On Rotation(5)

Joke’s on her, I thought. If she’d known back then how disastrously bad I would be at keeping a man, maybe she would have let me spend a little more time ogling Taylor Lautner’s abs.

My door slammed open so hard that it nearly ricocheted off its hinges. I looked up to find my sister glowering over me, her hands on her hips.

“You know your bestie has been blowing me up,” Tabatha said. “She’s freaking out because you aren’t answering her texts.”

With a sigh, I pulled my phone out from my pocket. I’d silenced it shortly after receiving my score in an attempt to shield myself from notifications from my class group chat, which would inevitably be full of Step-related humble-bragging. I had ten messages from Nia (all some version of Are you alive?) and thirty more from the “Sanity Circle” group chat brainstorming progressively more grisly ways that I could have been murdered en route to Naperville. I smiled in spite of myself.

Sorry to disappoint, I typed. I am, indeed, still among the living. When I looked up again, Tabatha was peering down at my face.

“You okay, sis?” she asked. “Momma told me about what happened.”

My heart rate skyrocketed, and I rolled onto my back, looking up at her in terror.

“How did she find out?” I said, my mind racing. Had I somehow accidentally hit a button and forwarded my Step score to my mother? Had she hacked into my exam registration account and taken a peek for herself?

Tabatha raised an eyebrow.

“Um,” she said, “because you told her?” When I looked at her blankly, she added, “About Frederick?”

The relief I felt was washed over almost instantly by despair, and I groaned, wiping my hand down my face.

“There are no secrets in this house, are there?” I said.

“Not a one,” Tabatha declared. She closed the door behind her with a click, then dropped unceremoniously onto the bed next to me. She was still dressed in a chic jumpsuit from her outing, completely unaware that her boyfriend had spent the morning requesting her hand in marriage.

“Look at you,” she said. “Sulking. Just like old times.”

“I’m not sulking,” I insisted. “I just have a stomachache.”

“Yeah, sure, a stomachache,” she said. “How are you so bad at lying? Even to yourself.”

“How are you so bad at minding your business?” I snapped.

Undeterred, Tabatha sat up on her elbows and flicked me on the forehead.

“My big sister’s emotional well-being is totally my business,” she said. “Anyway, what I came here to say was good riddance. No offense, but your boy Freddy was a jerk.”

“No, he wasn’t.” I sighed. “Frederick was actually a gentleman most of the time. He just . . . wasn’t that into me.”

Him and everyone else. How many times had I thought I’d made a genuine connection with a member of the shittiest sex, only to be shrugged off like an old coat at the nearest opportunity? So many that I had practically lost count. But Frederick had seemed so different. After all, he’d done something groundbreaking: called me his girlfriend. He had looked at me and seen a future, seen something more than an ethnic, erudite fling to show off to his friends. He had wanted something more than an Ass. No one before him had managed that, no matter how poorly they fit the script for what a fuckboy was supposed to be. I’d made it to almost twenty-five before convincing a man to commit to me, and even he hadn’t made it a year before saying “never mind.”

A tear slid down my cheek, and I swiped it away, annoyed. To her credit, Tabatha didn’t say anything for a long time, letting me mire in my misery. Then she sighed.

“Angie,” she said. “Be honest with me. Were you that into him?”

I rolled onto my side to give her an incredulous look.

“What do you mean, was I into him?” I said. “I was with him, wasn’t I?”

Tabatha rolled her eyes.

“You know what I mean,” Tabatha said. “Did you like him?” Then she grinned, kicking her voice up to a grating pitch. “Did he make you feel all warm and gooey inside?”

Impossibly, I laughed.

“Never make that voice again,” I said, but I knew the answer to her question. It was one I’d turned around in my head over and over again ever since the excitement of being chosen had worn off, even before Frederick became distant. “I guess? Or at least, I wanted to like him. I didn’t have a reason not to. I just . . .”

“You didn’t have a spark,” Tabatha finished for me.

I closed my eyes. Yes, that was true. Frederick and I hadn’t had even the semblance of a spark. But I’d found our lack of chemistry comforting. With Frederick, there was no haze of hormones to cloud my judgment, no rose-colored lenses for red flags to hide behind. No opportunity to do what I did best, which was to throw myself heedlessly into another person and let them drain me dry. A spark was like a sprig of parsley next to a steak: nice, but not necessary, for love. Not objective. I had looked at Frederick, with his three-piece suits and silver tongue, his law degree and his easy, ready smile, and thought, here is an investment that is low risk, high reward. No need for a will-they-won’t-they, no hours spent second-guessing intentions and ruminating over lingering touches. Frederick’s romantic interest was explicit from the start; after all, we had picked each other like items off a menu. I would have to learn to love him, and I was more than okay with that. Frederick had felt safe, until he hadn’t.