16 Ways to Break a Heart Read online

  I didn’t answer. Something red and angry was bubbling up from my stomach.

  “I just don’t think she’s good for you, Dan.”

  “But she is.”

  Ruby’s face was purple. She took a breath, locking eyes with me. “Are you sure about that?”

  Was I?

  “You’re playing with, like, nuclear explosives,” Ruby said. “You realize that, right?”

  “Is that a metaphor?”

  “I’m trying to protect you.”

  “I don’t need protection.”

  “Have you slept with her yet?”

  My face got hot. We hadn’t, we were virgins still. Nat had wanted to wait until the moment felt “exactly right.” “Does it matter?”

  “Well, if you’re having sex, you’re screwed. Pun intended.” She punched my arm lightly then cracked a smile. “Otherwise, you can still get out of the relationship fairly unscathed. Girls get, like, super attached when they sleep with a guy.” She shrugged awkwardly. “I would imagine guys do too?”

  “Ruby.” Why wasn’t she getting this? “I don’t. Want. Out.”

  She flinched a little, looked down quickly—“Fine”—and then fingered a few of the purple petals that had fallen onto the marble countertop. “Just don’t come crying to me when she boils your bunny.”

  “Huh?”

  “Fatal Attraction, bud.” She slammed the kettle onto the stovetop and cranked the gas to high. “Look it up.”

  MARCH 20, 2016, SUNDAY, 6:54 P.M., TEXT

  From: Unknown Number

  To: Dan Jacobson

  Hope I didn’t make too many waves last night for you and your girl. I’m a troublemaker. Apologies. X, Ari

  MARCH 20, 2016, SUNDAY, SCRAP PAPER NOTE TACKED TO DAN’S DAD’S CAR WINDSHIELD

  PETE,

  LESLIE SAW DAN ROOTING AROUND IN THE FLOWERS THIS MORNING PICKING ALL OF OUR LAVENDER. NEW GIRLFRIEND? I’M ALL FOR ROMANCE, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GARDENING, CAN YOU PLEASE KEEP YOUR KID OFF OUR LAWN?

  DAVID

  MARCH 21, 2016, MONDAY, DVD COPY OF FATAL ATTRACTION STUCK INSIDE THE SLATS OF DAN’S LOCKER; WITH IT, A STICKY NOTE THAT READS:

  Watch and weep.

  —R

  7

  DAN, 8:57 A.M.

  Last year around Christmastime, Nat was helping out after school at Eagle Hill—stringing popcorn and cranberries with the kids; making construction paper wreaths and felt stockings; baking cookies, being cheery, being the best version of Nat. I was across campus at Dayview with Ryan doing similar stuff, only I was filming it and I was struggling. Trying to get him to meet one of his functional reading goals—to identify an item, just one, on his multiple choice task cards. He’d done it before, but now that I was filming he was refusing—smiling, rocking, shaking then hiding his head. He’d even snubbed my cookie bribes—broken pieces of crispy gingerbread from the Dayview café. So I’d gone to get Nat. Because she was great with the kids, sure, but also because she was just so skilled at persuading people to do the things that they didn’t want to do.

  “Can I borrow you for a minute?” I asked, poking my head inside her classroom. Kids were everywhere being cute maniacs—eating, singing, crafting, farting. Nat was on the floor with a small brown-haired boy, the two of them hip to hip wielding scissors; Nat making something complicated with cardboard, the boy tracing the outline of a snowflake with his finger.

  “What can I do you for?” she said, looking up.

  “Can you help me with Espinosa?”

  “Right now?”

  “Twenty minutes tops, I swear. I’m just trying to get some footage of him reading.”

  She faced the boy and pushed some hair off his forehead. “What do you think, buddy? Can you spare me for a bit?” He smiled broadly, his two front teeth missing.

  We spent nearly an hour in the senior bungalow—me hovering with my camera while Nat and Ryan ate M&Ms and played Jenga. They drew dolphins together. They drew rainbows. Nat said, “Screw task cards!” And found a clever backdoor way for Ryan to meet his goals—by rewarding him with huge hugs every time he was able to identify an object she’d drawn.

  Watching them together like that—even rewatching the footage later on? It broke my heart in the very best way.

  “Dan?”

  Cohen’s hovering over me, waving around a ripped copy of Gilgamesh.

  “Sorry?”

  “Your thoughts on Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s relationship: platonic? Romantic?”

