Beside me, Monica sighed wistfully in agreement.
“So why haven’t you gone out with him?” I asked her.
“Can’t,” she said flatly. “He’s too much like family. I mean, after the accident, when my mom flaked out and took off to find herself and we came to live with Stella, I was crazy for him. We both were.”
“Bettaquit,” Monica said darkly.
“It’s still a sore subject,” Kristy explained, while Monica turned her head, exhaling. “Anyway, I did everything I could to get his attention, but he’d just gotten back from Myers School then, was still dealing with his mom dying and all that. So he had a lot on his mind. At least I told myself that’s why he could resist me.”
“Myers School?” I said.
Kristy nodded. “Yeah. It’s a reform school.”
I knew this. Jason had tutored out there, and I’d often ridden along with him, then sat in the car doing homework while he went inside. Delia had said Wes had gotten arrested: I supposed this was the punishment. Maybe he’d even been there those days, as I sat in the car, looking up at the loops of barbed wire along the fence, while cars whizzed by on the highway behind me.
“Okay,” Kristy said, tapping her foot to the music, “tell us about the sort-of boyfriend.”
“Oh,” I said, “we’ve been dating for a year and a half.”
I took a sip of my beer, thinking this would suffice. But they were sitting there, expectant, waiting for more. Oh, well, I thought. Here goes nothing.
“He went away for the summer,” I continued, “and a couple of weeks after he left, he decided maybe it was better that we take this break. I was really upset about it. I still am, actually.”
“So he found someone else,” Kristy said, clarifying.
“No, it’s not like that,” I said. “He’s at Brain Camp.”
“Huh?” Monica asked.
“Brain Camp,” I repeated. “It’s like a smart-kid thing.”
“Then he found someone else at Brain Camp,” Kristy said.
“No, it’s not about someone else.”
“Then what is it about?”
It just seemed wrong to be sitting here discussing this. Plus I was embarrassed enough by what had happened, what I’d done to freak him out, so embarrassed I hadn’t even told my mother, whom I should have been able to tell anything. I could only imagine what these girls would think.
“Well,” I said, “a lot of things.”
Another expectant pause.
I took a breath. “Basically, it came down to the fact that I ended an email by saying I loved him, which is, you know, big, and it made him uncomfortable. And he felt that I wasn’t focused enough on my job at the library. There’s probably more, but that’s the main stuff.”
They both just looked at me. Then Monica said, “Donneven.”
“Wait a second.” Kristy sat up against the edge of the couch, as if she needed her full height, small though it was, to say what was coming next. “You’ve been dating for a year and a half and you can’t tell the guy you love him?”
“It’s complicated,” I said, taking a sip of my beer.
“And,” she continued, “he broke up with you because he didn’t think you were focused enough on your job performance?”
“The library,” I said, “is very important to him.”
“Is he ninety years old?”
I looked down at my beer. “You don’t understand,” I said. “He’s been, like, my life for the last year and a half. He’s made me a better person.”
This quieted her down, at least temporarily. I ran my finger around the rim of my cup.
“How?” she said finally.
“Well,” I began, “he’s perfect, you know? Great in school, smart, all these achievements. He can do anything. And when I was with him, it was like, good for me. It made me better, too.”
“Until . . .” she said.
“Until,” I said, “I let him down. I pushed too hard, I got too attached. He has high standards.”
“And you don’t,” she said.
“Of course I do.”
Monica exhaled, shaking her head. “Nuh-uh,” she said adamantly.
“Sure doesn’t seem like it,” Kristy said, seconding this. She took a sip of her beer, never taking her eyes off of me.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Listen to yourself,” she said. “God! Are you actually going to sit there and say he was justified in dumping you because you dared to get attached to him after a year and a half? Or because you didn’t take some stupid job at the library as seriously as he thought you should?”
I knew this was, pretty much, what I’d just said. But somehow it sounded different now, coming from her.
“Look,” she said, as I struggled with this, trying to work it out, “I don’t know you that well. I’ll admit that. But what I see is a girl any guy, especially some library nerd who’s off at Cranium Camp—”
“Brain Camp,” I muttered.
“—would totally want to hear say she loved him. You’re smart, you’re gorgeous, you’re a good person. I mean, what makes him such a catch, anyway? Who is he to judge?”
“He’s Jason,” I said, for lack of a better argument.
“Well, he’s a fuckhead.” She sucked down the rest of her beer. “And if I were you, I’d be glad to be rid of him. Because anyone that can make you feel that bad about yourself is toxic, you know?”