Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [114]
So it makes sense to move on, bringing myself one guy closer to, not The One, but The One I'm with When I Die. Kieran is the perfect candidate for the job—attractive enough that hooking up will be fun, but youngish and annoying enough that I won't try to turn him into The One. Likewise, I'm that girl for him. It's really quite simple. To be even more sensible about it, I'm only going to let this last as long as winter break. When it's over, we're over.
Done.
the eleventh
Kieran's annoyances are becoming, well, if not less annoying, then something else . . .
Arousing?
One minute we're fighting, the next we're fucking. Psychologically speaking, arousal is arousal is arousal. But I never knew how true that was until Kieran.
the twelfth
We're really getting the hang of this now. It's almost a shame that it, like all romance, is doomed.
the thirteenth
Must stick to the plan: Break over, break up. Period.
the fourteenth
The unthinkable is happening:
I'm falling for an assclown.
the fifteenth
Marcus who?
* * *
June 1st
Kieran:
“Nomen et omen” was the first of many things you said that annoyed me. But perhaps there's truth to this aphorism after all. If only I had looked up the definition of your name sooner, I could have been warned about the “small” and “dark” nature of your heart. Because I waited until it was already too late, here are . . .
Some Things I've Always Wanted to Tell You
1. Wearing AXE deodorant body spray is not funny in an ironic, po-mo kind of way.
2. Ditto listening to the Grateful Dead every single time you smoke up, or shouting, “We're fuckin' to ‘Truckin''! We're fuckin' to ‘Truckin''!”
3. And don't even get me started on your obsession with I Love the 90s. Guess what? We all fucking love the nineties because we are all complete narcissists when it comes to the commercialization of pop cultural nostalgia and we all want to think that our own appreciation of “our” decade supersedes everyone else's so just GET OVER your need to prove that you know more than anyone about Furbies and Soul Asylum and Beverly Hills 90210.
4. I never minded your problem with premature ejaculation. In fact, I appreciated that sex was over before it ever really began. Intercourse didn't interfere with my studies, which enabled me to make the Dean's List.
5. You play your heartache like a party trick, don't you? You've been damaged in some profound, important way. You need to be helped. Fixed. Made whole again. And as a result of your deep, deep suffering you can't be blamed for the pain you inflict on fools like me who make the mistake of trying to be your savior. We are both victims here, so you can't be the bad guy. Oh no, not a sensitive soul like you, who waxes poetic about “feeling” but is, in fact, too much of a selfish little boy to be capable of feeling anything real at all. As someone who knows the difference between “love” as an amusing abstraction and genuine love, I can only feel pity. And that's because I never cared enough about you to hate you.
Respectlessly,
J.
* * *
the first
Kieran cheated on me.
And I'll be homeless next fall.
I'm not sure which is worse.
Like too many couples in Manhattan, I think I'd be willing to shack up with someone I despised if the apartment had a doorman and adequate afternoon sunlight. The small but furnished, off-campus-but-not-too-far-off-campus one-bedroom sublet that Kieran and I agreed to share this summer and next year had both the doorman and the sun, plus a ridiculously low rent (thanks to his parents' generous housing subsidy), so neither of us had any reason to enroll in the university lottery. This is the same apartment that he will now share with his ex-girlfriend, now his re-girlfriend, who just turned eighteen