Page 146 of Ruthless Rustanovs

“It’s not you, it’s me, Scott,” Sola told the caller as she reversed her mentor’s car out of the strip mall parking space.

“I feel like we’re in two different places in our lives.

You’ll be joining a new team next season, and I still don’t know where I’m going to land once I’ve graduated from ValArts.

We both have these huge lives in front of us, and frankly, I think we’re much too different to make things work together.

We’ve been drifting apart for a while now.

I think it’s time for us to break it off.

But I’ll always think fondly of you, and, um… thanks, I guess…”

She cut her eyes towards the Lexus’s Bluetooth display screen. “C’mon, say something! I’m dying here.”

“Well…there’s a lot of good stuff to work with, but you really shouldn’t start a break-up speech with ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’ That’s so cliché,” her best friend, Anitra, answered.

“Okay, okay, good feedback,” Sola said, mentally filing her friend’s comment away.

Thank God she’d met the soon-to-be doctor during her first year at ValArts, when Anitra had mistaken her as the only other black student in their Directing 101 course.

After an awkward explanation about her heritage—Guatemalan parents, one of whom had curly hair and much darker skin, likely due to an ancestor of African descent, Anitra had answered, “Well, we’re the only women wearing glasses in this class. So…”

So…they’d ended up becoming best friends. And remained such, even after Anitra dropped out of ValArts to attend school in West Virginia on a scholarship for a BS/MD Accelerated Medical Rural Health Program.

But luckily for Sola, the future doctor still remembered everything they’d learned during their first year Theater Lab course about providing critique and giving good notes.

“Anything else?” Sola asked, as she negotiated the car Brian had left at J.J.’s bar a few days ago out of the parking lot and onto one of Valencia’s busier streets.

According to Brian, only a few decades ago Valencia had been home to nothing but a few goat farms, several orange groves, and a young art school: the Valencia Institute of the Arts.

But thanks to the sprawl from nearby Los Angeles, the formally small desert town was becoming busier and busier by the year, and ValArts had gone on to become one of the most prestigious universities in the nation for students of both visual and performing arts.

“You’re making it seem like it’s mostly you who has all the issues in the relationship,” Anitra said in response to Sola’s question. “I’m concerned he’s not going to realize what a douchebag he’s been to you after you’re done breaking up with him.”

So much for giving good, impartial notes. “Nitra...”

“I’m just saying you might want to come right out and tell him he doesn’t deserve you, because he’s a controlling asshole who doesn’t know a good hairstyle when he’s sees it.”

Sola shook her head at the radio. Anitra was still way more bitter about the second of only two major fights she and Scott had ever had over the course of their relationship.

Albeit, the hair one had been pretty major.

Scott had lost it when she’d shown up at his condo in Marina Del Rey with her hair cut short after a summer spent interning with Brian in New Mexico.

The ensuing argument became so intense, Sola ended up leaving early and taking a bus back to Valencia.

She spent the entire ride texting with Anitra about how insane Scott had been, yelling at her like a lunatic.

Anitra agreed his reaction had been way out of line, too.

And when she’d told her mentor, Brian, what happened when she returned home earlier than expected, he’d said, “I think I can understand what a young woman such as yourself might see in a football player. It’s a common enough trope, though in this case the handsome soldier is bearing pigskin instead of a sword.

However, I don’t think that fellow is for you, Marisol.

I doubt he’d know Tosca from Don Giovanni if you gave him a libretto to follow along.

And I’m sure Eddie would agree with me on this if he were able. ”

That was Brian’s way of saying she could do better than Scott, and that if his husband, Eddie, weren’t suffering from a rare debilitating neurological disorder that manifested in various states of dementia and catatonia—with the rare “good day” thrown in every few weeks or so—he’d totally agree.

Sola, too, had started to have doubts about what had, up until then, been a more or less fairytale relationship between her and the boyishly handsome second-string running back for the L.A. Suns.

But then Scott had shown up at the auditions of the thesis play she’d been stage managing to get in more tech hours, and finish what should have been a six-year program in only five.

Even though the play was a spoken drama, he’d auditioned for the role of Sola’s boyfriend with a charmingly off-key version of The Fray’s “Over My Head.”

Every other girl in the theater had melted and looked at Sola like she’d be crazy not to take him back. And so she had.

After all, he really did seem genuinely sorry, and at that point, they’d been together for over a year.

Ever since meeting on a commercial she’d PA’d the summer before.

Not that long ago, she’d been shocked that a sandy-haired football player from Omaha would even pay a nanosecond of attention to a poor Guatemalan art student like herself.

But just a year and a half after he sang for her forgiveness, Sola regretted not listening to Anitra and Brian. Scott had become more and more controlling since they’d gotten back together. Often calling to check up on her at odd times, and sometimes showing up at her place out of the blue.

She couldn’t so much as mention a male, even in the context of one of her plays or classes, without him accusing her of cheating.

In fact, the last two times they’d had sex, it had been because he’d shown up in the middle of the night without warning.

Supposedly it was because he missed her.

But Valencia was over an hour from where Scott lived in Marina Del Rey.

And she could tell by the way he’d looked around the small cottage she rented for next to nothing from Brian, that he was searching for evidence that she’d been with another guy.

But the most damning fact of their doomed relationship was that Scott hadn’t been able to spend any time with her since September.

He was having a bad season with the Suns, and he’d told her not to visit him during the season because he “didn’t want to be distracted by sex.

” Sola had been somewhat relieved, too, because with only a year left to complete the rest of her MFA requirements—including all her tech hours, since she’d have a thesis opera to direct during her spring semester—she’d be pretty busy herself.

However, being busy was one thing. Not missing your boyfriend one iota in over three sexless months was another. Which was why, as much as she hated to hurt anyone’s feelings, she really needed to break up with him this weekend—the first one in thirteen they’d managed to schedule together.

But that didn’t mean she wanted to stomp all over the guy.

“I just want to break up with him,” she told her best friend as she carefully drove the short distance back to her little guesthouse, which sat just behind the Craftsman Brian shared with Eddie.

“I don’t want to make him feel bad about himself. He’s already upset about getting traded to Omaha after missing that pass in the playoff game. If I start listing reasons and stuff, it’s going to be like I’m piling up on him.”

“I guess,” grumbled Anitra. “But I really think somebody ought to let him know that the shit he pulls with you isn’t cool. Maybe I’ll text him...”

“Anitra, don’t you dare!” Sola insisted, knowing her bestie just might.

“Okay, okay, but only if you promise to call me right after. And take plenty of dialogue notes, because I want a blow-by-blow detail of what he says when you finally dump his sorry ass. That pixie cut was so cute!”

“Nitra…” Sola started to say with another laugh as she pulled up in front of the house.

But the laughter died in her throat when she saw what was waiting for her on the front lawn.

Scott, in all his gorgeous football player glory, stood there with what looked like at least half a marching band behind him. He smiled and the band started playing “Over My Head” as soon as her car came to a stop.

And just in case that wasn’t enough of a clue about what was going on, two majorettes rolled out a sign that read, “MARRY ME, MARISOL!”

Sola’s mouth dropped open.

And somewhere in the distance her best friend demanded on the other side of the car’s Bluetooth radio, “What’s happening? What’s going on?!”