Page 84 of Okay, Cupid

Stupid.

Stupid.

Stupid.

I walk until my chest is heaving, until my thighs are starting to hurt a little. I reach the Great Highway and the seawall, where the parking lot sits empty because it’s too cold and too dark to be out here. The tide fades out as I stumble through the sand. I should go home, but I can’t. I need to be alone. I need to be somewhere that has never been home to me because I can’t deal with this anymore. I can’t deal with these feelings that I want to pull out of my body. I can’t deal with a future where Huy Trinh won’t know who I am; I can’t deal with a future where he isn’t a part of my life. Whatever this job was, this assignment, this curse, it’s ruined my life harder than Leo ever could’ve.

There’s a log, situated in the sand, for anyone who wants to use the firepit that sits there open, ashen, charred wood left behind.

I wish that I’d never met him.

I was always taught that love was a blessing, that love was what kept us all going. Love for one another, platonic and romantic, one-sided or mutual. I was taught that love is the universal language, that it’ll be what saves us all, that it’s the very reason that I exist, that I have a future, a responsibility.

I was taught that love is the most important thing in the world.

So why, sitting here, can I only think of love as a cruel curse, as the thing that is keeping me trapped here, with a future that seems to hold no hope for me at all?

This is what I deserve, for letting this happen again. At the first hints, I should’ve told Leah and Richard, gotten them to take me off this assignment.

Because Leah was right.

I’m not ready; I never was. I might not ever be again. Because what are the fucking chances? That I’d make the mistake of falling for a boy, only to let it happen all over again.

I just have to get them together. I have to put an end to this.

I have to.

It’s for the best.

That’s what I have to tell myself.

It’s for the best.

It is.

The easy thing about not technically having parents is that it’s so much easier to skip school.

Sure, Hearst calls me, thinking that I’m Leah, leaving a message to warn me that unless I submit a doctor’s note by the end of the month, my absences will be listed as unexcused. Apparently, I only get five of them a year.

On Tuesday, I go to Japantown. There’s an AMC there where Cal and I have watched movies. There isn’t much playing, just leftover movies from last year and a few early-in-the-year stinkers. But I manage to spend the entire day there, only making my way home once I’ve seen the moon almost crash into Earth, a family drama about a Chinese American family, and a rom-com about two exes reuniting for their daughter’s wedding.

There are a handful of differences in that last one that keep me from relating too hard to it.

On Wednesday, I know that I can’t sit through six hours of movies again, so I ride the train over to Oakland. At least this way I can guarantee that I won’t see anyone that I know over on this side of the Bay.

Distance won’t help, though, that much I know. I could travel anywhere in the world, and yet I’d still be drawn here, to this city, to this boy.

• • •

I go back to school when I desperately don’t want to.

I have a duty that I’ve been neglecting. Huy and Alice aren’t together yet, despite getting them along this path. There is still work that needs to be done.

And it’s my job to see it through.

I manage to dodge Huy in English, but when I walk into algebra, Huy is seated on top of my desk. Alice is twisting around to talk to him. I can’t hear them. For a beat, I just stand there, looking at them, picturing this as their life together. Huy laughs at something that she says, and he feeds her a slice of an orange he’s struggled to peel, if the shredded remains of the peel on his desk are any indication.

I don’t belong here with them. This isn’t my world, my life.