4. Ten Things I Hate About You （Melissa）
Chapter four
Ten Things I Hate About You (Melissa)
The other sisters of the Brookbog Coven (our covert little secret society in Berkeley) were present as well.
It wasn’t dumb luck that all of us happened to be originally from Brooklyn; we had carefully planned to induct only those members whom we knew would stay in touch after college.
If you were so much as a state away, you couldn’t be in the Brookbog Coven.
Another rule of the Coven was that come rain or shine: we had to meet every week.
Natasha, my best friend, sat by my side, cradling my head on her shoulder.
She was pursuing her master's at NYU. Nat was the first to arrive at this impromptu meeting.
Normally, we only ever met on Sundays, when all of us were free.
But this was a special occasion; and as per the rules, every witch had to be accounted for.
Vanessa, who graduated magna cum laude from Berkeley, had a job as an analyst on Wall Street.
She’d done a double major in data science and applied mathematics.
She was the most analytical of us all and chose to look at everything with the shrewd sense of a mathematician.
Then there were Tony and Lisey, who, after graduating, started an EDM musical duo that currently played gigs in all the hot clubs in New York.
The six of us had been through everything together for the past four years.
Bad breakups, celebrating job offers, crashing random bachelorette parties, you name it, we’d been through it, just as they were here for me now.
I’d sent an SOS in the group chat, assembling them at our favorite brunch place.
“There. There. It’s a lesson we circle back to every once in a while, don’t we, girls? Repeat after me. Men are pigs,” Natasha said, running her palm on my cheek, wiping away all the stray tears.
“Not all men,” Tony said. “I mean, come on. This guy we’re seeing, Josh. He’s…”
“We’re seeing? You’re both seeing the same guy?” Lindsey scoffed. “I can’t even begin to get into why that’s wrong on so many levels.”
“Would you relax? He’s been super chill about poly relationships, and now that we’ve both been with him, it’s not that bad,” Lisey said.
“Verdict, girls? Yay or nay?” Vanessa, ever the statistician, said.
“Nay,” I whimpered. “That’s simply strange and both of you know it. It ends in heartbreak either way.”
“It’s a nay for me too. Y’all gotta get your own men and not share them. In fact, take a hiatus from men. Just no more dating for any of us for a long, long time. We need me time more than we need we time,” Natasha added in a very whimsical tone.
“Big nay from Lindsey,” Lindsey said.
“The coven wants to point out to Lindsey that referring to herself in the third person does not take away from the fact that she’s named after the girl the Mean Girls were mean to,” Tony said. “Stop trying to make Lindsey happen. It’s never going to happen.”
“I’m sorry, I skipped the memo where we went from being witches to bitches,” Lindsey mocked in a high-pitched voice, gripping her mimosa glass so hard that I feared it would shatter.
“Ladies, as the final vote on this matter, which is a no from me, I would like to point out that we do not stray further from the actual topic at hand,” Vanessa said.
“Sidenote, poly relationships aren’t necessarily good or bad, but it shouldn’t come to that you, Tony, and you, Lisey, let a guy come between you two.
So there, with this minor matter resolved, would you all be ever so kind as to stop going on tangents and get back to what ails our beloved Melissa? ”
“You know you talk like a freaking robot, Vanessa,” Tony added one last snarky remark before going back to her drink, a virgin pina colada.
“Noted,” Vanessa said, deepening her monotonous inflection to further irk Tony. “Now, Melissa, you said that Ryan—”
“Ugh, don’t even say that name. It’s like the most basic ass name I’ve ever heard. The same goes for all Joshes and Kyles,” Natasha interjected.
“Fine, you said that the guy in question came clean about the fact that he was using you as a prop in a dare?” Vanessa asked, adjusting her glasses.
“Yeah, but…only after I inferred that our sleeping together meant that we were presumably going to be in a relationship,” I mumbled, suppressing a deep sob.
“So you love-bombed him,” Lisey added.
“She didn’t love-bomb that jackass,” Natasha came to my defense. “If anything, he played the fuckboy card.”
“Explain,” Lindsey, who was now listening with both hands under her elbows, asked, leaning forward on the table.
“He ended things before it could even get to the relationship talk. Let’s say that even though there was no dare to begin with, he chose to be an asshole simply so he could get out of her hair,” Natasha said.
