Page 16 of Problematic Summer Romance

“Is there anywhere else you could stay for a while? With a friend?”

My friends are the ones I’m trying to run from, I don’t say. My heart is already too close to breaking. “A park bench. Does that count?”

He scoffs. “I’m going to book a hotel for you to stay at. And pay for it.”

“That’s nice, but…money is not an issue.” Eli has always made sure of that. Being financially independent from him is a priority of mine, and I’m here on a scholarship, work a part-time job. I try not to touch the funds Eli provides for emergencies, but I could book my own hotel.

Conor’s words, though, resurface a faint memory. Wasn’t Conor the one who paid for my travel, back when I was fourteen and did an internship with that California local news station? And the next year, when Eli left for a work trip, didn’t he drive me back and forth from school for a whole week?

Hang on. Didn’t Conor used to date Minami, too? Yeah, he did. And it feels…wrong. Minami was as close to a mother figure as I got after Mom died, and I will forever worship her. So I might be biased, but…how did Conor Harkness, supreme asshole, manage to pull someone like her?

“Where are you, anyway?” Conor asks. Something seems to occur to him. “It’s slowly coming back to me. You moved to Europe for uni, right?”

“So youdoknow that. Did you think thirteen-year-olds went to college in foreign countries?”

“Can’t say I ever thought about it. Where are you, precisely?”

“I’m not tellingyou, a stranger, where I live.”

“Come on, Maya. It’s not like I don’t have the resources to find out.” A tapping, rhythmic sound. Like he’s typing, or drumming his fingers. “Let’s see. You mentioned Tunnock’s. Probably for sale anywhere in the world, but particularly popular in Scotland.”

I exhale.Tooloudly.

“Ah.” He sounds obnoxiously pleased. “St. Andrews? University of Edinburgh?”

Motherfucker, I mouth.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll figure it out. Back to the topic at hand—I’m not going to berate you for your choice in friends and roommates.”

“You’retookind.”

“Oh, I’m not. I’m not even kindenough. I’ve just made similar mistakes. What I don’t get is, why should younotfeel angry about them bringing their relationship inside your house?”

“Because,” I say. I hope he reads in my tone that what I really mean is:fuck off.

“Because…?”

“I don’t know. I was—I shouldn’t have yelled at them.”

“Among all the blows being dealt, here, that seems like the least egregious.”

“I know, but…I have anger-management issues.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. With some people. Not everyone. I don’t, you know, get mad at the customer service guy at Costco.”

“Is Costco in Scotland?”

“Yeah. For a while now.”

“But you don’t berate their workers.”

“No, I…” I swallow. “It’s mostly with people I care about. When I feel hurt by them, I tend to lash back.”

“Hmm. Right. You drove Eli absolutely off his rocker when you were a teenager, didn’t you?”

I laugh. “I may have, and look where it got me. He and I barely talk. But when I moved here, I decided that I wanted to become a better version of myself. And since most of my issues boil down to how angry I always am, I started doing all that shit. Therapy. Journaling. Identifying triggers. And it works, for the most part. But now I…I’mfuriousat them, and I can’t figure out if this is me backsliding, or a righteous, legitimate feeling. Should I just bottle this up? I just…I wanted Scotland Maya to be grounded and easygoing and carefree, but…”

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