Page 90 of My Favorite Bad Decision
I hug her. “She’ll probably suggest ways you could be livelier in bed too.”
She laughs. “She will. Thank God I have you, so I know there’s some hope for normalcy, despite our gene pool.”
I see her out, and then slide down the wall with my phone clutched to my chest. It has to end. It unequivocally has to end.
“Hey there,” he says, answering on the first ring. “Is Maren okay?”
“I can’t do this anymore,” I whisper, the words choked. “I’ve loved every minute, but it’s got to stop.”
“Kit, don’t do this,” he says. “Look, let’s talk this out. I’ll come over and?—”
“No,” I whisper. “That will just make it harder for me to do what I should have done a long time ago. Miller, Maren is getting a divorce and half the reason for that is you. Because she remembers how nice you were, and she’s even giving you credit for things you didn’t say tonight. I know you and my dad think it’s crazy, and maybe it is, but I know my sister. She convinces herself of shit, and she’s convinced that I broke you up the first time and that maybe now things are going to get sorted out.”
“Except I don’t want Maren,” he says. “There’s nothing anyone can say that will change that.”
I swallow. “It doesn’t matter. Because she believes these things are true, and I can’t be the one to crush her when she learns they’re not.”
“I’m crazy about you, Kit,” he says. “I don’t think you have a clue. Please don’t do this.”
“I love you, Miller,” I reply. “But don’t call me again.”
I hang up, so heartsick it’s hard to breathe.
I’ve said those words to people before, but it never hurt the way it just did.
Because this was both the first and the last time I’ll say them to him. And I’d like to keep saying them forever.
26
KIT
Overnight, I’ve gone from a life that was perhaps too full to one that’s entirely empty.
I’m unemployed. I’m no longer Blake’s girlfriend, nor am I Miller’s dirty secret. Although I guess, technically,hewas the dirty secret, not me.
I spend a lot of time with Maren—Harvey is out of town for work right now, and she’s going to need to figure things out before she tells him. My mother is also around—surprising no one, she is rooting for Maren tofind her soul mateandtake life by the horns. This is one of the phases my mother loves: that moment in the story when all is lost. She enjoys being the plucky victim and having everyone tell her she deserves more. She’s enjoying it vicariously through Maren now, and while Maren isn’t entirely buying into my mother’sI am woman, hear me roarglee, she’s definitely in her optimistic phase: the quiet smile, the dreamy, infatuated thing in her eyes.
“Miller looked really good, didn’t he?” my mom asks us. “If I were ten years younger, let me tell you…”
“Let’s be honest, Mom,” I say with a sigh. “His age isn’t what’s stopping you.”
She laughs. “It sure wouldn’t in his case. At least for one thing.”
“Mom,” Maren and I say in unison. “Ewww.”
And then Maren turns wistful while my entire heart seems to sink into my stomach like a dead weight. I miss him so much that I’m sick with it, and she’s convincing herself a little more every day that they were meant to be.
When I’m not with Maren, I’m talking to various people in the administration at UVA. I’ve had two very long conversations with advisors, establishing again and again the chain of events. If I can convince them I didn’t simply melt down from academic stress, I’ll then have to retake the exams. I unearth my old notes and try to study to take my mind off things, but it doesn’t quite work.
I miss Miller so much that it’s all I can do at night not to text him, that when I wake up in the darkness, there’s always a moment when I assume breaking up with him was a bad dream, and if I scoot backward an inch I’ll find him there, warm and solid and entirely mine.
The weirdest thing is that during all these nights…I don’t dream about Rob once.
* * *
“You sound sad,”my father says when we talk. “What’s this about?”
“Nothing,” I reply. “You know I hate New York in the winter. It’s just depressing here.”
