Page 39 of Good Luck, Babe!
It’s still daylight out. That doesn’t feel right. Nobody should feel like this while the sun is up. This humiliation, this misery, this is a nighttime feeling—it should only be allowed to happen when no one can see your face.
Buenos Aires flies by, and I watch it without really seeing. I’m stuck on memories of that night.
She kissed me. Finally. After years of me wanting it, Yumi kissed me, and I…I don’t know. The memories just aren’t there in my brain. I remember flashes of moments. Images. The stars through her domed glass ceiling, faint. The feel of her lips, soft. The taste ofThis is a bad idea, bitter. The panic, warm.
I couldn’t—
The only thing my body knew in that moment was that it needed to get out of there. So it did.
I left, I didn’t look back. My pride held my hand, kept me from turning around. I think I knew that seeing her closed front door would have broken me completely.
I climbed into my car, held it together long enough to drive out of Yumi’s complex before I pulled over and sobbed unintelligible syllables into my steering wheel. I didn’t know why it was so painful. I told myself,You’ve been through worse than this. You will go through worse than this.Guiltily, I tried to summon the feeling of my mom’s death. I tried to imagine how I’ll feel when my dad dies one day. I wanted the pain to pale in comparison, but all of it just melted together like Chapstick onto a leather car interior under the Arizona sun. I couldn’t extract any singular part of it. All of those things, the real and the speculative, crushed me as one.
Windows down, AC blasting, I cried until my head ached and my eyes itched and my throat was scraped raw. I didn’t feel any better afterward. Not that day, not the next, and not the day after. I suffered every time I reflexively opened the text thread at the top of my messages and hurt my own feelings.
One year away from that moment and it still cuts just as deep now as it did then. Except this time, I’m not alone in the car. I’m not allowed to cry.
I’m never fucking allowed to cry.
Chapter 22
Heartbroken
It’s weird to be comingback to somewhere—the beds rumpled how we left them, empty plastic takeout container on the dresser, wrapper from the dulce de leche cookie I bought Yumi on her nightstand.
“So,” Yumi starts, crossing her arms. “What’s going on?”
“Hmm?” I ask, turning away from her to focus on reorganizing my pack. Today’s clothes are hanging in the bathroom, having been washed unceremoniously in the sink, so I move my clothing cube to the top of the bag, ready to throw the (hopefully) dry clothes in tomorrow morning.
“You’re really going to do this to me?” She doesn’t sound mad. She sounds resigned. Like she expected it—whatever it is.
I zip my pack closed and stand. “Do what?”
Yumi sighs, pursing her lips. “Be Noelle about this whole thing. You just lock down when you’re uncomfortable,” she says. Not accusatory, but factual.
I don’t like the way my silence proves her right.
“You begged me to come here, so I did. You begged me to act like your girlfriend, so I did. You’re not allowed to just shut off and make me figure you out.”Like you used tohangs in the air between us.
She’s right, of course. But I want a break from being an adultabout things for once. I want to cry. I want someone to pin my graduation cap for me. I want my mom to watch me on our favorite show and my best friend to braid my hair and my dad to be okay. But the puzzle pieces keep changing.
I wrap a hand around my necklace, spinning the globe between my fingers. “I can’t believe you told everyone,” I say with my head bowed. It feels unbearably childish.
“Told everyone what?”
I can’t tell if she’s kidding or not. “The truth! About me!” I run a hand over my hair. “About us! Without even talking to me about it first. What the hell was that?” My breath comes faster as I teeter on the edge of control.
Yumi just furrows her brow. “So, you wanted me to lie?”
What sort of question is that? This whole thing is a lie. We. Aren’t. Dating. We aren’t even friends. “Yes.”
“Just, make something up?”
“Yes,” I repeat, emphasizing the word.
“And I was supposed to know that…how?”
“Because it’s obvious!” I snap.
