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There’s a knock on my door the next morning. I’m already curled in the fetal position under mountains of blankets, but I pull my pillow over my face so that I’m fully hidden. Like an ostrich, I’ve got my head buried, and I’m avoiding my mother, my life, everything.
The scent of coffee and aftershave makes me pull the pillow off my face. Dad sits on the edge of my bed, his favorite coffee mug gripped in his hand. I watch him from the corner of my eye as he stares at me in the same loving fatherly way he’s done my whole life. Guilt pours over my body, warming my skin more than the blankets.
“Hi, Daddy.” I force a smile and roll over on my back, then shift up into a sitting position. When I’m hurt, Dad is hurt, and I hate making him look the way he does right now.
He takes a sip of coffee and smiles back at me. His wire-framed glasses rise with his eyebrows. “Think you’ll get out of bed today?”
I shrug. “I figure I’ll have to pee at some point.”
Dad’s lips form a thin smile, and he adjusts the sleeve of his dress shirt, probably to give himself something to do instead of awkwardly sitting here looking at me. I mean, I get what he’s trying to do—comfort me just like Mom’s been trying to do all week—but talking about a broken heart with your dad is just weird.
“Wait,” I say, sitting a little straighter. I glance over at my nightstand, to the dry erase board calendar on the wall behind it. “Why are you dressed for work? It’s Saturday, right?” A flicker of panic has me retracing the steps of my pity party. I’d come home from the football game after waiting around for an embarrassingly long time, hoping Nate would come talk to me. I’d changed into pajamas and fallen into bed and proceeded to cry all night. Please God, don’t let it be Monday. There’s no way I’ve slipped that far over the edge of heartbroken insanity.
Dad nods and heaves a heavy breath. “I’m working both days this weekend. We’ve incorporated an old bookkeeping company that has a ton of clients but shitty accounting practices.”
I nod, relieved. It’s only been one night, just like I thought. I still have the weekend to pull myself together and start trying to get over Nate again. Dad clears his throat. Then he speaks so quickly, his words all rushed together, that although I hear exactly what he says, I blurt out, “What?”
“Do you care to tell me what got you so upset last night? And do I need to kick that jock’s ass?”
Threatening words sound so foreign on my business-attire-wearing, high-vocabulary-speaking father that I break into a smile. And then the expression disappears as quickly as it had appeared. “No. It’s not Nate’s fault, I guess. I mean, it is, but it’s my fault, too.”
“Listen to me, Isla.” Dad rises from my bed. “You are an amazing person, and I am so proud that you’re my daughter. I know you’re hurting, and Jane thinks we should intervene, but I think you just need to find a way to grow from this pain. I’m not trying to be hard on you, but I think you can pull yourself out of this.” He leans over and pats my knee through the comforter. “If you want to wallow in bed, I’ll support you for twenty-four hours. But then you need to get up and take hold of your life.”
“Thanks, Dad. That’s … that’s motivational.”
He smiles, a sad twist of his lips that reaches all the way to his eyes. Motivating the accountants at work is in his wheelhouse. Motivating his teenage daughter is a little rusty, but I appreciate it anyhow. And now I know I’m screwed in the head from this heartache because there’s no way I’d have been able to sit through this awkward fatherly pep talk before my heart was shattered.
I gaze longingly at my cell phone, wishing the stupid piece of plastic and circuit boards wasn’t the main source of my heartache and joy.
“How long will it take to feel better?” I ask just as Dad makes it to my door.
He stops and turns around, his brow furrowed like he’s thinking out the terms of a long-term accounting contract. “Honey, I wouldn’t know. Your mom was my first love, and she’s never broken my heart.” He puts a strong hand on my shoulder. “I don’t envy you, but I know you’ll bounce back. You’re a Rush, after all.” He winks.
I don’t feel any better, but I smile anyway.
Now that Nate has broken my heart a second time, the wallowing only lasts until two in the afternoon. Turns out there’s only so many hours in a three-week period that I can lie in bed and feel sorry for myself. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe my dad’s little speech did help. All I know is that once I pulled myself out of bed and took a shower, I made a promise that I’d never again think back to the good old days with Nate. Because that’s where it always makes me fall apart.
I’ll feel lonely, and I’ll think back to a time when I wasn’t lonely. Memories of being in love and being loved back will flood into my mind, and suddenly I’m crying. All it takes is a single memory to tear open a mending heart. So I simply refuse to think about him anymore.
It’s probably not going to work, but I’m trying. And I’m sure if Dad wasn’t working so much overtime, he’d have something motivational to say about trying.
At school on Monday morning, I force myself to focus on things that will make me happy instead of reminding me of how lonely my world has become. As I cling to my backpack straps and filter through the hallway, shoulder to shoulder with students who don’t know my name, I think about the free coffee kiosks and the weirdly delicious breakfast burritos the cafeteria sells for just a dollar. I think about first-period English class and how I get to secretly crush on Emory even though he’s with Heather and with the exception of the first day of school, he acts like I don’t even exist. I know it’s pathetic but pathetic is pretty much my middle name now.
I walk into first period encased in a mental shield of I-don’t-give-a-damn. My boyfriend of four years texted me after three weeks of ignoring my messages and then he never wrote back. My eyes aren’t even that swollen from crying anymore. I straighten my shoulders and slide into my desk near the poster about decisions. Nate doesn’t bother me at all. I am totally fine.
Mr. Wang heaves a box onto the desktop of a guy in the front row and passes out copies of this nine weeks’ required reading book, The Great Gatsby. I notice they’re all brand new paperbacks, not beat up copies from years before with dog-eared pages and penises drawn in the margins like at my old school. Heather drops a stack on my desk, and I take a copy, handing the rest of them to the guy behind me.
“Do not forget to add your John Hancock to the front cover!” Mr. Wang shouts above the rustling of book-passing. “Every year you people leave these books all over the place and teachers just drop them off in my room, thinking I’m some magical genie who knows exactly which forgotten book belongs to whom. Write your name, people!”
“We get to keep these?” I ask, cringing when I realize I had said my mental question aloud.
“We certainly do, Miss Rush,” Mr. Wang says, flourishing his copy in the air. “By the end of the year, you’ll have six classic novels to add to your collection at home.”
“Cool,” I say, only because Mr. Wang is still looking at me.
Emory shakes the silky hair out of his eyes, and I glance over at him. He’s watching me. Tingles rise up my toes. “Your tax dollars at work, Iz-la,” he says, throwing me a wink.
Emory cracks open the cover of his book and scrawls his initials on the top left of the cover. This is the first time I’ve looked at him the five minutes that we’ve been in class together. He seems to have grown even more gorgeous over the two days of the weekend. His creamy tanned skin, the way his hair falls in straight, choppy pieces over his face, the line of his jaw when he smirks—even the tendons in his fingers are sexy. But that’s probably just my warped imagination, grasping for something to think about besides my broken heart. Even now, with my chest experiencing rolling aches from stray thoughts of Nate, I can’t help but picture climbing over my desk and into Emory’s lap, sinking my hands into his hair and making out with him. I bet he tastes like coffee. And I’d bet my high school diploma that he’s an amazing kisser.
