So we just decide to drive around in his truck. I tell my mom I’m meeting Charlotte for coffee and head out on foot before she can ask questions. I’m eighteen years old and maybe she realizes there isn’t much she can do to stop me. Zenn meets me three blocks away from my house. I climb into his truck and he circles the downtown twice before pulling into the parking lot by the beach. As soon as he puts the truck in Park we are on each other like lint on black corduroys. We kiss hungrily and awkwardly over the gearshift. It’s too cold to go in the bed of the truck. I’m too tall to climb onto his lap. It’s a frustrating predicament.
Eventually we resign ourselves to the fact that neither of us is adventurous enough or brave enough (or small enough) to do much in the cab of a pickup truck. We settle for an intense make-out session that leaves me feeling loose and unraveled to my core. Then he drives me home and I slink into my room before my mom can see my sexually frustrated swollen lips and beard-reddened face.
Chapter 37
But the next lull when I don’t hear from him is longer — almost three full days — and I know it can’t be his phone again. He may be at school, but he doesn’t meet me for lunch. I try not to text him too often, but I know I’ve got to be coming across as a little needy.
Me: Hey!
Me: Hey you.
Me: You work too hard.
Me: Hey! You know … there’s this place called school? You should go sometime.
Me: I miss you.
Me: All work and no play …
Nothing.
Finally on day three he texts me back and I feel like an addict who finally got a fix.
Zenn: Hey
Me: Hey! Everything OK?
There is a long pause — maybe three minutes, where he doesn’t text back. Finally …
Zenn: Not really
Oh, crap. Something is up. Something is definitely up.
Me: What’s wrong? Want me to come over?
Zenn: My mom is home
Me: Oh
Zenn: Meet at the park?
The park! Where we had our first date! Maybe everything is fine.
Me: OK.
I don’t question anything: why we’re meeting at the park, why he seems so serious, what has happened in the last three days. I feel confident that everything will be all right once we see each other.
The park is nearly empty. The biting wind and new snow have scared away all the afternoon playgroups, and there isn’t even any sun to trick your mind into thinking it’s warmer. I see him sitting on a bench rather than the play set. No blanket, no pizza. He looks at his phone and bounces his knee up and down.
I sit down and nudge him with my shoulder.
“Hey, you.”
He gives a little half smile. Well … a quarter smile. Like, the kind of polite smile he might give to a teacher.
His knee starts bouncing again.
“What’s going on?”
He stares up at the sky and sighs.
“Eva …”
Oh, no. His voice is like a funeral. Something bad is coming. I look at those lashes and that smooth skin that is still bronze even as tiny snowflakes swirl around us.
“Is … your mom okay?” I think about her drinking, about her manic episodes. Could she have gone off the deep end?
“Yeah, she’s fine. I guess. As good as she gets.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“We can’t —” His voice cracks a little and he clears his throat. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” He is calm and quiet, but he doesn’t sound like himself.
I couldn’t have possibly heard him right and I don’t want to panic. I don’t want to freak out. But … what the actual fuck?! I had tea with him less than a week ago, for the very first time, and now he’s saying we should break up?
Was he using me? Tricking me out of my virginity somehow? Does that even happen in real life?
“Why do you say that?” I wonder if his parents found out. But if I didn’t let my parents dictate our relationship, I’m not sure why he thinks his parents should have a say.
“I know about the scholarship,” he says. “How could you do that, Eva?” He sounds angry with me, which I guess I knew he would be. But I did it for him! Surely he must see that.
I try to make light of it. “You deserve it, Zenn. I was afraid they’d hold your dad’s past against you, and I’d get the orphan pity.”
His voice is tight. “That’s for them to decide. Not you.”
Suddenly I remember the conversation we had at his kitchen table, about his mom letting that woman pay for his school supplies. He works three jobs so he doesn’t have to accept help from anyone. And here I try to “help.”
Oh, man. What have I done?
“You shouldn’t have to pay for what he did,” I tell him. “You’ve already paid enough.”
“So have you.”
“Zenn. Come on. Your situation is much worse than mine.”
“Eva. You can’t touch anything!”
I put my hand on his. “I can touch you.”
He pulls away. “That’s not enough. Not forever.”
“It’s enough for me.”
“No, it’s not. You are not the kind of girl who gives up everything for a guy. That is not the kind of girl I would fall in love with.”
Wait. Did he just admit he has fallen in love with me? Or did he say that he wouldn’t because I’m that kind of girl?
“I’m not letting you give up anything for me.”
“I’m not giving up. I’ll still go to college. I’ll figure something out. We don’t need to break up …”
“Have you finished even one application since we met?”
My silence becomes my answer. He’s right. I’ve been a little distracted.
“I am not enough,” he says forcefully. “This is not enough for the rest of your life.”
I feel like he has slapped me. He doesn’t know how “enough” this is, how long I’ve waited.
“How do you know what’s enough for me?”
“Because I know, Eva. You are bigger than this …” — he searches for words — “this barricaded life you’ve been living. You deserve everything.”
“But not you.”
“You deserve more than me.”
“I think I should decide —”
“But you won’t. Because this feels good now. But someday you’ll resent me. This is your chance. I’m not going to let you throw it away for me.”
We sit in silence for a minute and my mind is spinning with a million different arguments. His eyes are glistening from the wind, or maybe from something else.
“So. You’re breaking up with me?”
He swallows. “I have to.”
I take off my glasses and press my mittened fingers to my eyes. I’m not crying — not yet, anyway — but it’s only a matter of time. I feel it threatening, like nausea.
“For my own good, huh?”
“Eva —”
I swallow, nod and put my glasses back on. A part of me wants to reason with him, to beg, to make him change his mind. But what’s the point?
“Okay. Fair enough.” One tear escapes my treacherous eyes and I swipe at it with my mitten. I get up to walk away.
“Eva,” he says. But when I pause, he doesn’t say anything else. So I keep walking.
Chapter 38
I don’t cry on the way home because I don’t actually believe this has happened. He really likes me. I know it. We are amazing together. You just don’t break up with someone when things are that good.
But he doesn’t follow me. He doesn’t chase me down, offer me a ride, tell me he was just kidding. He lets me walk away. So when I get back to my house and he still hasn’t texted me to say I changed my mind, I lose it. I close the door to my room and collapse on my bed and sob like my life depends on it.
My mom knocks first and walks in. “Honey?” Her voice is soft, concerned. “What happened?”