Page 28 of The Last Special Thing

Amelia paused, her eyes on the apartment door.

“Trust me, they’ll be okay. They do this,” Art reassured.

“They do what?”

“They fight, and then they fuck,” he said nonchalantly.

Her cheeks grew red, and she forwent any follow-up questions. She knew it happened, but the thought of having sex with Max, who didn’t shower half of the time, was disturbing.

They strolled hand in hand down the main strip of road. It was a relatively quiet evening for a party town in the middle of summer. They passed by bars and restaurants where college students were outside vaping, and couples on patios indulged in extravagant towers of tortilla chips drenched with nacho cheese sauce.

The ocean breeze tickled her arms, and Amelia pulled her pink cardigan closer. She almost regretted her choice of jean shorts, but washing sand out of pants was a nightmare.

“Band practice was sick today. Jake, the singer,” he reminded, “brought a bunch of new lyrics and they just go there, you know?”

Her phone buzzed, and Weston’s name flashed across the screen. She silenced it and put it back. It buzzed again, and she silenced it a second time without looking.

In Weston’s defense, she had been uncharacteristically avoiding him. She hadn’t seen him since their breakfast at Lillian’s, which had been a week and a half ago. They typically saw each other three to four times a week. She didn’t know how to tell him about her date with Art, which was the first time she felt like they were completely broken up. Art tucked a strand of dark hair behind his ear. There would no longer be a grey with Weston, she would tell him. Soon.

Art eyed her as she clicked the silence button on her phone for a third time.

She inclined her head toward a large Jenga game on the patio with a couple of girls wobbling out the pieces, attempting to divert his attention.

“There is no way that girl is going to get that piece out,” Amelia said. The girl pushed a piece of wood and wiggled it free, instantly destabilizing the entire tower. Wood pieces crashed to the ground and scattered across the patio.

Her friend laughed. “So close!”

“I have to ask about him,” Art said, forcing a lighthearted smile.

So he had seen who was calling.

Amelia concentrated on the sidewalk ahead of them. A trash can overflowed on the edge of the pavement, and a squirrel whizzed up to scavenge through it. She had been thinking about how to tell Weston about Art. She hadn’t yet considered how to tell Art about Weston. Clearly, he knew something based on them coming and leaving together on the Fourth of July and Amelia’s avoidance of Art toward the end of the night when Weston was around.

“What do I need to know?” he pressed.

He stopped walking and waited for her to meet his eyes.

She rolled her shoulders back. How much did she owe Art after a couple of weeks? There didn’t feel like a right answer when two weeks felt like two months, so she opted for the whole truth. If Art was who she thought he was, if this was going to go where she wanted it to, he should know.

With a deep breath, Amelia started. “We’ve known each other since elementary school, but didn’t start dating until our Junior year of high school.”

Art’s eyes were soft as he waited for her to continue.

“I didn’t know how similar we were until we started talking about college. He was as passionate about MIT as I was about acting in L.A.”

“So the whole time you planned to be across the country from each other?” he clarified.

She tensed. “Well, yeah. But isn’t it good that we didn’t want to hold each other back from our dreams?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to share your dreams?”

She crossed her arms. “We shared our dreams after college. He would move to L.A. or New York, wherever I got my big break. Then we would spend summers in Italy.”

“So what ended it?”

She blinked a few times. “He broke up with me the day after he was announced Valedictorian. He said it was better to end it then and slowly separate than have an abrupt goodbye in the fall. He reasoned himself out of the relationship, which was awful because he knew I loved him.”

Art thought that over. “I expect love to be a lot of things. Reasonable has never been a word that comes to mind.”