The Breakup Support Group

“I change my mind,” I say, screwing the plastic cap back onto my water bottle. I sit on the edge of his bed and fashion a pretend serious look on my face. “I want to break up.”

“Fine,” he says, walking over me and wedging his legs in between my knees. He bends forward, resting his hands on the bed on either side of me. “I’ll just ask you to be my girlfriend again.”

Heat swells around my insides, and it takes everything I have not to wrap my arms around him and pull him on top of me. “You never asked me in the first place,” I whisper.

“I was getting there,” he whispers back, his lips grazing my ear.

And then he pulls away, standing straight up. The sudden absence of his nearness makes my stomach hurt. I frown all dramatic and puppy like.

“You’re really hot,” he says, rubbing at his eyebrow. “Even when you’re pouting.”

I lean back on my elbows and curl my bottom lip even further out. “What about now?” I ask through my lips.

His eyes sparkle, and he crawls on top of me, wrapping an arm around my waist. In one ridiculously swift move, he slides me up the bed, depositing my head on top of the fluffy hotel pillow.

“Seems like you’ve done that before,” I say.

His dark eyes bore into mine. “I don’t want to talk about the past,” he says, kissing me quick and urgently. “I only care about the future. Our future.” His hair falls into his eyes, and I tuck it behind his ears.

“I’m listening,” I say.

“Do you want to take a chance on me?” he asks, rolling over to his side. He trails his fingers down my arm. “Be my girlfriend? Do the whole relationship thing?”

“I’ve wanted that for longer than I care to say.” Heat fills my cheeks, and I look at his chest, avoiding his eyes. “You scare me.”

“You scare me,” he says, matter-of-factly. “More than anything. More than global warming, or the fear that I’ll be stuck in this town for my whole life. I’ve always been able to cut ties with anyone or anything. But I can’t get you out of my head.”

I roll to my side, facing him. “Having feelings for someone isn’t a bad thing.”

Our eyes meet, and he gives me a sad smile. Then he turns over to his back and tucks his hands under his head while he stares at the ceiling. “Come here,” he says, gesturing with a jerk of his head for me to join him. I slide over and nestle my head in the crook of his shoulder, resting my cheek on his chest.

He wraps an arm around me and his fingers twist into my hair. “What’s on your mind?” I ask, because the way he works his jaw tells me he’s trying to work up the courage to tell me something. “You can tell me,” I say, tracing an invisible circle on his shirt with my finger.

He swallows and his chest rises. “My parents have an open marriage. It’s been that way since …” He sighs. “Forever, I guess. I can remember being five years old and my parents would get a babysitter on Friday nights, and they’d leave together but come home separately. It made them so happy. They lived for Friday nights. It was their date nights, but they were off dating other people.”

I look up at him, but he’s staring blankly at the ceiling above us, his fingers stroking my hair as he talks. “When I was in sixth grade, I skipped soccer practice and came home early to find my dad banging some chick half his age in the kitchen.”

“Whoa,” I say, unable to stop the reaction.

He snorts. “Tell me about it. So anyway, after they’d gotten dressed and the girl went home, my dad explained to me—not about sex or anything—but that he and Mom date other people, and it’s okay because they agreed to it. My mom told me same kind of story a few years later. It’s all cool with them, and I was supposed to be cool with it, too.”

“Is that why you date around so much?”

He waits a beat before answering. “My dad will tell you that relationships are like business transactions. He says that he and Mom run a successful real estate business and that together, they provide for us and keep me in a brand new car and keep Mom in her Botox and designer clothing. He says that’s how to stay happy in life—find someone who can be your best friend but bang whoever else you want. It never really sat right with me, not even when I tried it by dating three girls in seventh grade.”

I make a gagging sound, and he leans over, kissing my hair before talking again. “What my parents do in their relationship makes them happy. And I finally see that I don’t have to follow Dad’s advice. I can do my own thing and date the way I want to. It is really easy to text ten girls on a Friday night. But that’s not what I want to do.”

“Is this the part where you tell me what you want to do?” I ask. My eyes are heavy with exhaustion, but I watch him intently.

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He smiles and runs his fingers through my hair. It sends chills down my back, and I shudder, pulling closer into his embrace. “Isla, I want to be with you and only you. For as long as you’ll have me. You’re the girl who saved me from the void of loneliness. I want you and I need you.”

“I want you and I need you,” I murmur, leaning into his kiss.

“It’s a deal, then,” he says.

“The support group will have a field day over this.”