  “I—” I haven’t read a word of it. I scan the room for an ally, but all I see are bored, blank faces.

  “Dan.” Cohen drops her arm and the book smacks against her bony hip. “Do your homework.”

  The bell dings. I grab my crap, hang my head low, then scuttle out into the packed hallway where I immediately slam into Whitman and this other guy, Will Brizendine. “Jacobson!” They slap my shoulders and hands, grinning broadly. “How’s it going?”

  I slap back, my eyes darting left. There’s Arielle, avoiding my gaze, clinging to Whitman’s arm like a shy child. I mumble something about calc and dart off.

  Seconds later, when I’m only a few feet away from my locker, I see it: the cream-colored edges poking out the slats of my metal cubby; the red ribbon taunting me like a mischievous snake. The calligraphy. The heavy cardstock. It’s another package from Nat.

  My stomach drops.

  LOS ANGELES, MAY 9, 2017, TUESDAY, 2:45 P.M.

  This one’s a goodie.

  We were parked on PCH, windows down, car console packed with beach food (fried clams, french fries, lemonade in frosty bottles). The wind that whipped our cheeks was cold and salty, and we laughed and danced in our seats with the radio, shoving our faces full of batter and grease, grinning stupidly while the waves outside crashed and retreated. I was happy, Dan. I’d been a miserable idiot until you came along, and now I was like one of those giggle toys that laugh hysterically when you punch them in the gut.

  “More ketchup, please.”

  “Here.” You passed me a couple of packets. “Nat?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I love you.”

  I had a fry hanging out of my mouth. “You love me?” I’d waited four long months for those words, and now here they were—I! Love! You!—so casual! So breezy! As if you’d been saying them every day, always. “Dan, I—” I tried saying them back and a chunk of potato fell from my lips. You laughed so loud it rocked the car.

  “I hate you!” I threw the fry at your face.

  “No you don’t.”

  “You’re right, I love you.”

  “Say it again.”

  “I love you.”

  “One more time.”

  “I love you!” I said, and then we crazy made out for an hour.

  It was the best, Dan. Better than our first kiss. Better than birthday cake or methamphetamines or the chicken wraps from the Lebanese place by your house. This moment MATTERED. Love meant devotion and commitment and FOREVER. You kissed me and cradled my face with your hands. I felt high. Higher than if I’d been mainlining coffee and candy all morning long. I thought for sure this feeling would last—the elation and excitement—and I couldn’t imagine a time when you weren’t in my life, loving me; when I wasn’t loving you.

  Truth is, I still love you and I loathe you for it.

  Because somewhere along the way you stopped loving me back.

  Nat

  DAN, 10:02 A.M.

  She’s wrong, I didn’t stop loving her. A little piece of me will likely always love Nat, but being enmeshed with someone that dynamic, that seductive but scary turbulent—it comes with a cost. One I could never sort out a way to pay without going into overdraft.

  Last fall, at about the midway point in our relationship, Nat had a collage piece in a group show at Marlborough, her fancy-as-fuck, all-girls school in Hancock Park. Nat’s parents were there, Lex too, but I spent most of the night on my own browsing mediocre student art—lumpy sculptures and sloppy sketches—whi
le Nat held court with a gaggle of fawning peers and faculty.

  “See anything you like?” It was Lex, saving me. I’d been on my own slurping too-sweet punch for an hour, contemplating escape routes. “I think the Renoir knockoff is for sale.”

  “But likely out of my price range,” I joked.

  Lex bit down on a spray-cheese-slathered cracker. “You should’ve been here for last year’s show. Katherine Felps took a dump in the middle of the studio and had the balls to call it art.”

  I blinked, stunned. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Ha! But no, I’m dead serious.” She finished her snack with a shrug. “Sheesh, private school!”

  I laughed, despite myself. I liked Alexa. She was brash and a little scary but in a pleasant, disarming way.

  “You like Nat’s piece?” she asked after a beat.

  In fact, I loved it. It was her best yet; an eerie, animalistic self-portrait. “I do, yeah. A lot.”

  “Nancy Schattner wants to buy it for her private collection.”

  “Who?”

  “Marlborough board member.” She ladled some neon punch into a clear plastic cup. “And Schattner’s husband says he has a journalist friend who might be interested in doing a profile on Nat for the Arts & Culture section of the L.A. Times.”

