Shuffle, Repeat(39)

I tuck it into a pocket. Apparently Oliver’s mother also dabbles in the gypsy ways. “Thank you for having me over,” I tell her, and then I follow Oliver away from the mistletoe and out into the snow.





I thought about talking to Mom about this whole Itch dilemma, but she’s so flushed and cuddly about Cash, it makes me not want to drag her back down to earth with my problems. That’s why I’m sitting in the passenger seat of Shaun’s hatchback, riding straight into the mouth of Saint Nicholas. Luckily for Shaun, a warm front came in this week after the snowstorm, so he was actually able to convince his parents that he should be allowed to visit his favorite place in the whole world: Frankenmuth.

Frankenmuth is a little over an hour north of us and is self-heralded as the “Little Bavaria” of Michigan. The tiny town is riddled with covered bridges and wooden cottages and inns decorated with towers and clocks and balconies. During the winter holidays, it looks like Christmas vomited on it.

Shaun and I coast up Main Street under the blinking white star lights hanging overhead. On all sides of us are shops selling ornaments, breweries selling wheat beer, and restaurants selling sausage.

“We should have left earlier,” Shaun grumbles. “We could have taken the pretzel-rolling class.” He slides into a parking spot between a Buick and a horse-drawn carriage (currently missing the horse). He’s out of the car and opening my door before I’ve even unfastened my seat belt. He grabs my hand and pulls me onto the sidewalk. “First up: the world’s biggest Christmas store!”

Minutes later, we’re browsing a row of plastic candy canes. I point up at the two-story ceramic Santa Claus looming over us. “If that fell, we would be dead.”

“But at least we’d go out happy.”

“Speak for yourself.” We watch a lady in a red apron wind up a tiny reindeer and place it in front of a customer’s toddler. The reindeer clatters over the floor toward the kid, who claps and giggles before stomping on it. The kid’s mother gasps and I burst out laughing. Shaun drags me around a corner, out of sight.

“Rude!” he tells me.

“Come on, that was funny.”

His lips twitch. “Fine. It was funny. So you know you have to dump him, right?”

“Non sequitur much?”

I talked to Shaun about my problems with Itch on the drive up here, but he stayed mostly quiet, only asking a question here and there before turning on music (decent music!) and humming along for the rest of the drive. Now I find out he’s actually been thinking about what I said.

“You can’t keep dating someone you don’t like anymore,” Shaun tells me. “That’s a recipe for tragedy.”

“It’s not that I don’t like him. It’s that I don’t like him the way I used to like him. Or maybe I don’t like him the same way he likes me. Or as much. Or…” I trail off, because I know Shaun is right. “I need to break up with him, don’t I?”

Shaun nods. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.” I pick up a red glass ornament and see myself, looking small and lost and confused, reflected in its shiny surface.

“Hey, June?” Shaun is looking right at me. “Is there someone else?”

Of course Oliver flashes into my mind, because—duh—I just hung out with him a couple days ago, and there was that whole thing with the mistletoe and the imaginary car and the hot cocoa. It’s only because he’s the one boy I spend time with besides Shaun and Itch. It’s only because we carpool together and listen to music together and argue philosophy together. It’s only because, objectively speaking, he’s an attractive guy. That’s all. That’s it.

“Nope,” I tell Shaun. “No one else.”

He regards me before picking up a Mrs. Claus puppet and sliding it over his hand. Mrs. Claus tilts her head at me and bobs up and down. “That’s what I thought,” she says in a funny voice that sounds very much like Shaun’s.

? ? ?

Two days later, I end it.

“Why?” Itch asks.

We’re back at Cherry Hill Park, but this time I’m the only one sitting on a swing, my bare hands wrapped around the metal chains and my boots sliding across the patch of ice beneath me. Itch stands facing me with his arms folded across his chest. His eyes are hard and angry.

“I’m sorry,” I say from my seat. “It’s not about someone else, and it’s not really even about you.”

“Thanks for that.”

“Maybe it’s because we’re halfway through the year and real life is on the horizon, I don’t know. Whatever it is, we’re not working anymore.” I wait but he doesn’t respond, so I pull myself up from the swing. My fingers are cramped, frozen from the cold of the chain and the tension in my body. I shake my hands and rub them together, then step closer to Itch. I look up into his hazel eyes, and I remember how I used to think he looked like he was daydreaming, and how touching his flop of almost-curly hair used to make me warm inside.

Used to.

“Do you think we’re working?” I ask him. He looks down and scuffs at the hard ground with the toe of his sneaker. “Adam. Are you actually happy when you’re with me?”

Maybe it’s his first name, or maybe it’s the question itself that elicits a reaction. Itch shakes his head and steps backward. He puts space between us, looks at me from across a distance that might as well be acres and acres of land. “You know what’s crap?”