Page 1 of Pick One
1
TEAGAN
“The guy’s not coming,”I told my friend Fern in a slightly panicked tone, holding the phone to my ear with one hand while yanking at my hair with the other. “I have been waiting in the lobby of my new apartment building for forty-seven minutes, exactly as agreed. Forty-seven minutes does not suggest ‘oops, I was stuck in traffic.’ Forty-seven minutes suggests my brother’s friend forgot he was supposed to help me. Or that Jace forgot to ask him in the first place. Forty-seven minutes means I have beenforsaken,Fern. Forty-seven minutes means my sofa is inperil.”
Fern sighed in my ear, like the fate of my hand-tufted green Chesterfield was of no particular importance to her. “Teagan, babe, are you sure you need to be worrying about this right now? You’ve had a hell of a week, and in the end, it’s just a sofa. Replaceable.”
She had a point. But that point was notmypoint.
“No, Fern.” I tugged my hair harder. “It’s not just a sofa. This sofa is asymbol, okay? This sofa is the perfect combination of form and function. This sofa is firm, it’s supportive, and it cradles my ass lovingly, which is more than I can say about any man I’ve ever dated,especiallyMartin. This sofa is the proverbial line in the sand between what I am willing to forego and what I refuse to give up. It’s bad enough that I came home early from my Intro to Creative Writing TA hours Tuesday to make soup for my flu-ridden boyfriend, only to find him beingriddenby someone who was blond and twinky and decidedlynot the flu.” I sniffed. “I refuse to let the bastard have my sofa, too. Martin doesn’t deserve hand-tufting.”
“Martin doesn’t deserve to keep your apartment,” she retorted. “As I explained to you at length.”
Oh, she had. She most definitely had. Through our entire shared shift at Campus Connection on Wednesday, even the part where I ended up sorting stock in the back because I’d been crying off and on—she’d simply raised her voice so I could hear her.
The “Come to Jesus” discussion was Fern’s preferred love language.
“You should’ve made him move out,” she concluded.
“I know, I heard what you said. But then I’d have had to pay to live in that building, and grad school stipends and part-time work at Coffee Connections would not make that happen,” I reminded her. “I’d be another innocent ingenue forced to sell my body on the street, and anyone who’s ever seen a Broadway musical could tell you howthatwould end.” I paused, then remembered Fern was a biology grad student when she wasn’t a barista and probably hadn’t been listening to show tunes since high school. “Death, Fern. It ends in death.”
“Teagan.” Fern said my name like it was a complete sentence, expressing exasperation and warning and fondness all at once.
“Besides,” I went on quickly, “this way I get to show Martin how utterly unaffected I am by his treachery.” I stared at my reflection in the lobby’s plate-glass window and assumed a calm, distant expression. “I plan to stay cool and remote and slay him with my quiet dignity. Let him writhe in guilt.”
“Oh, honey. The man cheated on you in your own bed. You really think your quiet dignity will get him?”
“It might.” I sighed and curled in on myself again. “I mean, yes, what Martin did was unforgivable. And to be perfectly honest, things between us hadn’t been right in a while, no matter how hard I tried, so I’m not sorry things are over. But he was a kind, caring person at one point.” I stared out at the distressingly empty sidewalk. “He still has those qualities, deep down.”
“No,” she said flatly. “He doesn’t. He never did. The day you met, he ordered a latte, paid in exact change, said one witty thing about Shakespeare that I swear he didn’t even intend to be funny, and said your hair was ‘seriously sexy.’ Then all of a sudden, your brain started churning like a broken ATM spitting twenties, filling in all the blanks that made him your personal Prince Charming.”
“But… wait, really?” I frowned. “I don’t remember this! And if you knew it all along, why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Oh, for— You’re kidding, right? Dude, I staged an intervention in August before you moved in with the guy, but you wouldn’t listen. You told me, ‘Pick one, Fern: potentially losing your greatest chance at happiness or potentially losing your heart’ when youknowhow I feel about your ‘this or that’ questions—”
“I think you mean my amusing philosophical conundrums,” I teased.
“I think I mean your false dichotomies,” she retorted. “Because humans almost always have more than two choices. But anyway, then you quoted some poem at me about buds of love—”
Ugh. Nowthatsounded like something I would do. “It’s Shakespeare,” I said grimly.
“Right. And at that point, I washed my hands of you.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said sadly. “It’s not even a particularly good poem.”
“Yes. Uh-huh.That’sthe takeaway here, Teagan. Your judgment ofpoetrywas skewed.” Fern huffed. “Honey, have you ever considered just being less…” She broke off.
“Less?” I prompted.
“I don’t know how to say this without it sounding shitty, and I don’t mean it that way, but less… volatile? Less emotional? Less likely to jump in with both feet.” She sounded frustrated. “Just… justless.”
Ouch. I leaned back against the bank of mailboxes that lined one wall of the lobby.
“Not everything has to be sweeping and dramatic and overly gushy. You need stability more than you need romance. So next time you meet a guy, approach with caution. Chill. For your own well-being. Because next time, you might not find an apartment on short notice or coerce your brother into finding someone to help you move your couch. Next time, you might lose something that’s not replaceable. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said in a small voice.
This was not the first time I’d heard this speech from someone in my life. More like the billionth. My dad used to angrily inform me that people would “take advantage of me” if I insisted on being so “high-strung.” My mom told everyone in an only half-joking way that I was her most exhausting child—which was particularly funny if you knew that I was the only one of the three Donahue brothers who’d never been arrested. My friends loved and appreciated me, because they knew I was loyal to the death… but they also never seemed very surprised when my boyfriends tossed me over because I’d gotten attached too quickly and moved too fast.
