Strung Out by Erin Khar

Author:Erin Khar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: 2019-12-17T19:28:58+00:00

* * *

The car behind us laid on the horn.

“Where does he want me to go?” Pete said.

I sighed again, loudly, over the squeaky sound of the windshield wipers, and Pete turned toward me.

“What?”

“What?” I asked back.

“What’s going on with you?”

“I don’t know. I just feel. Uck, I just feel fucking trapped in this car right now.”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“Pete... I don’t know if I can... I feel like maybe we should take a break.”

I looked at him, and he swallowed hard and stared straight ahead at the traffic in front of us.

“A break.”

“Yeah, I mean. I don’t know. I just feel like you’re mad at me all the time because I want to go out and I’m mad at you because you don’t.”

“I can’t do a break. If you... If that’s what you need, then we should just break up. But know this—if we break up, that’s it. We are not getting back together. I’m not going to play that game with you.”

We sat in silence again, and I wondered what it would feel like in that car if Jack was sitting in the driver’s seat, with his sparkly blue eyes and mischievous smile. We finally made it past Western and traffic opened up.

We got to the diner and Travis and his girlfriend were there waiting for us. I did my best to pretend we hadn’t just talked about breaking up in the car, but I looked across the table at Pete and could see the hurt in his eyes. The waitress set down my breakfast in front of me and two large teardrops fell onto the stack of golden pancakes. I cut them up and put too much maple syrup on them, and pretended to eat, but just moved pieces around on the plate, making pancake soup, trying to keep up with the conversations at the table.

I wondered how different things would have been if we’d bought that loft in Providence. In November, we went to see my dad in Rhode Island and we talked about getting married; I looked at rings. We talked about getting out of LA. My dad wanted to help me buy something, a little piece of material happiness, make a path for me, again. We looked at a townhouse on Benefit Street near Brown that had a darkroom in the basement but was way too much house for us. Then we found a loft—a raw space with exposed brick and views of the water near my favorite Italian restaurant. There were multiple offers and we didn’t get it. When we got back to LA, I started looking at condos and lofts, resigned to be in a city that I didn’t care for.

When we got back in the car, I felt sick and panicky. I loved Pete. I did. It was me I wanted to dump.

“Pete, I don’t want to break up. I’m sorry. It’s just been a tough couple of months. I love you.”

He started the car and leaned over and kissed me.

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