I lightly kick my legs and use my arms to keep me afloat. Matt follows in my direction, walking through the water and lowering himself down until he’s shoulder deep.
“I’m glad we were able to do this,” he says. “I haven’t seen you much lately.”
I give him a coy smirk. “Missed me, have you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
That earns him a playful splash, and he turns his face away with a grin. I slow down my pace, allowing him to swim a little closer.
“I take it the internship has been going well.”
I relax farther into the water. “It’s going very well. I’m learning a ton and everyone there is really nice. Our boss, Lorenzo, in particular, and Mira, my friend in logistics.”
“Did you study something else before you went for design?” he asks. “If you think about it, it makes no sense that we’re expected to know what we want to do halfway through college and then stick with it forever. We’re all clueless then. When I was twenty or twenty-one, I willingly took shots of Jägermeister to pregame, which is arguably the most disgusting liqueur on god’s green earth.”
“Oh no,” I commiserate. “Yeah, that’s definitely not a pregame shot. By law, I don’t think you’re even allowed to consume Jäger until you’re heartbeats away from blacking out.”
“Exactly. So that goes to show where people are in their mental development at that age.”
“Fair enough,” I say with a chuckle. I take a second then, wondering just how much I want to open up before going on, “Though, as much as I agree with you that not everyone knows what they want to do out of college, that’s not what happened with me. I never switched majors or went for the wrong career. I was in fashion school, but I dropped out after my sophomore year.”
Matt’s surprised, his head angling slightly. “Really?” I nod in response. “Can I ask what happened there?”
My stomach tightens as I think of the choices I made back then. I tell myself that everything happens for a reason. That if I did things differently, I wouldn’t be here right now, but it still isn’t enough to quell my regret entirely. It’ll always be there. Like a cut that scabbed wrong and never healed right.
“I was young, and I fell in love,” I tell him. “And before you spew out his name, yes, I’m referring to Greg.” Matt flashes me a look like I just spoon-fed him poison, or possibly Jägermeister, and I can’t believe his innate disgusted response to my ex’s name is somehow becoming endearing to me.
“We met when I was a freshman,” I go on to say. “Not at school, just out one night. We started dating and things got serious relatively fast. He wound up getting accepted into law school in Chicago the next year. We tried doing long distance, but it was so much harder than we thought it’d be. After a while he asked me to move out there to be with him. I agonized over it for a long time, but then I packed my bags, left school and did it.”
“And how did that work out?” Matt asks, although I’m sure he can guess the answer.
I smile as best I can. “Clearly, not great. I mean, it was good for a really long time. Or maybe that’s just how I saw things.” I pause then, thinking about the way I used to view my relationship with Greg, and how I still view it now, to a certain extent. Sometimes I rewatch our best times together in my head like a movie. With soft lighting, whimsical music and our happily-ever-after just out of reach. The pictures I love to look at are my perfect screen grabs. But how much of that was real? Now I’m not sure.
I can feel my mind wandering, and I look to Matt. He’s waiting patiently. I give my head a little shake as I try to get my story on track again.
“My parents never supported me moving, so I was on my own financially. I started waitressing right away. I figured I’d save up enough money and then apply to fashion schools there, but it never ended up happening. Something always got in the way and then eventually Greg passed the bar, graduated law school, got a great job and broke up with me.”
“Nice,” Matt grumbles. “I knewGregwould live up to the douchey persona I envisioned for him. He didn’t break up with you on graduation day, did he?”
“Not quite that brutal,” I confirm, “it was a few years later.” I take a second, remembering that day all too well. It makes me sad. It makes me angry. It makes me want to go back and demand answers instead of crumbling, which is what I actually did. “I never should have moved,” I tell Matt. “But all through life, I feel like you always hear that if you find love, you fight for it. You risk it all. That’s what I thought I was doing by moving to Chicago. I gambled, and I lost.”
Matt doesn’t say anything, only looks at me. I can tell he wants me to keep going and I’m surprised when I do. “The funniest part was when we broke up, he told me it was because I wasn’t ambitious enough. He needed to be with someone who was as driven as him. He said maybe I was the right person at the wrong time.” Even thinking about it now, it’s still a bitter pill to swallow. “Here I had given up on my own goals because I didn’t want to give up on our relationship, and that very decision was ultimately what broke us up. Or at least, that’s what he said. Now he says he barely remembers why we ended things.We, mind you, not him.”
Matt sits low in the water, moving his arms over the mostly calm surface. “I think I’m going to cast my vote with Marco on this one. I have no idea why you talk to that guy anymore.”
I think about saying nothing in Greg’s defense, but I can’t ignore that there’s two sides to every story.
“To be fair, maybe I should have been more ambitious. Greg was always encouraging me to get back into school, but I didn’t see how I could cover tuition and my share of the rent at the same time. He offered to pay for my half until I was situated, but I was afraid he’d think I was taking advantage.”
Matt listens, but if he hates Greg any less, he doesn’t say it. “Have you guys stayed in contact ever since the split?” he asks.
I shake my head. “In the beginning, we didn’t speak much. I only ever saw what was going on with him via Instagram. Which I may have checked more regularly than I should have...like daily.”
Matt floats backward in the water. He seems very tempted to splash me. “Why would you do that? Why go out of your way to torture yourself?”
“Insta creeping isn’t torturing myself if I’m notdyingto get together with him again,” I contest.
Matt looks at me and I can’t be sure if he believes me or not. “Maybe you’re not texting him or following him in the hopes of getting back together now, but you’re also not allowing yourself to move on from him, either. In my experience, when you’re getting over someone, a zero-contact policy is the only way forward. You can’t let go of something and cling to it at the same time. It’s tiring, it’s time-consuming and ultimately, it’s pointless.”
