What If It's Us
Page 4

I yawn in the elevator. I had to get up at seven because of summer school. Yay life. The universe keeps on swinging—brass knuckles to the heart and ego.
I step out of the elevator and let myself into Dylan’s apartment because we’re that tight. But I’m smart enough to knock on his bedroom door ever since a few months ago when I walked in and he was really going at it with himself.
“Hand out of your pants?” I ask.
“Unfortunately,” Dylan responds from the other side.
I open the door. Dylan is sitting on his bed, texting away. He’s cut his hair since I saw him last night for dinner. He’s the only dude my age I know who’s rocking a beard. For the longest time I swore I was behind on the puberty game since I haven’t even grown a mustache, but Dylan’s actually the freak show here—handsome freak show.
“Big Ben,” Dylan sings, putting down his phone. “Light of my life. He Who Is Stuck in School.” Summer school double-sucks because Dylan has been cracking jokes ever since that day I came out of the guidance counselor’s office with the bad news. He’s just lucky that no one he ever dated persuaded him to skip studying and to trust that the right grades would fall into place.
“Hey,” I say. Cute nicknames aren’t really my thing.
Dylan points at my chest. “That shirt is a thing of beauty, isn’t she?”
His wardrobe consists primarily of T-shirts from indie coffee shops around the city, and he gave me this Dream & Bean shirt last night when he came over for dinner. Dylan hooks me up when his dresser gets too crowded. He doesn’t usually let go of his favorites, like Dream & Bean, but I’m not complaining.
“I didn’t have anything clean to wear,” I say. “It’s not, like, a cool shirt.”
“That’s hurtful, but I’m guessing you’re in a mood because you’re carrying a breakup box you were going to hand over to Hudson. What happened?”
“He didn’t come to school today.” I put down the box.
“Skipping day one of summer school seems like a bad start,” Dylan says.
“Yeah, I asked Harriett if she would take it to him and she said no,” I say. “Then I was going to mail it, but Priority shipping cost too much.”
“Why did it have to be Priority shipping?”
“Because I want the box out of my face sooner.”
“Regular shipping would’ve done the trick too.” Dylan raises his left eyebrow. “You couldn’t do it, could you?”
I put down the box I should’ve mailed or thrown away or tied to an anchor and dropped into a river. “Stop seeing past my bullshit, it’s my bullshit.”
Dylan gets up and hugs me. “Shh-shh-shh-shh.” He rubs circles into my back.
“Your soothing voice isn’t soothing me.”
Dylan kisses my cheek. “It’s okay, Pudding Pop.”
I sit down cross-legged on his bed. I’m tempted to reach for my phone to see if I’ve missed any texts from Hudson, or to check Instagram to see if he has uploaded a new selfie. But I know there won’t be any texts, and I’ve unfollowed him on every platform.
“I don’t want to see him fail out of summer school because he’s avoiding me. He’ll get left behind if he’s absent three times.”
“Maybe. But that’s his problem. If he doesn’t show up, you won’t have to spend the summer with him. Problem solved.”
It wasn’t that long ago when spending my summer with Hudson was all I could think about. A summer as boyfriends in pools and parks and each other’s bedrooms while our parents were working—not exes who are in summer school because we spent more time studying each other than doing our chemistry homework.
“Wish you were in the trenches with me,” I say. “He has his best friend, and I should have mine too.”
“Oh man, remind me to never commit a crime with you. You’ll get caught and out me so fast.” Dylan checks his phone, like we’re not even talking, which is my least favorite thing about humans. “That class would be all drama anyway. I can’t be there with my ex, that’s not a healthy environment.”
“I am literally in there with my ex, Dylan.”
“No you’re not. He didn’t show up, and if he does, don’t forget you got the edge here. You won the breakup by being the Breaker Upper. It would double-suck if he broke up with you. It only single-sucks for you.”
I’d trade my poor kingdom for a universe where single-suck heartbreak isn’t a victory. But here we are.
Recent breakups prove that we should’ve never screwed up our friend circle by trying to date. Not to point fingers, but Dylan and Harriett started this. The four of us had a good thing going until Dylan and Harriett kissed on New Year’s Eve. I was kind of into Hudson and I was pretty sure he was into me too, but when we turned to each other that night we didn’t kiss, we just shook our heads because I knew my best friend and he knew his. This was never going to last. Maybe Hudson and I wouldn’t have been inspired to give it a shot ourselves if we hadn’t been left with a lot of alone time while Dylan and Harriett spent their weekends together.
I miss the squad days.
I get up and turn on the Wii because I need some shit-talking and entertainment to cheer me up. The triumphant opening of Super Smash Bros. blasts from the TV. Dylan’s top character is Luigi because he thinks Mario is overrated. I go for Zelda because she teleports and deflects projectiles and shoots fireballs from great distances, which are all optimal moves for any player looking to avoid hand-to-hand combat.
We get the game going.
“On the sad scale, how are you feeling today?” Dylan asks. “Opening-montage-of-Up sad? Or Nemo’s-mom-dying sad?”
“Whoa, no. Definitely not opening-montage-of-Up sad. That shit was devastating. I’d guess I’m somewhere in between, like last-five-minutes-of-Toy-Story-3 sad. I just need time to bounce back.”
“No doubt. Okay, I need to tell you a thing.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” I ask. “Because not cool.”
“Sort of,” Dylan says. He does this big dramatic pause while hammering down on one button so Luigi keeps shooting green fireballs at Zelda. “I met this girl at a coffee shop.”
“That is the most Dylan sentence you’ve ever said.”
“Right?” Dylan’s chuckle is very charming. “Okay, so after my doctor’s appointment yesterday I went uptown to try this coffee spot.”
“Of course you leave an appointment for your heart condition by going straight to a coffee shop. You’re a little too on brand sometimes.”
“The yearly ritual,” Dylan says. He has a heart condition called mitral valve prolapse, which isn’t as shitty as it sounds—at least not in Dylan’s case. I don’t know what he’d do if his doctors actually banned him from coffee. “Anyway. I walked past Kool Koffee, which I have avoided forever because you know I don’t find cutesy spellings cute, and she stepped outside to throw away some trash and I became trash for her.”
“As you do.”
“But I couldn’t walk in there wearing a Dream & Bean shirt.”
“Why not?”
“Uh. Do you walk into Burger King with a Happy Meal? No. That shit is disrespectful. Have some common sense.”