Page 90 of The Breakup Artists

Four whole days and nothing from August. This is the longest we’ve gone without speaking since Des passed. And it hurts. My mom says he’ll come around, and Bentley says dudes need space sometimes. But I can’t get over how wrong I feel—like I’m missing my heart or my lungs, something so vital to my being that I can’t survive without it.

I glance out the living room window at the ladder leading to August’s room. But I’m not going over there, not after he kicked me out. So I pick up my phone and scroll through my texts with Leah, Amber, and Ella, looking for a distraction. But they all say some version of the same thing—everyone is lying low. It turns out those lawn surfers were actually rowdier than my story made them out to be and Justin’s mom’s garden was demolished (loudly), causing the police to be called and Justin’s parents to have to return from their weekend trip. Which in turn caused some of the group to have their parents suspend credit cards or driving privileges, Ella being one of them.

I sent a screenshot of the news to August, with an addedGood thing we left when we did or my parents would have killed me.And also thank god Leah’s still talking to me, but he didn’t reply.

* * *

I give August’s house a pointed look in the glowing evening light and walk across my front yard toward Bentley’s driveway, where he leans against his old pickup truck, waiting. Bentley smiles, and my frustration with August breaks apart and scatters like a group of startled birds. I smile back.

“Man, you’re gorgeous,” Bentley says and opens his passenger door.

He offers me his hand and I accept it, getting a whiff of his yummy woodsy soap. I grab the skirt of my long dress—the cotton one that is arguably casual but also fits me like a glove—and slide into the passenger seat.

He goes around to his side, his smile graduating to a grin.

“What?” I say as he starts the engine.

“Nothing, I’m just... This is nice.”

I kick off my sandals and put my feet up on his dash. “Going for ice cream is always nice. It’s like the nicest of the activities.” I don’t know why I say it; I know he wasn’t talking about the ice cream.

He turns onto our sleepy street and heads for town, a five-minute drive past beach cottages to brick storefronts and the harbor. The wind blows my hair around my face, and I don’t try to pull it back. It’s one of those warm evenings where the humidity is low and the salt water permeates the air. I hang my arm out the window, my neon bracelets catching the remaining light.

“I love this town,” Bentley says as we pass the Surf Shack, and it affects me.

I’ve been hearing people say that phrase my entire life. The townies who have minimal ambition for college and even less for travel, who do their best to never leave. The tourists who loudly praise this place for all of forty-eight hours before they move on to their next romantic docking destination without looking back. I’ve always known I’m neither of those. Which is why my sudden problem with California is so confusing.

“Yeah,” is all I say.

Bentley pulls into a parking spot on Main Street in front of the art gallery. I take my feet down from the dash and slip them back into my sandals.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said about Berkeley,” he says like he can hear my thoughts. “And I kinda looked it up? It seems like a really great school.”

“You did what?” I turn toward him, annoyed for a reason I can’t pinpoint.

“I just thought I could help you make a pros and cons list or something.”

“Maybe,” I say, cutting him off in the hopes that he’ll drop it. Talking about it makes it feel like a real problem, which I’ve been doing my best to pretend it isn’t. I open my door and slide out, closing it again before he can continue.

He joins me on the sidewalk. “You know, just to help you sort out how you feel about it,” he continues, like maybe I didn’t understand what he was getting at.

“What kind of ice cream are you going to get?” I attempt to step away from his truck.

But he doesn’t take the bait, and he doesn’t move.

“Okay,” he says. “Or not. Just thought I could help with the indecision.”

I tense. I don’t want him to see me as indecisive, and more than that, I’m afraid he’s right. “You wouldn’t understand.”

He freezes and I freeze, too. “What wouldn’t I understand?”

“You’ve never wanted to leave this place. You’re not...” I instantly know I shouldn’t have started that sentence, that the only way it could end is with something unkind. I study my sandals for a beat too long. “Honestly, it’s not a big deal.”

“But it is a big deal. To you,” he says so supportively that I almost believe we’re more than a summer fling.

“By that logic, wouldn’t it benefit you if I stayed here? You’d get to see more of me.”

He shakes his head, like I’ve completely missed the point. “I’d never want you to give up important opportunities because of me.”