Isla and the Happily Ever After (27 page)

It’s a leading question. Clearly, Josh tells him a lot of things. “I did.”

“Aaaaand?”

I force another cheerful smile. “It was a beautiful gift.”

He pumps his fist. “Nice.”

“Went off without a hitch,” Josh says. “Thank you, Chuck.”

“Thank you, Chuck!” Brian repeats.

They discuss the plan, some last-minute part of the arrangement with Chuck that Brian hadn’t heard yet, and I squirm in my seat. How many people knew about this? Has Josh done this sort of thing before? The less private it gets, the more uncomfortable I feel.

There’s something I shouldn’t say, but for some terrible and unknown reason, I have to say anyway. I should save it for a more appropriate, less emotionally stressed day. I should save it for when we’re alone. I shouldn’t
ever
say it.
Don’t say it.

“Rashmi likes ancient Egypt, doesn’t she?” I ask.

Shit.

“What?” Josh’s response is sharp as his attention snaps from Brian to me.

“I— I mean, in your book. Her rabbit, Isis. And then she goes to Brown to study Egyptology.”

“Yeah, she goes to Brown because she
goes
there. Those things are true.”

“And there’s that drawing of her as an Egyptian goddess.” I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud.
And
I’m saying it in front of
Brian
. I don’t know what’s happening, but something inside of me has short-circuited. I’m freaking out. The Egyptian thing is a coincidence, I know this, but I can’t stop. “Was that how you knew about the temple?”

His brow furrows in angry confusion. “Huh?”

“The Temple of Dendur. Did you ever take her there?”

Josh gathers himself. “First of all, I
like
the reflecting pool. I wanted some time alone with you tonight, so I chose – what I thought was – the museum’s nicest room. Second of all,
no.
I did
not
take you someplace where I previously made out with my ex-girlfriend. Or whatever else it is you think we might have done in there.”

“Well, I know that much. If you’d done anything more, I would have read about it. Very graphically! In your graphic memoir.”

Time stops.

And that’s when I know that I’ve just said the worst thing that I’ll ever say in my entire life. And I’ve said it to the person whom I love the most.

Josh’s voice is deadly quiet. “Anything else you’d like to share with me right now? Any additional criticisms of me or my work?”

I want to speak. I want to apologize. This isn’t about his ex or his work. I have no idea why I just said those things. I’m confused. I’m not sure why I feel this upset, why I’m picking fights about things that don’t even matter.

Brian glances at me in the rear-view mirror, and his expression is unbearably strained, as if he’d jump through the car window if he could fit through the hole.

“No. Really,” Josh continues. “As long as you’re finally opening up to me, why don’t you go on? Tell me what else is wrong with my book.”

I’ve backed myself into the furthest corner possible. “Nothing is wrong with it.”

“But there are things you’d change?”

“No! I mean, yeah, but…small things. You know?”
Stop talking.
“It’s not a big deal. All books require a little bit of editing.”

The street lights cast Josh in shadow. I can’t see his expression, but it doesn’t
feel
nice. He remains silent. Waiting.

“Okay.” I gulp. “Well. There was this one flashback that was in a weird place. When you get your tattoo? That scene…it just didn’t flow with what came before and after it.”

“All right.” It comes out like ice.

“And your parents. They were, like, this big deal in the beginning, but by the end, it was like you didn’t even
have
parents. They completely dropped out.”

“Because they live in another
country.
”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t in your life any more. Even if it’s their
absence
that matters, it’s still something that should be acknowledged.”

His jaw is clenched. “Anything else?”

“Um.” My voice lowers to a near whisper. “There were a lot of drawings of Rashmi. In the middle.”

“
Shocker
.”

“No,” I say quickly. “I mean, there were a ton of one-page panels that were just…
there.
Completely unnecessary. They didn’t contribute anything to the story.” I can’t believe that I’m saying this –
all of this
– aloud. A good girlfriend would keep her mouth shut. “And then sections of your junior year were really crowded. You needed more variation between the panels. More space.”

“More space.”

“Um, yeah. Spaces. Breaks. For the reader to contemplate things. To figure out what’s important, on their own.”

“Spaces,” he says. “To figure out what’s important.”

“I’m sorry.” I’m drowning in a river of my own making. “I didn’t say anything earlier, because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. It’s
great
, I promise.”

“You’ve used that word to describe it in the past. And yet, I still don’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry.” I say it again, my voice desperate.

“Are you sure you aren’t just pissed off? Maybe because it isn’t about you?”

“No!” The shame is overwhelming. “I wasn’t even in your life until this year. I know that. I know I’m not an important part of your story.”

For the first time in several minutes, Josh is thrown. “What do you mean, you’re not important to my story?”

“I haven’t been around that long. And you had this whole life before me, and you’ll have this whole life after me—”

“
After
you?” His voice gets an octave higher. “What do you mean
after
?”

“Vermont. Your school. Your future.”

Josh is baffled. “But…you’re coming with me.”

“Am I?”

“When Dartmouth accepts you—”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I say.

He punches his fist against the seat. “Stop saying that. Why are you always putting yourself down? You’re gonna get in. There’s no way that you’re not getting in.”

“Tell that to Columbia.”

And now he’s thrown again. “What?”

“I didn’t get in.”

“
What?
When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I can’t look at him. My failure is humiliating. “A few days ago.”

“I’m so sorry. God, I wish you’d told me. I had no idea.”

“I got a letter from la Sorbonne, too. Accepted.”

Josh deflates with visible relief. “That’s great. You deserve it.” But there’s sadness, too, as his posture sinks further. Because if I attend la Sorbonne, there will still be an ocean between us. “So what if Dartmouth does accept you? Where will you go?”

