Held A New Adult Romance(42)

It was around that time I started to laugh again - not much, but every day it was getting better. When I saw or heard things that were funny I would be conscious of my mouth, stretching into shapes that were unfamiliar from long disuse. I started to realize just how little I'd smiled when I was with Justin. If I ever laughed at anything he didn’t find funny he’d just look at me in disgust until I conceded that it was just dumb: he was determined that we should have the same sense of humor.

“You need to get out,” Everglade kept saying. “Meet someone else. Wake up to the possibility that there are like three and a half billion penises on this planet, and not just his.”

“I don’t know if I want to date,” I said. “I don’t know if I feel up to it.”

“Who said anything about dating?” she said. “I was talking about fucking someone. Nothing like a good old fashioned one night stand to rinse the taste of the last guy’s dick out of your mouth.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. “What?” she said. “It’s 2012. If you can’t gargle a nutsack to chase the blues away, then what was the point of the whole damn feminist movement?”

“I don’t know...”

“So just meet someone for coffee,” she said. “You don’t have to hook up. Just hang out. Come on. You might meet a nice boy? A doctor maybe?”

I laughed at her Jewish mother act and agreed to go to the student union  , just to get some coffee and to be seen in public. Back in those days I wasn’t that interesting to the paparazzi. In her mid-teens Everglade had been unlucky enough to acquire a genuine stalker, but as celebrity brats we were both accustomed to a reasonable amount of unwanted attention.

At first I wasn't really aware that the stares were anything other than the ones I was accustomed to. Feeling only slightly self-conscious I wandered into the bookstore and set about browsing the shelves for classic novels, the ones I should have read the previous summer; Justin had put kind of a dent in my GPA. It was only when I was paying for the books that I saw a glint of hostility in the cashier's eyes, and as I walked away I heard someone whisper, "Yeah - that's her."

I was rattled, but I headed to the coffee shop to meet Everglade, only to find Justin holding court there. He wore dark glasses and was moping into a mocha latte. He was sitting on his own, but his magnetism was only dimmed rather than neutralized; I could see how half the girls in the shop turned subtly towards him every time he sighed. "Amber," he said, removing his glasses. His eyes were red and puffy. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," I said. Trust him to act like a sane human being now. It had the desired effect too; I started to feel like shit. After all, I'd never given him a chance to explain himself after the annulment - just stormed off like the spoilt, dramatic little brat I was. "How about you?" I asked.

He gave me a wan, beautiful smile. "Oh, you know," he said. "Getting there."

I was about to ask if I could join him, when a girl pushed past me, almost spilling my coffee. She was blonde and slim - pretty, but her eyes were angry. And it was with a strange, sick shock that I realized she looked like me. She sat down at the table next to Justin. He looked me in the eye for a moment, turned to her and then kissed her, deep and slow and hard.

"Asshole," said Everglade, when I told her. "What does he expect? You're going to get jealous of Suzy Substitute and take him back?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know if I can go out there again - I felt like everyone was staring at me."

She shrugged. "You're paranoid. God's way of telling you to lay off the bong."

"I'm not. I swear. I was in the bookstore and someone said 'Yeah, that's her.'" She shook her head and I could hear myself begin to babble. "No, it wasn't like that...not like usual. This had malice to it, Everglade. Real spite. What the hell have people been saying about me?"

"Lots," she said. "Probably. And you're never going to stop them, so you'd better stop giving a shit."

That was around the time I started getting mad at her. She knew you couldn't stop people talking shit, any more than you could fix a lost cause like Justin, but he managed to make me hate myself every time I saw him - red-eyed, dragging his feet, clinging to another identikit blonde like she was a security blanket. Then one night I got a call from a girl named Andrea, saying Justin was in the hospital and asking for me.

"I don't see what I can do," I said, determined to keep my distance. "We broke up. Over two months ago."

"Please," she said. "He took pills - it's too late to pump his stomach. I think he's dying."