Here's to Us(What If It's Us #2)(20)

“That’s really great.”

“How are you? How’s school?”

“Fine. I mean, I’m writing a lot. Not, like, for school. Just wizard stuff.” He waves his hands dismissively.

“Just wizard stuff? You know you’re talking to someone who’s read The Wicked Wizard War three times, right?”

“Aww. Really?”

“Ben, I’ve literally read other people’s Wizard War fanfiction.”

“I have . . . fanfiction?”

“You most certainly do.” I blush, remembering a story I discovered last fall about Ben-Jamin and King Arturo getting locked in a dungeon together. Not so heavy on the plot, but the prose was very descriptive.

I clear my throat, ignoring the heat in my cheeks. “So why’d you take The Wicked Wizard War off Wattpad?”

“Oh. I mean, I’m revising it. Adding a few things,” he says vaguely.

“Let me know if you need someone to look at your new stuff!”

Wow, I love how cool I’m playing it. Love how I’m not being an obvious fucking fanboy for my ex-boyfriend. Hey, maybe I’ll be the world’s first person to enter into a parasocial relationship with someone I’ve literally had sex with.

“Thanks, that means a lot. Seriously.” He studies me for a moment, smiling. “Oh! Wait, you won’t believe who I ran into in Central Park—”

“Please tell me it was the twins.”

“No!” He laughs. “Wow, good guess. But no. So I’m hanging out with—friends, and we stumble upon this wedding, right? And when I get closer, I realize, no joke, it’s the couple from the flash mob proposal.”

“Shut up.”

“Dead serious.” He rubs his cheek, grinning. “I was like, how do I know them, how do I know them—oh SHIT.”

“The universe! When was this?”

“Saturday! Just happened. I actually caught a video—I’ve been meaning to text it to you.”

Ben steps back toward the self-service kiosk to let a Black woman wearing a Baby Bjorn walk by, and I drift along beside him, a light flickering on in my brain. Saturday. That’s the day Ben liked my photo.

Nostalgia, I guess?

Maybe it was just the universe reminding him I existed.

I study his face. Now he’s talking about how the bridesmaids wore pants and how Dylan had Opinions about the street vendor coffee, and I keep nodding along, but my brain’s miles away.

Because how is Ben allowed to just show up with that face? It’s pretty rude, to be honest. Yes, Ben, we all know you’re gorgeous. You don’t have to knock people over the head with it.

Or maybe it’s just me. I don’t even know if he has this effect on most people, but something about Ben Alejo’s face makes my brain light up. It just does, and I’ve never understood it. Honestly, it made the Mikey stuff harder at first, because things weren’t quite so instantaneous with him. I mean, I’d definitely noticed Mikey. I’d seen him around campus a lot—this sweet-faced boy with grandpa glasses and Elsa-blond hair. But it wasn’t a stop-me-in-my-tracks all-organs-on-deck situation. And I guess that made me wonder whether my attraction to Mikey was even real.

I used to try to stack up the proof of it. I spent all of fall semester studying Mikey’s mouth and his jawline and his dark blond eyebrows and lashes. The way he printed all his readings for class and highlighted almost every line. I found him so irresistible sometimes, but other times I’d swear I was talking myself into it. And there were always sparks when we kissed, but afterward I’d feel so strangely relieved. Like I could never quite trust the sparks would be there next time. I remember wondering if things would all click into place if I’d just ask Mikey to be my boyfriend. One last leap, and I’d be sure. But if I wasn’t sure, how could I ask him that? I kept putting it off a week, and another week, and another week after that, until it was December. And I still wasn’t sure.

Which felt like its own kind of answer.

So I broke up with him, though even using the word “breakup” felt ridiculous. Can you even call it a breakup if it wasn’t really a relationship to begin with? Even though Mikey was perfectly stoic when I told him, I cried the whole night. I felt like a monster.

But then again, waking up alone in my bed the next morning felt kind of . . . right. And the next day felt even more right. I walked around campus that whole week feeling like I’d just stepped off a too-fast treadmill. Discombobulated and dizzy, but also kind of blissfully untethered.

And then it was winter break.

At first, it was my parents who made it weird, Mom especially. She was so full of Gentle Concern it was almost aggressive. Basically, neither of them let me out of their sight for a week. We did the menorah lighting at Avalon and the Fantasy in Lights at Callaway Gardens, and they both spent the whole time watching me warily, like at any moment I might remember to collapse into a big messy gloom-spiral meltdown.

But this wasn’t anything like my breakup with Ben. I was a year and a half older and wiser, for one thing. “Plus,” I reminded Mom as she pulled into the parking deck at North Point Mall, “I wasn’t the one who got dumped this time.”

Mom put the car in park and turned to look at me strangely. “You weren’t dumped last time either.”