The Romantics(17)

Age thirteen:


Eternal. Sunshine. Of. The. Freaking. Spotless. Mind.

Holy hell.

Gael had rented it and watched it with Mason because someone on Reddit said that Charlie Kaufman was pretty much the greatest screenwriter ever. Mason thought it was weird and boring, but Gael watched slack-jawed as a bumbling dude (who vaguely reminded him of himself) and his firecracker of a girlfriend, Clementine, first erased each other from their memories and then struggled to get each other back. The orange-haired Clementine left quite the impression on Gael, his thoughts somewhere along these lines: If you love someone enough, even if you try and ERASE THEM FROM YOUR MEMORY, they still won’t be gone.

Clementine is hot.

Awkward guys can actually get cool girls from time to time.

Love is messy.

I want that.





Age seventeen:


Maybe the most important moment, the one that solidified it all. The one that told him this: that all he’d been waiting for, all he believed in (or had believed in, before his parents split), all he’d been searching for since that first declaration under the slide—it was his, and it was there for the taking.

An email from Anika, the day after the planetarium: hey— i thought of you this morning.

it made me happy.

that is all.

xx,

a





missed french connection


Gael made his way back to his house, the frat hangouts and crappy college apartments turning quickly to tall maples and manicured lawns and cozy porches. As his feet crunched across scattered leaves, he tried to make sense of what had just happened. He had gone from Birthday Dinner Fail to sharing pretty much his favorite meal with an adorable stranger. Whom he’d kissed. On the lips. Out of nowhere. It was almost too much to handle.

Gael knew that he shouldn’t get ahead of himself, that he was fresh out of a breakup. There was a reason that they called it a rebound. Because it was clichéd. Obvious.

He kicked at a pile of leaves and tried to push the crazy thought out of his mind.

Clearly, he was a complete mess, he thought, quite reasonably. He didn’t need to bring someone else into this.

(I couldn’t have agreed more. Which is why I had planned to save Gael’s real-deal romance for months later, when he was in a better place, at least somewhat. But just like you humans, I don’t always get what I want. Far from it.)

Gael was thinking about how soon would be too soon to look Cara up on Facebook, send her a message, when he saw, of all people, Sammy walking down his driveway.

“Oh,” she said, startled. She stopped short, right in front of the tree that had been there forever, the one that Mason had fallen out of once, but in his Mason luck, hadn’t gotten so much as a scratch. “Hey. I was just leaving. I rode back from the restaurant with your mom.”

“Err, sorry for causing a scene,” Gael offered.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It was just a shitty situation.”

Apology taken care of, Gael went right back to daydreaming about Cara. Her cool T-shirt, and her hot sauce thievery, and that way she had of smiling so big . . .

Gael didn’t notice the way Sammy tugged at the hem of her dress. He was replaying the kiss in his head, marveling at how something had, almost miraculously, actually gone well for him.

God, was he insane to even think about liking someone so soon? (Yes.)

And if he was insane, did it even matter? (Yes, again.)

Gael felt better than he had since before Anika broke the news via public makeout sesh. His emptiness had turned to lightness, like if he didn’t focus on the here and now, he’d float away.

He barely even heard Sammy when she said, “You know, I haven’t been completely honest with you . . .”

Sammy stood in front of him with a serious look in her eyes, waiting for him to say the words that would send the truth tumbling out, a truth she’d wanted to divulge for a while but hadn’t quite found the right opportunity. (It’s easy, Gael. Just listen to the girl. Ask her what she means.)

But (of course) that’s not what Gael did.

“Sorry, what?” he asked.

Sammy shook her head quickly. She took two steps back, growing the space between them.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’ll see you on Monday.” She scuttled down the driveway as quickly as her legs could take her, which was very quickly, Sammy being five foot nine, the same height as Gael.

Gael, for his part, headed into his house, not bothering to give Sammy Sutton so much as a second thought.





how to crush a crush (aka phase one)


Despite a few clever attempts at tipping the scales in my favor (not limited to, but including, both the Internet and phone service temporarily going down at his dad’s place), by Sunday, Gael had found Cara on Facebook, and asked her if she wanted to accompany him to REI. He’d decided a nondate was the easiest place to start.

Perhaps he would have been able to wait a bit longer if he hadn’t been bored out of his mind at his dad’s place that weekend. The apartment was a not-so-cheerful three-bedroom that didn’t even have a Blu-ray player. I may have accidentally given Gael’s dad HBO access, but not even that could hold Gael off for long—between back-to-back episodes of Game of Thrones and Mason’s frequent phone calls, none of which he answered, Gael was perpetually reminded that betrayal was not reserved to lands filled with dragons and dwarves.