• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“You couldn’t possibly miss this face,” I said.

“Well, not this face, but, like, the nontoxic version of it,” said Bridget.

“You can’t hide forever,” Pepe said.

I was touched by this. I really was. Pepe and Bridget cared in a way that I thought only Hope could, or would.

“Okay,” I promised pathetically.

But there’s something I have to do first. Well, second. After I take a shower.

the twenty-fourth

The millisecond I stepped foot inside Silver Meadows, I knew that word of the infamous Valentine’s Day dumping had already spread among the over-sixty-five set. I was met with hushed tones too soft for hearing aids, pruny, pointed fingers, and embarrassed, toothless smiles.

I found Gladdie in the rec room, as usual. The only difference was that everyone except Gladdie and Moe hurriedly hobbled off when I arrived, as if they would catch breakup cooties from me.

“Buck up, bee-yoo-ti-ful,” Gladdie said.

“Do you want me to teach him a lesson?” Moe asked, raising his hand, which, due to arthritis, he couldn’t close into an official fist.

“No,” I said. “There has already been too much violence over this.” And I went on to explain all the brawls, balls-kicking, and suspensions.

“Look on the bright side, J.D.,” Gladdie said. “There are plenty of fish in the sea. And your first fish ain’t your last.”

Gladdie gently patted Moe’s hand, and he smiled at her like she was the most bee-yoo-ti-ful woman in the world, even though she had ninety years of wrinkles and her eyebrows were drawn on crookedly and her lipstick had melted past her mouth line and her beret was red and her pantsuit was blue and her walker was still resplendent in purple. Maybe she mismatched on purpose. Red and blue make purple. I was about to ask her when his voice snuck up on me from behind.

“Hey.”

“Tutti Flutie! Fancy seein’ you here.”

“Hey,” he repeated. “Hey, Jessica.”

“Hey,” I said, without facing him.

“Can we talk?”

I nodded. When I turned around, I looked down at his feet. Same old Vans with the hole in the toe. I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the face in this state. I followed him down to the empty library. The fire was out and the room was cold and dark and smelled like musty, wet pages. I slumped into the leather armchair and he sat on the hearth facing me wearing his COMINGHOME T-shirt. The fake-velvet letters had faded and flattened out. I’d missed my chance to feel their softness with my fingertips.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? You didn’t dump me on Valentine’s Day to fuck the class slut.” My voice was not nearly as lighthearted as I had wanted it to sound. And as soon as I said fuck, I felt bad for saying it. I didn’t feel like I should curse in a home for the elderly—you know, with so many of them ready to pass on and all. It’s about as close to church as I get.

“He’s not f—” Marcus stopped himself from making my mistake. “He’s not having sex with her.”

I snorted in disbelief.

“No, really,” he said, shifting his weight off the hearth so he was leaning toward me, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet. “He’s not. He has no intention to, either. Apparently Manda feels that she misused her feminine powers and now wants to abstain from sex.”

“She wants to be a born-again virgin?”

“Apparently.”

“Susan Faludi bullshit!”

“Classic,” he said, nodding his head in agreement.

“Well, I hope they are very happy not having sex together. But what I don’t understand is why he had to break up with me to not have sex with her.”

The more I talked about this, the less it made sense. Marcus knew there was no use arguing with me until I finished, so he just bounced up and down in his sneakers.

“Why didn’t he just not have sex with both of us?”

He shrugged.

“Why did you try to get us together in the first place?”

He leaned in close and put his hand on my knee. And just like the first time he put his hand on my knee—on the cot in the nurse’s office, right before I peed in the cup—a current of electricity shot from my knee, buzzed my bod, and overloaded my circuitry.

But unlike that first time, it was a gesture