He gave me a patronizing look. “If we’re being honest, this has been coming for a lot longer than three weeks.”
I worked hard to keep up with what he was saying, but it felt like things were moving in slow motion. “What are you talking about?”
“This might seem sudden to you, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
He might as well have slapped me with his statement. Had he really thought about breaking things off? We’d had so many conversations about wanting to make things work between us, about how we didn’t want to break up. It had been his idea for me to transfer schools and join him here at Waterford.
My mind struggled to comprehend what he was telling me. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’ve been thinking about breaking up with me for a while, but you still talked me into moving here?” I could hear the disbelief in my voice.
He gave a half-hearted shrug. “I thought it might help, that maybe if you were here, it might…reignite the spark in our relationship. But obviously I was wrong.”
I stared at him, flabbergasted. “And you couldn’t have figured that out before I uprooted my whole life? Why in the hell would you even suggest I come here if you were thinking about ending things?”
He threw his hands up in the air. “I don’t know. We’ve been together for a long time. Things were easy and convenient. You’ve been a good girlfriend.”
My eyes felt like they were going to bug out. “Convenient? Agoodgirlfriend? If that is all I am to you, then yeah, I’m not sure what we’re doing being together anymore either.”
His face relaxed. “So that’s it, then. We’re broken up?”
His look of relief twisted the knife he’d put in my stomach. Again, I searched his face for any sign of sadness or regret, but I couldn’t find any. Four years together, and he couldn’t even muster a tiny feeling of sorrow.
I swallowed my emotions and pushed back my shoulders. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Watching him not be bothered by all of this had me refusing to show him any of what I was feeling. I could hold myself together until I was away from him and then let my emotions flow freely.
He placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to move here for us to realize that we don’t work together anymore, but you’ll like it here. I promise.”
I shook off his hand. “Oh, I know all about your promises.” Ugh. The number of times he’d promised things to me that never happened was too high to count. I was done with him and all his stupid promises. “Your promises don’t mean shit.”
Turning on my heel I walked away from him, storming out the heavy doors and welcoming the warm breeze as it hit my face.
Acting as if I were a professional speed walker, I hurried away from Josh—and our relationship. I looked at the school buildings and all the unfamiliar faces as I passed them by and started to feel a stinging in my eyes. I willed myself not to cry. Not yet, at least.
Twenty days ago, I’d arrived at Waterford, nervous but excited. A big change like that had been hard for me, but I’d focused on thoughts of Josh and our new adventures, and it had gotten me through it. Now here I was, a total idiot to have moved and left my friends and life behind for a guy, one whom I wasn’t even sure had truly ever cared about me. I’d just been convenient and a nice cookie-cutter girlfriend. That thought alone made me want to throw up. My stomach clenched, and nausea set in.
How could I have been so blind? Had our relationship not really been as good as I’d thought it was? Yes, Josh could be a jerk sometimes, but he’d tried to make up for it, and he did have some redeeming qualities. Those qualities weren’t coming to me at the moment, but there had to have been something great between us at one point for us to have stayed together for so long. Right?
What was I going to do now? I couldn’t exactly leave—I’d just started my classes, and I was actually excited about them. But did I really want to stay here and be faced with my naïve decision and continually run into Josh? I’d have to at least stick it out for a semester. There was no way I was going to drop out over a breakup.
But I felt so lost. My world had been turned upside down, and I wasn’t sure how to right it again. I’d never been completely on my own before. I’d either had my family, my friends, or my boyfriend. The only reason I had been willing to leave my family and friends behind was because I’d known I would have Josh.
Gosh, how pathetic was I? I was a junior in college and had no idea how to navigate life on my own without some sort of crutch. Josh dumping me was like a bucket of ice water thrown over me, leaving me shocked and cold.
I stopped abruptly, realizing my surroundings weren’t familiar. I must have been on the outskirts of campus, as there were fewer people and only one tall brick building in sight, with small houses and apartments across the street. Great—not only was I feeling lost, I was nowactuallylost. My eyes pricked again, and a tear eventually slid down my face.
It seemed like that one tear was all that was needed to signal to my body that it could let the floodgates go.
5
Slate
Sitting in one of my favorite spots on campus, I finished up the reading assignment for my kinesiology class. Hiding away in between my classes was the only way to get my work done without people constantly interrupting me. Being popular had its perks, but being alone wasn’t one of them. Most of the time I was fine with it—I preferred not to be alone—but I also needed to keep my grades up so I could play football.
Looking around the small open area, only a few people were coming and going, no one paying any attention to me sitting under one of the large canopy trees. A girl standing in the middle of the sidewalk caught my attention. Her bag was resting on the ground at her feet, her shoulders slumped, her long blonde hair falling in loose waves, and when my eyes landed on her face, I wasn’t sure if I was seeing things clearly.
Was that Isla? And was she…crying?
I was sure it was her—I’d been with Isla earlier in class and knew she had been wearing black shorts and a cropped white tank top with black stripes.
