His lips left mine softly, but this time it was different.
I slowly walked away from where he sat and forced myself to not look back. It wasn’t hard. My best friend read my expression and came and hugged me. “What happened?”
“We broke up,” Jessica looked at me with a face that said “I’m so sorry.” Her face was full of care and love, but she didn’t know what to say.
We walked to the cafeteria to be with my friend Kensie. She would know what to say.
She didn’t. We sat at the table and I told her what happened. A little while later another girl, Jenny, asked “How are you and Kyle?” My reply was “We’re not.”
“Yeah, I saw that coming.” Jenny was a good friend of Kyle’s.
“I figured, you were acting weird this morning.” She told me that he was talking to me to her the day before and that he wasn’t sure how we were working out. I didn’t tell her this, but I was wondering the same thing.
I quietly excused myself from the table and went to find someone who would know what to say. My first choice was Sonja. She’s an extremely good listener and a fantastic advice giver, she’s not my best friend, but she’s who I go to with most of my problems. I found her quickly. She smiled big at me. I sort of smiled back. Normally I would say “I need to talk to you” or something like that, this time I just took her hand and pulled her away from her boyfriend.
She read my mind.
“So, why did you guys break up?”
“He says he has too much on his plate right now.” I left out the part that Jenny told me, it doesn’t matter.
She didn’t say that that’s a stupid reason to break up and she didn’t call him a d***** like my other friends did. “Hon, he’s just not the guy for you. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to find someone better and someone who fits you better. He’s not your Ricky.”
Ricky was Sonja’s boyfriend. They had been together for a year and a half, they are each other’s first kiss, first boyfriend, first love, and they are almost perfect. They bring out the best in each other and I’ve ever seen anyone like them. And I’ve spent a lot of time with them. Sonja is like a sister and Ricky is like an annoying older brother to me.
I liked that she used his name in place of something like “soul mate.”
She hugged me for a long time. We went back to her bench and I saw her inconspicuously whisper what happened in Ricky’s ear. Before I left he gave me a big hug. Ricky only hugs two girls in the world: Sonja and his baby sister. He’s hugged me once before, but he only does it when I’m really upset.
Then lunch ended and I went to Algebra. I have no idea what we learned that day, I have no idea what we learned in English either. Then I went to Basketball practice. I did not want to be there.
That night I went running like I do every night. I really felt like running though. Have you ever run when you’re upset or angry or sad? It makes you feel better. It’s weird, but it does. Apparently that wasn’t the mood I was in though. I stopped at the park at the elementary school. I swung on swing for a while and cried, but I could have held them back. The tears were almost forced.
The next day at basketball practice I told my friend Sade. “So do we hate him now?”
Sonja laughed. “We don’t hate him until we figure out if he broke her heart or not.”
Two days later I knew that he hadn’t.
“I figure he didn’t break my heart. It doesn’t hurt enough,” I told Sonja and Jessica.
“He just stepped on it a little bit?” Jessica asked.
“Yeah, he just stepped on it a bit.”
“That’s great. You’ll be over him soon. He wasn’t right for you. He wasn’t crazy insane for. You’ll find someone who is.” Sonja’s words made me smile. “Crazy insane” for me.
“I think I’ll be over him quickly.”
I was. I was done being sad about it. I went to the Winter Formal with my two best friends instead of my boyfriend; I had a lot more fun without him. I realized that he didn’t like my friends or try to like them like I did with his. We didn’t “click” like I wanted us too. I figured out that we had two stages in our relationship: we flirted a little bit, then straight to dating. Those three weeks of being together were our flirty stage. Then the thrill of being a couple just wore off. As great as they were, I cried more when my I have broken up with friends in the past. He was my first kiss and I definitely wasn’t heartbroken over him.