The Romantics(10)

Our reluctant hero was almost asleep when he heard a loud knock on the door.

Before Gael could speak, Piper burst in. He looked at the clock on his phone—despite his requests to be left alone, his little sister had given him less than a half an hour of Gael-time before her grand entrance. Apparently, Elementary French was done for the day.

“It’s dark in here,” she observed.

Knowing that he would certainly be unable to drift off now, he paused the movie and unwrapped another Snickers bar. “That’s kind of the point.”

She flipped the light on, blinding him. “Are you going to be in a bad mood on your birthday, too? Because we never go to sushi anymore, and you better not ruin it.”

His birthday. It was this Friday, and his mom had planned this stupid family dinner at his favorite sushi place. Gael could hardly stomach the thought of eating raw fish with his dad conspicuously absent and pretending it was all okay. He took another bite of Snickers.

(Side note: Pre-birthday breakups are the worst. Right along with pre-Christmas, pre–Valentine’s Day, and pre-anniversary.)

“Don’t you have some verbs to conjugate?” Gael asked, changing the subject, as Piper perched on his bed.

She shook her head.

“Will you just leave me alone?” he asked. “Please?”

“You have chocolate in your teeth,” she told him.

He shoved the last Snickers in, answering his little sister with his mouth full. “Now I have more.”

Sammy appeared and leaned against the doorway. “Sexy.”

Gael rolled his eyes and chewed intentionally slowly, which wasn’t very hard between all the peanuts and caramel and chocolate. Sammy just stood there, arms crossed, shaking her head.

“What do you want, anyway?” he asked. “I was trying to go to sleep.”

“Your little sister wanted to make sure you were okay.” She tilted her head to the side and gave him a careful smile, and for a second, she looked like the old Sammy, before the cool glasses and big ideas. It’s not like they’d been great friends, but she’d been far less annoying, at least.

He still didn’t want to talk to her.

“I’m not,” he said. “Okay? Which should be pretty clear. But now you both have an official answer.”

“Come on, Pipes,” Sammy said. “Let’s get through the rest of your French chapter.”

Piper hopped off the bed like an obedient puppy. Sammy put a hand on Piper’s shoulder and knelt down to her level. “Start the next exercise. I’ll be there in a sec.”

Sammy waited until Piper was down the hall to talk. “You know you can’t go on just wallowing in your misery forever.”

“Jesus,” Gael said. “You’re not my babysitter.”

Sammy put a hand on her hip like she always did when she was making a point. “I’m just saying. You have to move on, pull yourself out of it. It’s the only way.”

“Why do you even care?” he muttered, as he watched the blades of the ceiling fan whir.

“I’m keen on continuing to earn my fifteen bucks an hour, which I’m guessing your mom won’t be so into paying if she knows you’re sitting here at home every afternoon.”

Gael couldn’t care less about Sammy’s fifteen an hour. “That’s really helpful coming from you, with your—what—three-year relationship going strong?”

Sammy drew a quick breath. I could see all the hurt, which was still so fresh, come rushing back. Then her face hardened, and her answer came out harsh: “My relationship has nothing to do with you, okay?”

“I’m just saying, unless you’ve been dumped out of the blue, you don’t get it.”

She laughed. Only I could see that she really wanted to cry. Then Sammy repeated the mantra she’d been saying to herself for the last month and a half.

“Si vous vous sentez seul quand vous êtes seul, vous êtes en mauvaise compagnie.” She said it slowly, her voice all nasally and French.

(Her accent was actually pretty impressive, not that Gael cared about that.)

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Gael asked. He had a feeling it was a dig of some sort, knowing Sammy.

“It’s Jean-Paul Sartre,” she said. “Look it up.”

And with that, she flipped the lights off, turned on her heel, and pulled the door shut behind her.

It took him ten full minutes of Googling before he found the translation.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

Which only led him to one conclusion:

Jean-Paul Sartre, like Sammy Sutton, had never had a broken heart.





eighteen candles


That Friday evening, his mom knocked on his door and poked her head in. “You all set?”

Gael sat up in his bed, where he’d been lying down, staring at the ceiling, and wishing he didn’t have to go to his stupid birthday dinner.

As torturous as the thought of ringing in the big one-eight with a sad, three-person dinner was, so was the thought of disappointing his mom. “All right, all right,” Gael said reluctantly. He pulled on his Chucks, squeezing his feet in without messing with the laces.

His mom walked in the room and leaned against his closet door. Her dark, almost-black hair was pulled into a bun, and she was wearing a black dress with a scarf she’d knitted herself, along with these dangly turquoise earrings that Gael and his dad had picked out a couple of birthdays ago. “I just spoke to your dad, actually. He’s going to come, too.”