One more year, I told myself as another hand shot into the air.
“I disagree with that,” Jenny McHenry said. The color of her cheerleading uniform matched Brett’s varsity jacket. “Love’s still worth the risk, even if it can lead to heartbreak.” Students were nodding. Miss Copper was too.
“It wasn’t just heartbreak,” I added. “Romeo and Juliet died.”
“They died for each other,” another student chimed in.
“And if they didn’t, the book still would have ended before showing them grow apart. Love is temporary. It’s not some magical cure. That’s what Shakespeare was trying to show. That’s why they died, because they were naïve enough to think their love could end a war.”
“It’s easy for you to say that,” Jenny said.
The class fell silent.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Love. It’s easy to ridicule it when you’ve never felt it.”
Her words kind of hit me like a punch to the throat. I knew she probably didn’t mean anything by them. But the thing was, Jenny and I used to be best friends back in freshman year, when we were both inexperienced fourteen-year-old girls going through the motions. Until summer flew by, sophomore year started, and Jenny got her braces off, grew a few inches (so did other parts of her body), and had no interest in being friends. All of a sudden she was popular. She joined the cheerleading squad and racked up a trail of heartbreaks.
After that she started acting all self-righteous, giving out love advice and acting completely condescending that I was single. Like we hadn’t been in the same boat a few months ago. Like having a boyfriend made her an expert in all things romance. Puh-lease.
It was bearable at first but now, two years later? It was annoying.
Beyond annoying.
Anyway, Jenny didn’t know the details of my parents’ divorce. She knew my dad wasn’t around—that much was easy to figure out after spending time at my house. But I never talked to her about it. And she never asked. So her words weren’t some well-planned insult that knew exactly how low to strike. They were a coincidence. A coincidence that still hurt.
I raised my hand again. “You don’t have to be in love to understand it.”
“I think you do.” Jenny glanced over her shoulder, pointing at the book on my desk. “Books are one thing. But real feelings are different. It’s not the same.”
I covered the book quickly with my notepad.
Miss Copper cleared her throat, said, “That’s enough, Jennifer,” and passed around a handout, announcing that the rest of the period would be for silent work. She shot me a look when she said “silent” that had me sinking down in my chair.
For the rest of the class, I scribbled down halfhearted answers, all the while replaying what Jenny said in my mind. She was wrong. I knew a lot about love. I knew there were two kinds: 1) real love and 2) fictional love. The real kind was what I thought my parents had, pre-divorce. The fictional kind was what I’d preferred since.
I shook my head, imagining the negative thoughts tumbling out of my ears, and focused on the worksheet. I glanced up once before the period ended and found Brett looking at me. He had this look on his face like he could read my mind. Or worse, my heart. There was something about it that had me breathing a sigh of relief when the bell rang.
Like I said, this day was heading down a one-way street to being forgotten . . .
Until it wasn’t.
It happened when I was standing at my locker, grabbing my biology textbook. That was when a shadow loomed over me.
“Two years later and you’re still obsessed with these books.” Jenny grabbed If I’m Yours from my arms. She looked at the cover and snorted. “Why is he shirtless? And why are her boobs bigger than her head?”
I grabbed the book and tucked it back under my arm protectively.
“Don’t you find these romance books unrealistic?” she continued.
I pretended to be looking for something in my locker. “It’s part of what makes them enjoyable.”
“No wonder you were being so pessimistic back in class. If this is what you read, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”
A few boyfriends later and she thought she was a love guru, bestowing her knowledge on inexperienced mortals such as me. How gracious.
I wondered if she’d still be saying this if she knew about the divorce. If she knew I had a reason for being a pessimistic downer. If she knew what it felt like to love someone and have them walk out on you.
“I have to get to class, Jen. Can you save the unwanted therapy session for tomorrow?”
Jenny, not listening, tucked her curls behind her ears and said, “Don’t your parents ever ask you about it?”
I froze. It was that word. Parents. The plural. The assumption that there were two of them.
“Ask me about what?”
“Relationships. I remember your mom used to always talk to us about love back in freshman year. Remember? She always had hearts in her eyes, waiting for one of us to have a crush or something. I wish she could see me now. Huh?”
And, oh my gosh, it was just so annoying. Like what was wrong with being single? What was wrong with not having someone’s hand to hold and whatever else couples do? Why couldn’t a seventeen-year-old just be on her own and everyone be okay with that? Without expecting her to fall in love at any given moment?
I don’t know what had these next words spilling from my lips so effortlessly. Maybe it was the hurt I still felt over Jenny choosing popularity over me. Maybe it was the years of her snarky comments relating to my lack of relationships. Or maybe it was to protect these books I clung to like a lifeline, the only reminder that some sort of love could exist.
Whichever it was, I found myself saying, “My mom doesn’t have to pester me about being in a relationship because I’m in one.”
I waited for the ground to begin to shake. For the walls to cave and the ceiling to follow until we were standing in a pile of rubble and LIAR was burned into my forehead. I waited for my former best friend to point out that I was lying. Instead her mouth fell open a little, and I realized how different she looked from the fifteen-year-old girl I used to know.
“Who is it?” she asked, seeming genuinely interested.
My brain scrambled for something to say. A name. A person. Anything. My palms were sweating and every fictional character I’d read about seemed to vanish from my thoughts.
Right when I was about to give up, I felt an arm wrap around my waist. Felt fingers loop through mine.
I looked up to find Brett’s eyes. He was smiling.
“Hey, you,” he said, staring right at me.
I felt like I had just woken up from a nap and missed the past few minutes of my life.
“Hi,” I said slowly, staring at his hand in mine. How did that get there?
Brett was giving me this look, like c’mon, Becca, get with it.
Jenny was glancing between the two of us, looking as confused as I felt. Her eyes zeroed in on Brett’s arm on my waist and she said, “You guys are dating?”
Right when I was about to say no, we were not, because that would be completely ridiculous, Brett said, and quite effortlessly, may I add, “Just for a few months now. Since summer break. Right?” He looked down at me, waiting.