26. Gabe
26
GABE
I woke up to ten missed calls and twenty-six text messages from Aiden.
I’d gone home—no, I’d gone back to Brooklyn’s, I wasn’t allowed to think of it as home anymore—and thrown some combination of clothing into a duffle bag before heading out to the inn I’d stayed at for Mark and Jesse’s wedding. I didn’t want to bother Mark and Jesse just yet, but somehow, being on the same island as them felt a little better than going to some random hotel in Savannah.
I didn’t really pay attention to what I took, just grabbed whatever was lying around and shoved it in my bag. I’d have to deal with the rest of my belongings come Monday. If there was a Monday. I wasn’t sure I planned on acknowledging it when it came.
I checked into my room, a smaller one than the one the night of the wedding, and dropped my bag by the door. I kicked my shoes off, walked to the bed, and sat down. I realized I had no idea what to do.
Brooklyn had been right. I had no fucking clue how to handle a breakup. Was this what I was supposed to be feeling? This numbness? This sadness that had to be coming from the marrow of my bones? He’d told me I’d feel angry, and to use that anger to get over him. How could I use something I didn’t feel?
I lay back on the bed, not even bothering to get under the covers, and stared at the ceiling. I searched for anger. For rage. Even for annoyance. I’d settle for the tiniest crumb of something that felt powerful, active in a way that sadness didn’t. But I came up empty.
I curled over onto my side, my hand running along the sheets at the top of the bed. I flashed back to the first night I’d met Brooklyn, when I’d brought him back to a room in this same hotel, just one floor above. It felt like ages ago.
Do you think this is handmade?
The memory of his voice, his laugh, his breath on my neck, set something loose inside me, and I started to cry. I felt like an idiot, a grown man curled up in the fetal position, crying to himself in a hotel room, but that didn’t stop me. Once the sobs arrived, nothing could hold them back. They tore out of me, ragged, like they were ripping pieces of me away.
I welcomed it. It hurt. But at least it felt like something.
Somewhere along the line, I must have fallen asleep. And so I woke up, starving, to all of Aiden’s messages. And some from Niya too. I realized I’d never called her, never let her know what had happened after Brooklyn and I had talked. I realized I didn’t care.
Fuck. I really didn’t want to deal with any of them now. Or, possibly, with anyone ever again. But that wasn’t an option. It didn’t matter why Aiden had started calling me. Now that he hadn’t gotten an answer, he was sure to keep trying until he did. I pulled up his last text and responded to it.
AIDEN: Are you even alive?
GABE: Yes
My phone rang ten seconds later.
“Hey,” I croaked. I dropped the phone on top of the bed and pushed the speaker button so I didn’t have to bother holding it up. I didn’t have the energy for much of anything right now.
“Hey yourself, asshole. Way to fucking ignore me for twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-four hours? Jesus, what day is it?”
“Saturday, dumbass. Where the hell have you been?”
“Um, Summersea?”
“Where on earth is that?”
“It’s the island where Mark and Jesse live. It doesn’t matter. It’s not important.”
Nothing was important anymore.
“Okay, fine, so you’re on an island. That still doesn’t explain what you’ve been doing for the past day, aside from ignoring me.”
“I haven’t been doing anything. I’ve been sleeping.”
“You’ve been sleeping for twenty-four hours?”
Fuck, had I? “I guess.”
“What happened? Are you sick? In the hospital? Being held hostage by an international shrimp and grits cartel?”
I sighed. I had to say it. “Brooklyn broke up with me.”
It hurt even more than I expected. Like saying it out loud made it real in a way it hadn’t been before. My boyfriend—my ex -boyfriend who was technically still my current-husband—did not love me and did not want to be with me anymore. That was now a true fact, a thread of reality woven into the stupid handmade quilt of the universe.
The quilt of the universe fucking sucked.
“Oh, fuck, I’m sorry.” Aiden’s voice went from annoyed to kind in an instant. “Shit. I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Some kind of noise—something between a laugh and a sob—escaped my throat. “He just—he told me he didn’t want to be with me anymore. He thought I was throwing my life away if I didn’t go to Paris, if I stayed with him. Fuck, I don’t even know. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Damn.” Aiden was quiet for a moment. “So it’s true, then.”
