Page 50 of Rock Bottom Girl

“Idon’t know, V. I’m just not happy. I mean, Travis is great.”

“So great,” Vicky agreed, digging into the Styrofoam cup of chicken corn soup, a staple at cold weather soccer games. “But?”

“But I don’t know. I feel, like, ungrateful saying it out loud.”

“Ungrateful like you owe him a debt of gratitude for dating you?” Vicky looked at me like I’d just declared that Russia had invaded Pennsylvania.

“Well. Yeah. Kinda. I mean, look how much nicer everyone has been to me since we started dating.”

“And by nicer, you mean Amie Jo stopped calling you Zit-Faced Loser to your face. I told you the fastest way to shut her up is to punch her in her goddamn mouth and call it a day. She comes after you because there’s no consequences. You don’t freak out on her. You don’t defend yourself. You just wilt like a pretty little flower.”

Vicky was annoyingly right. I just didn’t have the weaponry to defend myself from mean girls. As far as I could tell, Amie Jo wasn’t human. She’d named me an enemy on the playground in kindergarten and had dedicated her life to being an awful person to me. Dating Travis had been the only respite from her bitchy nastiness.

“Can we get back to the Travis thing?” I asked. The action on the field stopped with the whistle, and we watched twenty-two long-legged guys jog off the field for half-time.

“Fine. Tell me why you’re having doubts about breaking up with Prince Travis, the mostly okay boyfriend.”

Vicky had been involved in a relationship with Rich Rothermel since the end of 10th grade. She said she just didn’t want to commit the time to a decade or two of dating, so she was going to marry her high school sweetheart. But not until they were thirty and done with their two-year backpacking trip around Europe.

With her future already planned out, she was more than willing to help me shape mine.

“He’s nice,” I said. “And sweet and thoughtful.”

“Uh-huh. How’s the sex?” Vicky was skilled at cutting to the heart of an issue and then poking it in the eye.

“It’s…okay.”

I’d held on to my virginity until senior year, not liking any of my short-term boyfriends enough to hand it over to their clumsy, sweaty hands. But when Travis Hostetter swept his blond hair out of his blue eyes and flashed me that All-American dimpled grin on the first day of school—miracle of miracles—I’d all but stuffed my v-card in an envelope and addressed it to him.

I liked him. I really did. He was a great guy. But…

“I don’t have anything to compare it to,” I reminded her.

“Trust me,” Vicky said, jabbing the plastic spoon at me. “You’d know if it was good.”

“Ugh, I feel like an ungrateful ass. So the chemistry isn’t really there for me. Is that a good enough reason to break up with him? And is being moderately more popular a good enough reason to not break up with him?”

“You got yourself a real conundrum there,” she told me. “Bottom line, are you happy?”

“No, but—”

“No buts. There’s your answer.”

I knew she was right, but it didn’t alleviate the guilt I felt for not being more grateful that the guy picked me from obscurity and had done all the right boyfriend-y things. Travis Hostetter was a great guy. He just wasn’t my great guy. He’d make some lucky girl an amazing boyfriend if I could lady up and release him back into the wild.

I felt eyes on me and looked up to see Travis waving to me from the bench.

I raised a hand back and cursed myself for not swooning. The feelings I had toward the blond Adonis in his heroically grass-stained socks were friendly, not lusty. And that made me defective.

“You ready to go back?” Vicky asked, jutting her chin in the direction of our rowdy circle of friends. Together, we were an island of misfits in the middle of the shark-infested waters of high school.

“I think I’m gonna grab a hot chocolate,” I told her. I didn’t actually want the gritty, powdery crap. But I did want to be alone with my thoughts.

“Okay,” Vicky said. “I’ll see you back on the bleachers.” She meandered off, eating her soup while she walked. I headed back toward the concession stand and then veered off behind the bleachers. Here I was separated from the action, the people, the lights. Here I was all alone even with a few hundred people crowding the stands, lining up at the restrooms, and stuffing their faces with fake orange cheese nachos at the concession stand.

“Hey there, Mars.”

I recognized the voice before I turned around.