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I felt forced to ask: “Did journaling help?”
“No,” she said, with a sigh. “I really think I might be addicted to Boris. Did you know a medical study showed that participants who had recently experienced a breakup had the exact same brain activity as people going through drug withdrawal?”
Ack.
“Well,” I said, trying to keep my tone upbeat. “You’re a strong, independent woman, and I know you’re going to break that bad habit!”
“Thanks.” She sighed again. “It’s so hard, though. I thought Boris and I would stay together forever, the way you and Michael have.”
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
Look, I know it’s weird that I’m nearly twenty-six and still dating my high school boyfriend. Believe me, I’m more than aware of what a cliché it is.
But it gets even worse: almost all my friends are people I went to high school with, too.
But in my own defense, when you find out at the tender age of fourteen that you’re the heir to a throne and a billion-dollar fortune (because my mom and dad never got married, and Dad always thought he could have more kids. Due to chemo for cancer that fortunately has remained in remission, he cannot), who are you going to trust, the people who knew and liked you before you got on Forbes List of Richest Young Royals, or the people you met after?
The answer is obvious. I can’t even count the number of guys I dated after I found out I was a princess who turned out to only be interested in me for my tiara.
(Well, yes, I can, actually: two. Josh Richter and J. P. Reynolds-Abernathy IV. Not that I’m still bitter about it, or hold a grudge against them, or asked to have my Facebook password taken away and changed so I don’t spend hours obsessively looking up every detail of their lives to make sure they’re miserable without me, because only a weirdo would do that.)
• Note to self: Ask Dominique what the new password is because it would be quite nice to see the photos Lana is posting of her new baby. I’m sure that at nearly twenty-six, I am mature (and self-actualized) enough not to go hunting down my exes. Besides, I am so happy in my own relationship that I don’t care what my exes are doing anymore. Very much.
One of the reasons I love Tina so much is that she understands and sympathizes with so many of my issues—being the daughter of an extremely wealthy Arab sheikh who also forces her to be followed around by bodyguards at all times—but she’s also the opposite of me in many ways. She’s good at math and science, and intends, as soon as she gets her medical license, to join Doctors Without Borders and help sick children. This is so admirable and amazing! I wish I could be more like her.
Except the part where she still hasn’t managed to sever all ties to her ex, Boris Pelkowski.
“Tina,” I said. “Michael and I are an anomaly. Hardly anyone stays together forever with their first significant other, except maybe in YA novels. And usually when they do, it’s because he’s a vampire or a werewolf or owns a beautiful estate called Pemberley or something.”
“But—”
“Seriously, did you think Lilly Moscovitz and Kenny Showalter were going to stay together forever when they both went off to Columbia after graduation?”
“Well,” Tina said. “I guess not after Kenny built that yurt in the middle of campus, then refused to go to class anymore.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s normal for people to change and grow, and for couples to sometimes grow apart.”
“You and Michael never grew apart. And what about Perin and Ling Su?”
I sighed. Just like I have a disproportionately large number of friends from my high school class, a disproportionately large number of the couples from that class have stayed together since graduation.
I blame the faculty. The absurd amount of homework with which they loaded us down every night gave many of us permanent post-traumatic stress. College—even though I attended Sarah Lawrence, one of the top schools in the country—was a breeze compared to AEHS (Albert Einstein High School).
“Okay, well, Perin and Ling Su are an anomaly, too,” I said to Tina. “But they’ve had their problems. Remember how they had to pretend for so long that they were only roommates?”
“Only because Ling Su’s grandparents were so old-fashioned,” Tina protested. “They totally support same-sex marriage now.”
“Yeah, because Perin worked so hard to win them over. She even learned Mandarin. What’s Boris done for you lately, Tina, except swap his classical violin for an electric guitar, write a bunch of cheesy pop songs, and then become an international pop sensation who is fawned over by millions of girls who call themselves the Borettes, one of whom he slept with?”
“Allegedly,” she reminded me. “He still says he didn’t do it. He says he misses me and wants to meet with me so he can explain—”
“Oh, Tina!”
“I know. But he still insists those pictures of him were Photoshopped, and that he would never, ever cheat on me.”
I could feel myself beginning to clench my jaw, and tried to relax it. Who could have imagined that Boris Pelkowski, the mouth-breathing violin virtuoso from my Gifted and Talented class way back in ninth grade, would become “Boris P.,” the purple-haired pop singer-songwriter who now plays sold-out concerts all over the world and has girls throwing themselves at him every time he steps from his limo (even though he still hasn’t quite learned to breathe through his nostrils, a fact the Borettes have declared “totes adorbs” on the Internet).
Although there was nothing “totes adorbs” about the nude photos one of those girls posted online of herself with him in a hotel room.