  My body went rigid. “The Times?” I looked across the room at Nat. She was radiating something I hadn’t seen before tonight: A blinding, incandescent ray of—what? Pride? Self-assurance? Suddenly I was seeing her the way others seemed to: as special. Inventive. Nat wasn’t like everyone else our age. She had it. That unnamable quality. That undefinable appeal that could launch her into a galaxy of insane success and fame. She was “a visionary,” people were saying. “A unique talent.” She was going to go far with or without her parents’ money; whether I felt threatened or not.

  “Wanna go outside and smoke a blunt?” Lex said.

  “Huh?” I couldn’t look away from Nat. I felt a fast, sweet pang of adoration, of love, that was quickly obliterated by a wallop of jealousy. “I don’t smoke pot.”

  “Me neither, duh.” She smiled impishly then ran for the exit. “I was just testing you!”

  I downed my punch, waved at Nat, and checked my phone.

  Three texts from Arielle.

  She’d been messaging me all weekend long—You’re cute; You’re trouble; I know you’re taken, but—flirtatious nonsense that I hadn’t responded to. Not really, anyway.

  “Hi, you.” Nat was here now, kissing me; pawing my face/shoulders/neck. “Sorry for leaving you alone for so long.” She grabbed my phone and—“Who’s been keeping you busy while I’ve been so hideously neglectful?”—checked my screen.

  Panicked, I took my cell back and blurted, “No one,” but it was already too late. Nat had seen the messages and her eyes were now wild with shiny, It-Girl tears.

  “Dan?”

  “She’s basically stalking me,” I insisted, shrugging coolly, though in actuality, I’d been the one to initiate the conversation that night. I’d texted earlier right after meeting Nat’s art teacher, Leilani, who had called Nat’s portrait “sensational” and “strikingly violent.”

  “I barely wrote back, see?” I thrust the phone in Nat’s face. My side of the chat was all acronyms and evasive emojis. She didn’t care though. She kept crying anyway. Quietly, but a few passersby noticed. I pulled her outside onto the patio where it was windy and warm. The Santa Anas were blowing everything sideways and down—palm trees, people, street signs.

  “Tonight was so important to me,” she murmured.

  I felt a blip of guilt followed by a furious wave of justification. Nat had been getting all the attention, after all. Hadn’t I deserved some too?

  “Is something going on with that girl, Dan?”

  “She’s just a friend.”

  “But do you like her more than me?”

  I didn’t. I wished I did. Arielle seemed so uncomplicated. The kind of girl who goes through boys like bags of potato chips. She seemed spacey and noncommittal and, frankly, like fun. I wanted to want her. I wanted to want a girl who wasn’t an emotionally unhinged creative genius. “I don’t like her more than you,” I said, pulling her close; thinking a hug or a nuzzle might soothe her. If only we could level the playing field; get back to that space where we were both at our best: Boxed mac and cheese. Wall-to-wall carpeting.

  “Please say you still love me?” Nat said, chin quivering, eyelashes wet and fluttering. And I did of course, so, “I do,” I said, but the love I felt—it was tight and constricting like a straitjacket.

  FEBRUARY 7, 2016, SUNDAY, 9:14 P.M., CHAT

  AlexaMcKay17: I spy your green, glowing dot.

  N_Fierro: Sexy Lexy!

  AlexaMcKay17: You weren’t in calc Friday.

  N_Fierro: I cut. Dan and I went to Malibu.

  N_Fierro: Lex.

  AlexaMcKay17: Nat.

  N_Fierro: He loves me.

  AlexaMcKay17: He said it??

  N_Fierro: Finally, yeah!

  AlexaMcKay17: How’s it feel???

  N_Fierro: Uh, fantastic??

  AlexaMcKay17: Can we celebrate?

  N_Fierro: Yes! When?

  AlexaMcKay17: Tomorrow after school? Village Pizza?

  N_Fierro: Can’t! Dan’s got the day off, so we’re checking out some rando vintage mall in the Valley. What about Thursday after Quigley’s lecture?

  AlexaMcKay17: I have debate.

  N_Fierro: Next week?

  AlexaMcKay17: You seriously don’t have anything sooner?

  N_Fierro: Ah, no??

  AlexaMcKay17: I’ve never had to schedule plans with you weeks in advance before.

  N_Fierro: Please don’t be mad, Lex. I’m in love!

  N_Fierro: Are you mad?