“Ryan didn’t seem to be that kind of guy,” I said, reflecting upon the events of last night, feeling both hurt and angry. “He was like the most thoughtful person ever when we were eating in the diner. I mean, what was that all about?”
“He did what all boys do. Be all super sweet to you until you give them the business. And then, they’re like, wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
Out the door they go,” Tony said. “Freaking reminds me of Brody, my ex. He used to buy me flowers every night and wrote me sappy poems that rhymed terribly. Then, after prom, when we did the deed, he literally ghosted me so hard that he boarded a one-way flight to Morocco. He’s been there, managing his uncle’s restaurant ever since.
Not so much as a ‘hey, how you doing’ message on Facebook, even. ”
“Pigs, I tell you. Absolute pigs,” Natasha stated. “But why did he have to go to Morocco?”
“Because his father’s flower shop was losing money,” Tony said.
That did it. It broke the tension, causing all of us to laugh out loud.
All heads in the restaurant turned in our direction, trying to ascertain what was so hilarious that it made six women laugh in unison.
But that was just another day for the Brookbog sisters.
We laughed together. We cried together. Such was our bond.
Having people to share the pain with made the pain not hurt as much.
“So, to recap the events of spontaneous heartbreak, Melissa meets her boss, is subsequently charmed by him, lowers her defenses, sleeps with him, and then finds out the next morning that he was a jerk,” Vanessa pronounces. “Now, permission to be crass.”
“Permission granted,” Natasha said on my behalf. I didn’t want to do anything other than rest my head on her shoulders and croon as she caressed me.
“We ought to trash his car. Good old high school justice,” Vanessa said.
“You mentioned it cost him more than a hundred million, and he loves it to death. Well, I suggest we take a basket of eggs and baseball bats apiece, and show Mr. Ryan Hellerman that you don’t just get away by messing with one of us. ”
“Not the car,” I said, shaking my head. “It might have been unforgivable what he’d done, but if he was being remotely sincere with me that night, then that car’s more valuable to him than anything else. It was his dad’s dream to own it; and before, it was his grandfather’s dream.”
“You cannot play the devil’s advocate when you’re the one wronged by the fucking devil himself, babe,” Natasha instructed, pushing my head off her shoulder so that I’d sit up straight and look her in the eyes.
“Guys like him think that they can do whatever they want, stomp on us like we’re little ants or something, and nothing bad will ever happen to him.
Let’s show him that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. ”
“Avast!” Tony and Lisey spoke in unison, rising from their chairs, causing them to topple over. Two waiters hurried in our direction, looking at us disapprovingly.
“Ladies, this joint is dead. I suggest we take this party out to the streets of New York and find that bastard’s car.
What we lack in terms of eggs and bats we’ll more than make up for in terms of roadside trash and stray bricks.
All of us in?” Lindsey asked, throwing her credit card on the table as we all got up.
“Hang on, you guys,” I blurted out, looking at my phone. An unknown number was calling me. The part of me that was still hung over Ryan wondered if this was him calling. Before I could come to my senses, I picked the phone up and brought it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Is this Ms. Melissa Frances?” a woman’s voice spoke through the phone.
“Speaking,” I said, looking around at my friends, who were all staring at me anticipatingly.
“You’re listed as the emergency contact for Frances O’Shaughnessy,” the woman said.
My knees gave away, and I fell back in the chair I’d just gotten up from.
Dad.
I’d been meaning to visit him on the weekend.
Before I started my job, I’d spent the past couple of days over at his house, taking care of him, making sure all his meds were in order, and the caregiver nurse who took care of him was treating him well.
It had been two days since I’d visited his house on Long Island.
This could not be the end.
“Yes. He’s my dad,” I said, my voice quivering.
“I regret to inform you, Ms. Frances, but your father—”
I didn’t know what she said. My phone slipped from my fingers and clattered on the floor, its screen shattering.
The concept of time suddenly had no meaning for me.
Everything was both in slow motion and fast-forward at once.
Natasha was shaking me, trying to get me to respond; all I could feel inside was a sense of loss, remorse, and a cold, cold numbness.
My eyes felt like they had been pierced by a thousand burning needles.
As hot tears streamed down my face, I looked up at my friends, all of them gathered around me.
Natasha was hugging me, Vanessa had her hand resting on my shoulder, Tony and Lisey were sobbing silently, and Lindsey was trying to yank me out of the chair so we could get in her car and head to the hospital.