Page 12 of When Javi Dumped Mari

Javi

Ten Years and Seven Months Before the Wedding

The weather early in our junior year is unseasonably warm, a second summer in the mid-Atlantic blessing us with mild October temperatures even at dusk.

People are taking advantage of the reprieve too.

Bodies are sprawled all over Belmont Green, and a student practicing Pachelbel’s Canon on her violin is providing the perfect soundtrack to help us relax.

The violinist isn’t playing it straight through, but rather focusing on three of my favorite variations—the ones I practiced for hours when I was teaching myself how to play piano in junior high.

If I had a keyboard, I’d be tempted to join her.

Beside me, Mari sighs and straightens the blanket we’re sitting on.

“Want to talk about it?” I ask.

Ignoring my question, she removes the lid of the pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream I brought her and digs in. Personally, I think it tastes like Pop Rocks and toothpaste, but to each his own.

“It might make you feel better,” I nudge.

“No, it wouldn’t,” she says, chomping on a spoonful of ice cream.

She capitulates within seconds. “I’ll just say this: I don’t get why I’m the bad person here.

All I did was tell him I didn’t want anything serious.

He acted as if I was asking for a divorce.

Not only that, he said I was a tease because I didn’t want to have sex with him.

The whole thing was wild on every level there is. ”

“He” is Rob, a guy Mari met a couple of weeks ago.

They seemed to be getting along, though I wasn’t sold on him, and when Mari backed off, he called her some nasty names.

Worse, we’re pretty sure he’s responsible for defacing the flyers around campus announcing Mari’s election to LASA president.

The timing’s too coincidental, and the language scrawled across the flyers mirrors the names Rob called her when they argued.

I’m not a violent person by nature, and a random kid isn’t worth an assault charge, but if I could figure out a legal way to make Rob’s life miserable, I’d be all over it.

We took down the posters this afternoon and—just to be safe—reported our suspicions to campus police.

“You’re not a bad person,” I tell her. “Rob’s just used to getting his way and doesn’t know how to handle rejection. Fuck him.”

A yellow Frisbee lands a few feet away from us, and a guy jogs over to retrieve it. He bends to pick up the Frisbee, then winks at Mari as he straightens to his full height.

Real smooth, cabrón.

Mari glares at him. “My vagina’s sealed shut for the rest of the school year. Move along.”

He throws his hands in the air, dropping the Frisbee in the process, and backs away.

She sets aside her ice cream—a testament to how annoyed she is—and flops onto her back, throwing an arm over her face. “I need revenge.”

I flop onto my back beside her. “What kind?”

“The petty kind.”

“Okay, how would you get your revenge?” I ask. “Walk me through it.”

She ponders my question a moment and says, “First, I’d glitter-bomb his car.”

“Good one.”

“Ooh, then I’d sign him up for thousands of marketing emails.”

“You’d need access to his account, though. Most of these companies want you to confirm your email address when you subscribe.”

She flings her arm out and flicks my forehead. “Must you bring reality into this?”

“Ow…and yes. If it doesn’t feel possible, this exercise isn’t going to be satisfying. Think bigger.”

“Okay, how’s this? He has a ridiculously comfy couch that he spent an obscene amount of money on. I’d fill the cushions with moldy cheese and anchovies.”

“Fuck, that’s brutal. He’d never get the stench out.”

“Exactly.”

“Well done. You could also substitute his social media pics with a photo of a horse and edit his profile name to Bestiality Stan. But you’d need access to his account, so never mind.”

She laughs. “That’d be too cruel to animals anyway.” After a moment of silence, she turns on her side. “You’re right, he’s not worth my time.”

“No doubt,” I say, turning to face her.

“Is this when you tell me I told you so ?”

I could but I won’t. There’s no point in rehashing what she already knows: I had a bad feeling about Rob from the get-go. “He hid his true colors. It’s as simple as that.”

She nods. “I’ve messed with a lot of frogs.”

The words slide over me like tar, weighing me down and darkening my mood.

Imagining Mari with other guys just isn’t a pleasant thought.

Ever. I wish I could protect her from the assholes of the world, but it isn’t my place to come between her and any person she chooses to be with.

Sometimes I wish it were. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“This fixation you have with being in a…what do you call it?”

“A situationship?”

“Yeah, that. I’m not judging, just trying to understand what that’s about. Where’s it coming from?”

