Page 78 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“We called off the wedding,” Jehan said, finally slipping her shoe off and giving Sam a good look for the first time. “Are you—”
“Don’t try and distract me. What do you mean, you called off the wedding?”
“You’re sitting on the floor,” Jehan said, eyeing Sam with concern. Sam shook her spoon at her friend, warning her not to dig into anything. For a moment, the two remained locked in a stalemate, until finally, Jehan sighed. “After the mess at Dorothy’s, Travis and I needed to take a step back. He thought it would be a week or two. But it wasn’t that way for me.”
Jehan was silent for a moment, and Sam began poking at her ice cream. Managing to dig out a chocolate-covered almond, she looked up at her friend and said, “Go on.”
“Can I have some of that first?” Jehan said, nodding to the container in Sam’s hand.
“It’s still very frozen, but yes.”
“Fair enough.” Jehan shrugged and walked into the kitchen. The sound of her roommate rummaging through the silverware drawer cracked around the apartment until she returned with a large dinner spoon. Plopping down on the floor next to Sam, she tried to dig at the ice cream for a second before giving up. Leaving her spoon lodged in the ice cream, she started again. “The funny thing about space is that while one person asks for it, the other person can choose to maintain it. I think Travis thought of space as some kind of punishment. In the end, I decided it needed to be permanent.”
“Oh, so you decided this then?” Sam tried to keep her surprise under wraps. She’d always felt like Jehan intended to stay loyal to Travis, no matter how obviously absurd that commitment became. It seemed like in some ways it was one of the things she and her roommate had in common. Unwavering loyalty to their loved ones even as their relationships became increasingly temperamental. Apparently, she was wrong about that too.
“I went a whole day without wondering what he was up to or wanting to tell him anything, and then a few days went by, and I honestly—this sounds bad.” Jehan stopped and scowled at her spoon for a moment as if she needed to marshal her strength before she admitted to something shameful. Pulling her spoon out of the container, she said, “I don’t think I’ve been so relaxed in years. Then I started asking myself,Who would I be if I were alone?”
“Good question.”
Jehan smiled. “The wild part was, once I asked the question, I found that I liked me when I was alone. Nothing about Travis helped me be better or dream bigger. At best, Travis discouraged me from watching movies that gave me weird dreams.”
Sam laughed until she realized that her friend was serious. Clearing her throat, she said, “So you just said,Let’s take space forever?”
“God, no.” Now it was Jehan’s turn to laugh. “I did what any self-respecting newly single person would do. I drug it out for another week and a half. Tried to pretend I hadn’t learned anything about myself. Wallowed over wasting money on a deposit at Dorothy’s, then broke it off when I couldn’t emotionally handle avoiding him anymore.”
“Reasonable.” Sam shrugged and watched as Jehan found a soft edge of ice cream and loaded up her spoon. “How’d Travis take it? What about your family?”
“My family took it like champs—except my uncle, who is upset about the logistics of me wasting my youth with a bozo more thananything.” Jehan snickered, then popped the spoon in her mouth. In between chews, she said, “Trav took it poorly, but you know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t really care. That is for him and the therapist I hope he invests in to work through.” With that, Jehan burst into giggles and went back for a second bite. “So you ready to tell me why you are on the floor now? Or do I need to stall a bit more?”
“I don’t think asking a friend how they are doing after calling off an engagement counts as stalling.” Sam rolled her eyes. “If anything, you’re avoiding.”
“And now you are deflecting. Spill.” Jehan smiled sweetly as she stabbed at a frozen almond.
“Ugh,” Sam said, closing her eyes. Deep down, she’d known she would have to eventually tell someone what had happened. She’d just hoped that she could put it off for a day or two, until either Anjo refused to accept her groveling apology or some other calamity struck. Sam had just started to reach into her shallow reservoir of ice-cream-induced emotional stamina when a key in the front door’s dead bolt stopped her.
“Hey,” Duke called as the door cracked open.
“In here,” Jehan answered, eyeing Sam as if she expected her to try to sprint away before she had to confess what had happened. Actually, now that Sam thought about it ...
“What are y’all doing on the floor?” Duke said, his gym bag in one hand and a random bag of frozen fruit in the other.
“Sam is having a day,” Jehan said, still watching her closely.
“Ah. All right. Lemme get a spoon.” Duke turned toward the kitchen, then called over his shoulder, “Sam, don’t start until I get there.” After another second of rattling around in the silverware drawer, Duke reappeared with a soup spoon and dropped down on the other side of Sam. “All right. I think we’re ready. What’s up?”
Sam crammed a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth to buy herself time until she couldn’t take the feeling of Jehan’s and Duke’s eyes on her, then started talking.
Once she got going, Sam couldn’t stop. Nor did her friends try to stop her. In fact, outside of a few raised eyebrows and occasionally dipping a spoon into the ice cream she was holding, they didn’t do much at all.
“Anyway, that’s why I’m on the floor with this ice cream that has lived at the back of a freezer for about twenty-seven years.”
“Hey. It’s not the ice cream’s fault you had a bad day,” Duke said, shaking his head and watching Sam as she wiped her tears on the hem of her scrubs.
Looking at her spoon, Sam noticed chocolate on her hands and wanted to cry all over again. Sniffing as she tried to keep it together, she said, “My hands are sticky.”
