’m so sad for us. For what we were. For what we maybe could have been.
“Grace?”
It’s too late for Gideon, but it’s not too late for me. For me. It feels good to be selfish, but it’s hard.
I open my mouth, but the words won’t come. Despite everything, I don’t want to break your heart. I wish I wanted to. It would be so much easier to cut you down with a smile on my face. But I’m not an ass-kicking ninja warrior queen.
Yet.
“What happened?” you ask. You are Concerned Boyfriend.
Tears are filling my eyes and I shake my head, as if the words could just fall out so I won’t have to say them. Nat will have to put more bobby pins in my hair—I can feel my mortarboard slipping off.
You reach for me, your hands gripping my arms, your skin warm on mine. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Oh god, you think it’s not you, that there was some kind of graduation drama. Your voice is so sweet, the question so innocent. You want to protect me and it’s too much. The end of high school, the end of us. The beginning of everything else. I don’t know if I can do this. After what you did to me the other day, this should be the easiest thing in the world. Why isn’t it? What’s wrong with me? I turn my head and see Nat and Lys. It makes me feel strong, knowing they have my back.
“I’m breaking up with you. Right now. Please don’t say anything.”
The words come out in a rush and sweat’s dripping off me and Please, god, please let me really do it this time. All those times I’d tried to do this and, in the end, it’s such a simple thing: five little words. I’m breaking up with you.
You have no idea how hard it is to love you.
Bitch.
Whore.
Slut.
Stop being such a child.
You’re lucky I love you so much.
I hate you.
I’ll kill myself if you break up with me.
You stare at me. No threats. No tears. For once, you don’t say a word. Because you know I mean it this time.
And then I walk away from you.
I don’t look back.
EPILOGUE
It is Christmas in August.
Natalie and I trim a fake tree. Alyssa puts on her favorite Christmas music. The house smells like sugar cookies and the stockings are hung by the chimney with care.
We’re having a party tonight. Lys is inviting Jessie and Nat is inviting her childhood friends who went to a different high school, and Kyle, who now knows the whole story of you and me. He’s been hanging out with us a lot, our go-to guy when things go bump in the night.
The three of us—Nat, Lys, and I—have been living alone in Nat’s house since graduation. Her siblings are at camp, along with her mom, who’s the summer camp nurse. We are given free rein, we are trusted, we are worthy of that trust.
Our days bleed into one another, one long strand of perfect moments: lip-synching to the Rent soundtrack, waking up to full glasses of Pepsi, overcooking and undercooking everything. We live in a cocoon of awesome, protected from you and Roy and anything else that dares to rain on our parade. We are young and free and we will never die.