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Thirteen
Even in high school, one of the reasons why Andrew and I got along so well is that we hated talking for long periods of time. We spent hours upon hours playing video games in silence, and then, in college, we graduated to cartoons and superhero movies.
Andrew went to scavenge for sugary cereal while I set up the movie. When he came back, Lucky Charms in hand, he looked at the TV and grinned. “Classic,” he said. “Superman. Still a fan favorite, I see.”
“Superman is the all-American. Charming, good looks, fights crime. What more can you ask for?”
“You do realize that Superman is an alien, right? It seems ironic that you view him as the all-American.”
“But he’s a lovable kind of alien. The cool kind of alien.”
We grinned at each other. We had been having this conversation since the beginning. It had a nice rhythm to it.
“You know,” Andrew said as he passed me the box of Lucky Charms, “one day, you’ll get tired of Superman.”
I snorted. “Heresy.”
“You can’t love the same person forever.” A jug of milk appeared in his hand, and I marveled that I hadn’t seen it before; it was so large. “It’s impossible.”
I frowned and stopped picking through the cereal. “Wow. That took a turn. Cynical much?”
“Seriously though.” He folded the cereal into the milk at a pace that was a hair less than furious. “Everything dies, including love. Even people’s relationships don’t last more than a few years nowadays. What makes you think that your love of Superman will outlast that?”
My heart picked up a pace more frantic than Andrew’s cereal folding, but I breathed around it. “Andrew, you can’t seriously believe that love can’t last forever.”
“I can, and I do.” He stopped swirling and stared at me. “I’m surprised that you don’t.”
I blushed. “My parents have been together for thirty years. There must be something to it.”
“Sure, people stay together for a while,” he conceded. “But love? Do you really think they love each other still?”
“I do. Your parents are still together; do you think they’re any less in love than they were when they met?”
“I do, actually.” He shrugged. “Lately, they’ve become…distant from each other.”
“They have three kids in college. That can cause money issues, tension.”
“It’s more than that.” He sighed and picked up his spoon again. “It’s not like I’m not looking for love. I just don’t think it’ll last that long.”
The Ace inside me looked on as my heart ripped itself into several thousand tiny, unfixable pieces. I pressed my fingers together, the numbness spreading throughout my body. “So you really don’t believe in a love that lasts forever?”
“I really don’t.” He pressed play on the movie. “And neither should you.”
That numb feeling stuck with me for the rest of the day. There was something about our conversation that I couldn’t shake. In a way, I felt betrayed, as if the boy I grew up with somehow became a man that I didn’t recognize. Or was he always this way?
Despite my efforts to think differently, I couldn’t help but think of it as a character flaw. I was cynical at times, sure, but not believing in love? What kind of psychopath didn’t believe in love?
“It doesn’t make him a psychopath,” Cat said later that day. Jeremiah murmured something to her on the other end of the phone line, and she giggled. “Cynical, sure, but not a psychopath.”
“But you know what I mean.” I wrapped the headphones wire around my finger. “What do you think it means?”
“I think it means that Andrew needs to be with someone that makes him believe in eternal love again.” I could almost hear her shrug and see her sly smile. “Maybe that person is you.”
I snorted even as the seed planted itself in the soil of my mind. “Please. I’m not leaving Michael for Andrew. I wish everyone would stop trying to get me to break up with Michael.”
I stopped winding the phone cord as an idea popped into my head. “Wait. Here’s a thought.”
“Ace, don’t,” Cat begged. “Nothing good comes of it when you say that—”
