The Romantics(52)

“She loves you. I love you. We love each other, in our way. I’m sorry you had to deal with any of this.” His dad put his face in his hands, stifling a sob.

And Gael didn’t know what to do, except to say, “I love you, too, Dad.” And then Gael wiped his eyes one last time and he got out of the car.



* * *




6. Loyalist (pardon the term, I love revolutionary history): One whose greatest strength when it comes to love is his or her devotion; one who may not fall as fast as the Romantic, but who falls way more deeply when it happens. May result in clinging to the past, overlooking a partner’s flaws, and, frankly, allowing oneself to be walked all over. May also result in a knack for forgiveness that gives one the space to heal and love again.





the real worst day of gael’s life


You’re well familiar with the second-worst day of Gael’s life. And now it only seems fit to share the first, to give you a look into the absolute worst day, the day that would hold that place for him for years to come.

It was a Saturday last July. When Gael and his family should have been grilling or visiting the farmers’ market or rowing in Jordan Lake or one of a million other things they used to do as a family.

Because they had always been a happy family. Even though Gael knew happy families were rare, he’d taken it for granted.

(And I don’t have to tell you that I’d taken it for granted, too.)

Gael knew something was off when his mom and dad walked into the living room, and his mom switched off Piper’s educational program before Piper had even used half of her allotted screen time for the day.

“Hey,” Piper said, running up to the TV and flipping it back on. “I still have forty-five minutes.”

His mom and dad exchanged a look, and then his dad walked up to the TV and turned it off himself. “You’ll get your forty-five minutes, but right now, we need to have, err, a family meeting.”

His parents sat on the couch, side by side, a united front. Piper stayed on the rug where she’d been watching TV. Gael scarfed the remaining leftovers from last night’s Italian dinner and waited for his parents to get on with it. He figured his mom had planned some new chore schedule or his dad wanted to do more outdoor activities together.

He was wrong, of course.

And he hadn’t enjoyed the taste of chicken parmigiana ever since.

His mom took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap. He realized, suddenly, that her eyes were puffy and that this was probably not about chores.

She looked at his dad again. “There’s no easy way to say this . . .” Her voice dropped off.

His dad cleared his throat and then folded his hands in his lap. “Your mom and I have decided to go our separate ways. I’m going to be moving out of the house into an apartment in Durham at the end of the month.”

The news shook Gael, shocked him. It was like everything slowed down, froze. His eyes drifted to the wall of family photos behind his parents—good times, bad times, their times—the pictures seemed to mock them all.

And then his gaze drifted to Piper, whose face was scrunched up like it was when she was trying to decipher a bit of French.

There was silence for—a minute? A second? An hour? Gael could hardly tell.

Go our separate ways. What the hell does that even mean? he wondered.

Piper was the first to speak. Her face unscrunched and hurt washed across it. “You don’t want to live with us anymore?”

His dad’s voice cracked. “Believe me, baby, I do. But”—he looked to Gael’s mom—“we think this will be best for everyone. We still love both of you more than anything, and we still care about each other, but it will be better this way.”

His mom stared at her hands, then up at Gael. “Sometimes people just don’t get along as well as they used to,” she said weakly.

Gael had a deep urge to rip one of the pictures off the wall, smash it over his knee, send glass shards everywhere.

Piper began to cry, and Gael had to look away. It was too hard to watch. Her face was too shiny, too red, too raw. “I don’t want you to live somewhere else,” Piper yelled. “I want you to live here!”

His dad stared at Gael, and Gael stared right back.

Gael realized this was serious, that they weren’t changing their minds, that this wasn’t some insane joke. That suddenly he was occupying a foreign world, and everything—from the photos on the walls to the marks in the dining room charting his and Piper’s growth to the small crack in the sliding glass door from where a pigeon had flown into the window—well, it all felt suddenly so alien. So . . . off.

Gael couldn’t stand being in the room anymore. He jumped up from the couch, walked as quickly as he could to his room, closed his door, and fell, facedown, in the bed.

And as he felt the tears dampen his pillow, he knew, deep down, that something huge had broken.

That a part of him would never feel the same about love, about family—about any of it—again.





night of the loving dead


It was Gael’s fourth Halloween on Franklin Street.

The street was packed, as it always was. Each year, students, professors, some high school kids like Gael, and people from colleges nearby descended on the stretch of Franklin that edged the campus. The city estimated about seventy thousand people came each year, making it one of the larger centers of Halloween revelry in the country.