“What’s true?”
“Oh. Right.” He paused. “Well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I guess if you’ve been passed out in a grief haze for the past twenty-four hours, you haven’t seen it.”
“Seen what?”
“Someone put a video of you and Brooklyn having a fight online. You can’t hear everything that you guys are saying, but, well, you can hear enough. Enough that it’s clear it’s a breakup.”
“Oh, God. I forgot.” I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. “I saw them. The kids who recorded it. They were teenagers. Asked me if it was real. Christ, so they put it online?”
“Yeah. Do you, um. Do you want to see it?”
“Why not. Can’t make my life any worse, can it?”
Five minutes later, after clicking the link Aiden had sent me and watching a shaky cell phone recording of my fight with Brooklyn, I realized how naive I’d been. I felt much, much worse.
“Are you okay?” Aiden asked after a minute of silence.
“I’m—” I started to say I was fine, but stopped. I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t anywhere close to fine. And so I started to cry. Again. As though the bed needed more of my snot rubbed into it. “I’m not,” I gulped, before another sob wracked my body.
“Well, fuck that guy,” Aiden said when I finally quieted down. “What a fucking asshole, leading you on like that.”
“I’m not even sure he did,” I said, my voice small. “I keep trying to think back and figure out where I went wrong. He never really wanted to talk about the future, but I just thought—I don’t know what I thought. I guess I was wrong, though.”
“I still reserve the right to hate him,” Aiden said. “Please, let me do that for you. You’ve hated enough of my exes. I owe you.”
“Thanks, Aiden. Really. Thank you.”
“I hate to bring this up, but we should probably talk about what we’re going to tell people.”
“Tell people? People who?”
“People everyone. Gabe, this has blown up. That video went viral. People who didn’t even know you existed forty-eight hours ago have learned your entire story and written articles about it. And Stars Today won’t stop pestering me for an interview.”
“Jesus. Just tell them no. Tell everyone no.”
“But what do you want me to say? Confirm the story? Tell everyone the video was a hoax?”
“Oh my God. I’m not going to be able to go anywhere without people asking me about it, am I?”
“Probably not.” I could almost hear Aiden wince.
Could I handle that? Having my breakup thrown in my face everywhere I went? The constant reminder of how dumb I’d been to think that Brooklyn could ever love me? The constant reminder that he didn’t?
“Just shut it down,” I said with a sigh. “Don’t respond to anybody, don’t say anything. Just shut the account down and let everything go.”
“But the video—”
“Just ignore it. I’ll be gone within a few days, and it won’t matter anymore.”
“Gone? Gabe, wait a second, are you okay? I know breakups are rough, but please, this isn’t a reason to be thinking about suicide.”
“Suicide? What the fuck—oh.” I snorted bitterly. “No, I meant gone, like, out of the country. Paris. Not here anymore.”
“Don’t scare me like that. I thought you were going to go drown yourself in the bathtub.”
“The tub here is like a foot deep.”
“You can drown in shallow water!”
“Yeah, but with this room, I have to share a bathroom with someone else down the hall. I wouldn’t do that to them.”
“Glad to know that social niceties are the only thing stopping you from ending it all,” Aiden said wryly. “Fuck. So, Paris, huh?” He was quiet for a second. “And here I thought a three-hour time difference from you was tough. What the hell am I going to do when I need to talk to you now?”
“You can still call me. No matter what time it is. I promise. Hell, I’ll probably be the one drunk dialing you. At least for a while, anyway.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“I know. I’ll miss you too.”
We hung up, and I texted Niya, told her I’d shut the account down. With any luck, I would be in Paris within a week.
I would miss Aiden. Getting to see him was one of the highlights of my life. And moving to Paris would make that a lot harder.
But if there was one thing I wouldn’t miss, it was feeling like this. I’d only been conscious for about two hours of my breakup with Brooklyn and I already felt like I couldn’t take it anymore.
How much longer was this feeling going to last?