  N_Fierro: Okay, you’re mad.

  AlexaMcKay17: You’ve stood me up twice this month. And you missed the food fundraiser last week.

  N_Fierro: I apologized for that.

  AlexaMcKay17: That was a huge deal, coordinating that event.

  N_Fierro: I’m sorry!

  AlexaMcKay17: And now you’re all booked up??

  N_Fierro: Please don’t act like I’m a super shitty person.

  AlexaMcKay17: Did I say you were?

  N_Fierro: You’re inferring it.

  AlexaMcKay17: I can’t possibly think you’re that shitty if I’m sitting here begging for your love like a dog.

  N_Fierro: Lex . . .

  AlexaMcKay17: It’s pathetic.

  N_Fierro: It’s not.

  AlexaMcKay17: This feels bad, Nat! Like, I feel super desperate and weird and like I’m competing with Dan for your attention. And I like Dan. Which makes this worse.

  N_Fierro: Stop! Please don’t feel that way. It’s not you, it’s hormones! I feel like I’m on some sort of ecstasy/speed cocktail 24-7. I can’t even remember to do everyday shit like shower.

  AlexaMcKay17: You must be a charming date.

  N_Fierro: Was that a joke?

  AlexaMcKay17: That was a joke, yes.

  N_Fierro: Good! Don’t be mad. Come with us tomorrow?

  AlexaMcKay17: To the rando Valley vintage mall?

  N_Fierro: Yeah.

  AlexaMcKay17: Uh . . .

  N_Fierro: Please?? If you come we can do dinner after. Just you and me.

  AlexaMcKay17: Really? Just us?

  N_Fierro: I’ll send Dan home, hand to heart.

  AlexaMcKay17: Can we get pizza?

  N_Fierro: We can.

  AlexaMcKay17: Did I guilt you into this?

  N_Fierro: 100%.

  8

  LOS ANGELES, MAY 10, 2017, WEDNESDAY, 10:35 P.M.

  Time to get a little X-rated.

  I’m writing you from bed, scribbling away under a canopy of white Christmas lights and glow-in-the-dark ceiling stars. I’m in my silkiest pajamas thinking dark, lascivious thoughts. Turned on yet? Remember what happened here, nearly a year ago? Twisted up in my sheets, fumbling awkwardly, bouncing bac
k and forth between pain and exaltation?

  “You look incredible.”

  “Do I?”

  I was standing on my front stoop wearing your favorite sundress—spaghetti straps, batik print, thin fabric. I’d twisted my hair into a topknot and stuck a gardenia under the elastic.

  “Mariella?” you asked, passing me a bouquet of wilted wildflowers.

  “She’s off today.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Excited. You?”

  “Petrified.”

  I grabbed you, kissed you, then pulled you quickly inside the house.

  Upstairs, I’d really tried to create a mood with dim lights and tea lights and fresh-cut jasmine and new sheets; I’d even shoved all my naked, decapitated Barbies into a sock drawer. The room looked legit. Adult. The sun was setting, the light outside, a neon pink; Kitty Carlisle sat stone-like on my bureau, watching us.

  “We have an audience,” you said, pointing at the cat.

  “A true voyeur,” I said.

  “I want this to be perfect, Nat.”

  “It will be.”

  “And, like, I want you to know how much this means to me.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a big deal, Dan.”

  “It does though. I want it to be.”

  I scooped up Kitty Carlisle and dropped her onto the hallway rug. Then I locked the door and looked at you. We were alone.

  First, it was your hands around my waist, shaky and timid; next, it was your fingers unraveling my bun. Between kisses you slipped the straps from my shoulders and tugged lightly at the sides of my dress. I yanked off your T-shirt. I bit your earlobe. I laughed while you shimmied gracelessly out of your pale, baggy jeans. Within seconds we were on the bed, limbs entwined, bodies hot and bothered. We’d been here before of course—three months in, and we were masters of the Everything-But. This was different though, this was how lovers did it: they got sweaty and primal; they writhed, they rocked, they made abysmal noises and sounds—

  “Nat?” You’d slipped on the condom, slipped inside me, and, “Am I hurting you?”

  It was happening. My thighs were slick; my pulse beat quick. I pushed my face into the pillow in an attempt to smother a cry. “Keep going,” I told you, bucking reluctantly; clamping my eyes shut and praying you thought my pleasure was pain.