She blows out her cheeks. “My mom, probably.”

“How so? I mean, can you tell me a little more about her?”

“You really want to know?” she asks with a slight shake of her head.

I’m not bothered by the question. Since Mari and I met last year, we’ve gotten closer, and I consider her a friend.

Even so, we haven’t shared a lot about our pasts, about the people who matter to us.

I’d like to change that. Honestly, I wish I knew everything there is to know about Mari, but telling her that would reveal too much.

So instead, I say, “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t interested. ”

“Huh,” she says. “Okay, where to start? Let’s see, my mom, Patrícia, met my dad in school.

He’s first-gen and well off, though he wasn’t always.

My mom grew up with much more modest means in S?o Paulo and was here to get a graduate degree in journalism.

Anyway, they started dating and fell in love.

They both say it was instant fireworks between them, and she couldn’t imagine leaving him.

So she stayed. And, well, my dad’s a bit old-school.

It’s not that he didn’t respect her career; it’s just that he didn’t prioritize it either.

So when they had me—my dad was in law school then—he naturally assumed she’d focus on the home while he did his thing.

Which is exactly what happened. Except my mom didn’t like the life my dad wanted to live.

The entertaining. The long nights at work.

His obsession with wanting to maintain his social status and do things she couldn’t care less about. They grew apart, I guess.”

“That must have been hard for her.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine. And it wasn’t only about my dad.

It was about being in the U.S. too. I mean, people assume being here is always the better option, as if an immigrant couldn’t possibly want to be anywhere else.

But she had a beautiful life in Brazil. A wonderful family that was too far away for her to visit as much as she wanted to. Siblings who needed her help.”

“She was homesick.”

“Exactly. Plus, I was going off to college soon anyway. And she certainly didn’t want to be an empty nester with my dad, so she divorced him and left.”

“What was that like for you?”

She lets out a long sigh, her gaze settling on the blanket.

“Hard. For a while, I wondered if I could have done anything to make her stay. She assured me it wasn’t about me.

That she would have taken me to Brazil if I’d wanted to go.

But in my mind, that was impossible. My friends were here, my life was here. ”

“Your dad was here too,” I point out.

“Not as much of a positive as you’d think,” she says flatly. “I overheard him tell her he wouldn’t know what to do with a sixteen-year-old daughter.” She laughs. “My mother told him to figure it out.”

“What’s your mom doing now?”

“Working at a daily newspaper in S?o Paulo and helping her siblings take care of my grandparents.”

“Do you see her from time to time?”

“I’ve visited the last two summers, and I hope to go back next year. My grandparents aren’t healthy enough to travel here, so I try to see them whenever I can. I spend the holidays with my dad.”

“Are you and your father close?”

She tilts her head from side to side as she considers my question, then says, “He stepped up when my mother left, even though I know he wasn’t thrilled about it. So I owe him a lot. But honestly, sometimes I worry I’ll get swept up in his hurricane too.”

I understand her so much better now. Turns out she has a protective shell as thick as mine.

Maybe that’s why we click—because we’re kindred spirits in a way.

A part of me hopes we’ll both let our guard down.

I get the feeling it’d be worth it. “Let me guess: You’re not trying to get swept up in any guy’s hurricane while you’re in college either. ”

“Exactly. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not hating on love. I’m just not looking for it right now.” She stretches, then gives me a once-over. “Your turn.”

My heart hammers in my chest. “My turn?”

“Yeah. Give me hope that I’ll find a decent person someday. Tell me about your girlfriend.”

This is the first time Mari has asked about this person who doesn’t exist. I figured she didn’t care enough to interrogate me.

And since I didn’t want to add to my initial lie, I let it be.

But I’d like my friendship with Mari to thrive in spite of our significant others, real or fictional, so I put my bogus girlfriend to rest. “We broke up.”

Mari bolts upright. “Oh no! Why? What happened?”

She says this in an overly dramatic tone, immediately raising a red flag in my mind.

“It just fizzled,” I say, sitting up and avoiding her gaze. “We wanted different things. We were going in different directions.”

“You mean you wanted to be here, and she wanted to stay in your closet?”

I cock my head. “Closet? Why the hell would she want to stay in my closet?”

“Isn’t that where people keep their blow-up dolls?”

And then it dawns on me: Mari never believed me in the first place.