“I don’t know.” And I realize I’m crying. “I haven’t decided.”

“But…I thought…I thought we had a plan.”

“No, you had a plan. You
have
plans.”

Josh shakes his head in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly who you are.” Tears stream down my cheeks. “You know how to be yourself, but you also know how to be a different kind of yourself on television and in society. And you’ve
always
had a passion for art, and you’ve
always
known where you’re attending college. You already even know what kind of apartment you’ll rent when you move there! Not to mention what kind of car you’ll drive, what kind of cat you’ll adopt, and how you’ll spend your weekends in the woods. I don’t know any of that. I’ve never cared about
anything
like you’ve cared about your work. I don’t even belong to a single country. I’m nobody. I’m nothing.”

“Isla…” My words have stunned him again. He has no idea what to say.

“And you’re right, maybe I
am
upset about your book for selfish reasons. I know you haven’t had the time, I know it takes months for you to draw them, but…eight pages. I was only
eight pages.
” My voice cracks, hollow and desperate. “I thought maybe I’d finally learn something if I could see myself through your eyes. But I wasn’t even there.”

Josh strains against his seat belt. He reaches for a hand, but I pull them both into my lap. “You’ll be in it,” he says. “Of course you’ll be in it.”

“I used to think so.” My chest is splitting in two. “Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? I’m a placeholder.”

“What do you mean?”

He’s trying desperately to get me to look at him, but I can’t. I’m in agony. “Your friends left school, and I was there, but I wasn’t enough to
keep
you there. You had to keep breaking rules. And then you left me.”

“It wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t like that!”

“No,” I say. “It was. You tried
really
hard for a
really
long time to get expelled, because you couldn’t admit to your parents that you didn’t want to be there. Your plan just succeeded at the wrong time. And now that you’re gone – now that you’re here, and I’m not – sooner or later, you’re gonna realize that I was only a distraction. Something to keep your mind off your misery. Something to keep you going until the next phase of your very carefully planned-out life could begin. But I no longer believe that you’ll actually want me there. And” – I swallow loudly – “I don’t want to be around when you discover it.”

Josh is reeling. “Wh-what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I don’t see myself in your future.”

“Isla.” His voice shakes. “Are you…are you breaking up with me?”

And there it is. The question that, once spoken aloud, is always inevitably its own undoing.

“You don’t love me like you think you love me,” I whisper.

Now he’s crying, too. “Why are you doing this?”

My entire world is crumbling, but I have to finish the destruction. I have to destroy what’s left of my heart before he can do it for me. “Because if it hurts us this much now,” I say, “I can’t imagine how much it’ll hurt when you come to this realization yourself.”

I’m as shocked by my words as he is.

I don’t understand how this could happen in one car ride, but as a deathly sombre Brian pulls over in front of Kismet, I already know that I’m getting out. And Josh isn’t.

Chapter twenty-seven

“Isla? Are you okay?” Kurt’s dad is watching me on the camera installed outside their building. I ran all three blocks from Kismet.

“Let me in. Please let me in!”

The door buzzes open and then slams shut behind me. I race up the two flights of stairs to their apartment, and Scott and Sabine are already in the hall. Kurt’s parents refuse to let me call them Mr. and Mrs. Bacon, because they refuse to believe that they’re old. “What happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Their questions all come at once.

“Is Kurt here?” I ask.

“Of course he is here,” Sabine says in a French accent. She ushers me inside with a slender, gentle arm. “He went to bed an hour ago, but he is probably awake. What happened? Why are you dressed up like this?”

I blurt it out. “I’ve broken up with my boyfriend, and I don’t want to go home.”

Their bodies tense.

“Did he hurt you?” Scott undergoes a Hulk-like transformation, which looks peculiar on his strung-out ex-rocker body.

“Yes!”

Scott’s body completes the Hulk transformation.

“No.” I sob hysterically. “
Emotionally
.”

Scott shrinks back into his natural form. Sabine exchanges a look with him. “Of course you can stay,” she says.

“Will you call my parents? I don’t want to have to explain. Not tonight.”

She leads me to Kurt’s bedroom. “I’ll call your
maman
right now.” She hugs me, and the comforting familiarity of her violet perfume keeps me in her arms, crying.

Kurt opens his door. “What’s going— Oh. What happened?”

Sabine releases me into his care. I flop onto his unmade bed, and he closes the door behind me. “It’s…it’s over!” I say.

Kurt places a solid hand on my back as I emit huge, gut-wrenching sobs. “Josh broke up with you?”

“No.
I
broke up with
him.
”

He’s quiet for nearly a minute. “I don’t get it,” he finally says.

I tell him the story to the best of my current ability, and when I’m done, he scratches his head. “So you broke up with Josh before he could break up with you.”

“No.” My head is swimming. “It wasn’t like that. Or… it was
more
than that. I don’t know.”

“You’ve never been able to believe that he could like you as much as you like him. You were afraid he’d dump you. So you picked those fights to get a conversation going in which you could dump him first.”

“No,” I say again. But something awful and truth-y stings inside of me.

Still. That doesn’t mean it was wrong to break up with him. I
do
believe that Josh would have left me, most likely before college even began. But maybe he wouldn’t have until
after
we were already in New England, already living together. Which would’ve been even worse. My heart couldn’t take it – moving someplace new and strange and then losing the person who’d brought me there. Because eventually, no matter what the circumstances, he
would
see the real me. Josh is a beautiful, messy, passionate work of art, and I’m…a blank canvas.