Page 56 of Going the Distance
“Do you want me to tell the guys as well?”
I thought about it; I found I wanted to talk to Levi about it all. I didn’t want him to hear from some group text from Lee or through someone else. “No, it’s okay. I’ll get around to it.”
“Have you told your dad everything?”
“No. He already didn’t like Noah enough because he was dating me,” I said. As if my dad had needed any reason to dislike my boyfriend other than the fact that the guy was dating his only daughter—it didn’t matter that he’d known Noah for almost eighteen years; as long as we were dating, he had his reservations about him. “He doesn’t need any more reason to. It’ll just make Thanksgiving more awkward than it already will be. Let me know how things go with Rachel, yeah? Tell her I’m sorry.”
Since yesterday, I’d thought about the repercussions—how awkward everything would be now if I went to Lee’s house and Noah was there, and so on. The biggest deal, though, was Thanksgiving. Lee had even been helpful enough to point out last night, “Thanksgiving is gonna be so weird now this year.”
Every year we spent Thanksgiving with the Flynns. My parents didn’t have many siblings, so I only had a small handful of cousins, all on the other side of the country, and we only saw each other at the summer family reunion one of my great-aunts held every couple of years. Lee was more like family than any of them were, so it only made sense to have Thanksgiving with the Flynns.
And now, what with the breakup, I was so not looking forward to sitting around the table with my ex after such an intense breakup.
I put it out of my mind, deciding to try and focus on my college application essay for the day instead. I needed to work on it, and I neededsomeway to channel all this energy without screaming—so once Lee hung up, I sat down at my computer and pulled up the Word document, rereading the three hundred and forty-eight words I’d managed to write earlier in the week. I needed to focus on something that wasn’t my breakup, or Noah, or the state of Lee’s relationship, which I was most definitely responsible for. This was as good as anything.
I did do one more thing before I started work, though—I opened my browser, clicked on the Facebook tab, and changed my profile picture from one of me and Noah at the beach this summer to a picture of me and Lee from our birthday party. Then I changed my relationship status to “single.”
