Break Up on Purpose by John Kim

Author:John Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2024-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

“I Need to Get a Restraining Order”

Embrace the turmoil, for it leads to a newfound sense of self and the promise of a brighter future beyond the storm.

—ANONYMOUS

SUSAN AND DARREN

Susan met Darren in her midtwenties in New York City, where good friends and a fresh “everything” bagel were all she needed to feel reset after a one-night stand and three hours of sleep. Where waking up with someone you didn’t like wasn’t that big a deal. It was just Tuesday, and the fact that he lived two blocks from her work made it worth it. Susan was a bartender and Darren was a musician. The magic moment, the moment she knew, was when he came back, out of breath, after getting her number. She was bartending a private party in the penthouse of a twelve-story building. The elevator was jammed, so he used the stairs, after realizing she only gave him nine digits.

With its bone-chilling cold, high rent, and emotionally unstable roommates, New York, the trauma bonding capital of the world, was where two-ply toilet paper and finding yourself were luxuries and survival mode was homeostasis. A place where a month-to-month lifestyle created the perfect petri dish for every young person who packed their Pontiac Sunfire and left their small town and dysfunctional family for a higher life and a harder fall. As you can guess, Susan and Darren’s love story was pretty textbook. Love between an alcoholic and a codependent bartender living in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment came with an expiration date.

They were together for ten years, a long roller-coaster of I love yous and Get aways. Intermittent love and fighting so loud that windows had to be closed, even in New York. But the Taurus in Susan kept her from leaving. Until she started breaking up with herself.

Darren went on tours, and Susan needed to know she was desirable again. That’s when she noticed Wade, her favorite barista. He paid attention to her, noticed little things, like the accented accessories to her outfits and the different ways she would wear her hair.

Susan knew she would get caught. It was just a matter of time. That’s why she kept lying and going over to Wade’s. It wasn’t that he used sex toys on her, something Darren never did because he believed “real men don’t need help.” It had nothing to do with her new body-shaking orgasms, which before she’d always thought women did for attention. It had nothing to do with the sex at all actually, although from the outside it would appear that way. It was her way out of something she felt trapped in—her ten-year relationship.

Although Darren had a short fuse, he wasn’t much of a fighter. All bark, zero bite. His last fight was in seventh grade, when he swung at a smaller kid so he would look tough in front of the bigger boys. It lasted two and a half seconds and he cried the entire walk home.

Knowing Darren wasn’t a fighter was why Susan pulled up in a cab in front of their apartment with Wade.

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