“You can’t just leave me.” In just a few strides I close the distance between us. “Do you know how embarrassing it is to be at an event like this without a date? You can’t leave right as it’s starting.”

“I’m sure you’ll make friends,” she says. “Hell, you know half of these people already and I know none. I doubt I’d be any help.”

“That’s not the point, Sara, and you know it.”

She turns away again.

“Sara,” I say through gritted teeth. “If you walk out that door, that’s it—we’re breaking up.”

She spins around, the bottom of her floor-length dress twirling. She extends her arms to the side, her purse sparkling in her hand. “I guess we’re broken up.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Sara

The room is quiet when I get back. My roommates are nowhere to be found, beds left behind unmade, with various considered and rejected shirts and dresses strung about between the crumpled sheets. They’re probably getting drunk at a frat party, or high and watching movies with friends. Normal college stuff.

I let my keys slip out of my hand; they clatter against the table, breaking the silence. In my room I slip out of the stupid five-hundred-dollar dress he had no business buying me. Couldn’t he have just bought me a beer or a Domino’s Pizza, like a normal college boyfriend?

It’s funny how quickly “put this on and be ready at 8” can go from looking like a cute surprise to like being summoned as arm candy, when you scratch back the pretty facade and catch a glimpse of the person writing the note.

I slide on baggy Warren sweatpants and my old high school track-and-field T-shirt. I’m pulling my hair, still crunchy from hair spray, into a messy bun when my phone lights up.

Yaz: So what exactly happened?

I texted her when I left the benefit, but she was slow responding. This is her second message, following a bunch of frowny emojis she sent over an hour ago.

Me: Nothing.

I send the first message and keep typing.

Me: I mean like nothing new. it wasn’t a big fight. It wasn’t really anything... I just realized I spent so much of my time trying to rationalize his behavior, trying to remember he’s done more good than bad. Trying to convince myself and other people he wasn’t a total dickhead and it was just like why? You know. Shouldn’t it be easier than that?

I think of my parents. They aren’t dramatically “your eyes light up the room, I can’t live a moment without you” in love. They might have been when they first got together, but it isn’t like that now.