Punk Love

“I know it sounds like a cliché, but he is an idiot, Jadie. You need to be a special kind of stupid to give up what you have for a one-time spin with a no-name. Who’d he hook up with, anyway?”

I was half-expecting it to be Ainsley, for the same reason I half-expected Ainsley to hold the sole responsibility for everything ugly in the world. As far as I was concerned, we needed to look into her when it came to the kryptos outside the CIA headquarters, world hunger, and Jack the Ripper (I’d always been notoriously bad at timelines, so attaching her to crimes that took place in 1888 was not a stretch).

“With this…this trashy girl he goes to school with. Elena.”

“She sounds awful,” I volunteered. And she did. Because the only thing I knew about Elena was enough—she had seduced Tom into cheating on Jadie. I’d say allegedly, but apparently, Tom at least had the good sense to run to Jadie right after and come clean about it, an hour after he woke up and found his limp dick still in a used condom, with Elena sleeping soundly beside him.

“Alex knows her, too.” Jadie patted her damn tissue to her eyes, leaving balls of it along her lashes. “She gave him a few blowies back in the day. Don’t worry, before you got together.”

Okay. Yeah. I really hated Elena.

I pulled Jadie into an embrace on her bed, its linen checked in white and black, and seethed.

“Who goes and throws away a three-year relationship for a rando? And to hook up with her at a party? Completely drunk? Wow. What a loser.” I played off my emotions and overstated how lucky Jadie was to dodge that bullet.

“He wants me to forgive him.” Jadie was gnawing on her lower lip now. The ice cream I brought over was dutifully sweating itself into the form of a milkshake on her nightstand. The truth was, when your heart was broken, truly broken, your appetite usually met the same destiny. Neither of us was in the mood for something sweet.

“Are you going to?” My eyebrows shot up.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I love him. And he did apologize and come clean straight away.”

Yeah, I gruffed inwardly. He also came inside Elena.

“You can definitely do that, but I think maybe you should sleep on this decision,” I said carefully.

“I mean, what would you do if Alex did it?” She perked up, eyeing me curiously.

Well. That was a good question. I would probably get a shovel and pray my extensive knowledge of how to get rid of a body, all courtesy of CIA: Places I’ve Never Visited, was going to get me out of a first-degree murder charge.

“I don’t know,” I said.

But I did know. I knew I was going to leave Alex and never look back. It wasn’t a pride thing. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to trust him again.

“Isn’t he moving to Sweden or something next year?” Jadie cocked her head sideways, looking at me.

“Yeah. Yeah, he is. But let’s talk about you.”

And we did. As my stomach churned in anger and worry.

Our time was ticking.

Alex was leaving.

And I was staying.

Jadie and Tom didn’t get back together immediately after the cheating scandal.

Instead, Jadie started dating a half-Japanese, half-German millionaire deity who was also the heir to a mochi empire. He was a jock and drove a Range Rover the size of my house and ate his steak—yes, steak—in the same way he fucked: raw.

Let’s call him Lance.

Lance was the bane of Tom’s existence, and I was pretty sure Tom hated every single second he didn’t even remember of being with Elena during that party for many months to come.

A party Alex wasn’t invited to, thank God, due to my boyfriend having a beef with the vast majority of the Western world, including many people from his school.

A few weeks after Jadie’s heart was broken—then immediately patched back together by a hottie—Alex and I went on a picnic.

Everything went wrong that day.

He was an hour and a half late because he had a flat tire, and I had a huge fight with my parents. It was hot. Too hot. And I couldn’t find anything to wear, because I grew out of my desire to look like Harley Quinn, but wasn’t sure Alex was into the new style I was thinking of adopting, of Summer Roberts from The O.C.

All I wanted was to prance around with pink miniskirts and cardigans, cradling an overpriced cup of coffee. I was over punk rock. I solemnly swore not to eat meat, watch the environment, and do my best to be a good human, but I was done living an extreme life of self-depravation. It just wasn’t worth it.

That was another thing that worried me. Alex and I were changing.