Page 10

It’s Amazing the Clarity That Comes with Psychotic Jealousy

“You okay?” Matty asks.

I clear my throat. “What kind of name is Cam Wallace? What is he, an analog camera? Also, it’s July, and this guy is wearing a beanie.”

He does have supercute eyeglasses, though. Very Professor Moriarty chic.

But that’s it.

Okay, fine. He’s also tall. And nerdy in a way that’s super adorable, and the more I stare the more I’m convinced he’s one of those guys who is completely unassuming, but once his shirt comes off, he’s ridiculously ripped. Sleeper bod.

I hate him.

Matty laughs. “Quiet!”

Benny hands me the mimosa the flight attendant serves him. “You need this more than I do.”

I down it in one gulp. My thoughts rapidly fill the airspace in the cabin. Ricky looked right through me. Like I didn’t exist. I yank the ring on my thumb off and quickly slip it into the pocket of my short shorts. “I can’t be here.”

“Where ya going, Sparky?” Matty asks. “We’re on a plane.”

“I can’t do this.”

Benny looks to Matty. “Take him to the back row; I’ll run interference. Ohmygod, did I just make a sports reference?” After quickly rushing to Ricky, Benny hugs him and screams, “Cousin!” far too loudly. Zero chill.

Matty ushers me down the aisle.

I look back.

Ricky’s eyes follow me, but he doesn’t move past Benny.

My mouth is dry.

Ricky’s line of sight never leaves me.

Matty plops me down in a cushy row that’s one long couch, between Monroe and Tyler, who, until we raided their territory, looked on the verge of respective naps.

“Not a good flyer?” Monroe adjusts the eye mask on her forehead. “Me neither.”

Matty intercepts. “He’s good, just dramatic. But I’ll take one.”

“I like you two,” Monroe says. “I’m not really the best flyer—this is my first time flying out of the country, and I don’t really know anyone here, so I’m kind of freaking myself out.

Do you guys know Sienna well? I went to college with her, and she’s the best. I’ve spent a lot of time with your cousin, and I love him so much.

He’s good people, and I get good vibes from you even though I don’t know you at all.

Does that make sense? I can kind of read auras. ”

I don’t think this girl took a single breath while talking.

“Read auras?” I ask, almost distracted enough to look away from Ricky and Cam who are entwined in each other’s arms, nuzzling necks, giggling. My stomach cramps, and bile rises in my throat.

“I’m kind of an aura and energy reader. My grandma is one, too. She’s also a pretty famous tarot card reader. I can totally read your cards if you want.”

Matty and I look at each other. Nonna would scream if she heard Monroe right now. I can hear her now: She’ll put the malocchio on you!

“Maybe later.”

“I’d be down,” Tyler, Topher’s hot Cornell roommate, says.

Matty is giving him serious “kiss me” googly eyes. I elbow him.

“Ouch, dude,” he says.

Tyler laughs. “Did I miss something?”

“He thinks you’re hot,” Monroe says.

I unleash a cackle so loud nearly every head in the cabin turns toward us.

“What?” she says. “He does.”

Matty’s face turns crimson.

“Energy reader,” I repeat.

Tyler doesn’t miss a beat. “You’re a good-looking guy yourself, buddy.” The compliment plus the friend zoning with “buddy” sends me. “I’m straight, but flattered.”

“All the good ones are!” Matty cries.

“Tell me.” Monroe leans in, eyes narrowed. She wants us to spill the scalding, piping-hot tea on the tension in the PJ. “What’s the drama here?”

Without hesitation, Matty fillets me open: “Fielder is Ricky’s ex. Love-of-each-other’s-lives-level exes. Fielder thought that when they saw each other at a romantic wedding in Italy, they’d immediately run back into each other’s arms. Except Ricky is here unexpectedly with a boyfriend .”

I grind my teeth. “Thanks for that.”

“Oh, I sense a plot,” Monroe says.

“To destroy the Jedi?” Tyler asks.

“No.” Monroe shakes her head playfully. “So are we planning to win Ricky back and dump the new boyfriend into the Mediterranean? Because honestly that would be such a movie moment.”

“We?” I ask.

“We’re obviously in on this now,” Monroe says, grabbing Tyler’s hand. He blushes. “I need something to distract me and calm my nerves. How long were you guys together?”

“Officially, two and a half years,” Matty responds for me. “Unofficially, for twelve years, since they were five and six. We all knew. The tension was ridiculous. We all thought they would get married once Fielder graduated high school.”

“Marriage at eighteen feels a bit sus,” Monroe says. “But I get the sentiment.”

“So Ricky has a new boyfriend? That guy?” Tyler points so brazenly at Cam that I reach for his arm and slam it down.

“Dude, you have no chill,” I say.

Monroe snort-laughs.

“I ask ’cause Ricky has been hardcore staring at you,” Tyler says.

I want to look for myself, but my head weighs a billion pounds and I won’t turn.

A bubbling anxiety in my chest makes me nauseous, and I can’t tell if it’s nerves, anger, or something more, something I wasn’t expecting.

Ricky’s impersonal postcard plays in the back of my mind like subtitles in a movie.

In so few words, he said so much. He hates me.

Maybe he’s mad I blocked him and went zero communication, but he dumped me.

Still, there was never anything passive-aggressive about our friendship-turned-relationship.

We were each other’s everything, best friend, family, past, present, future.

What happened? Did he do that thing that some people do post-breakup to heal and mentally turn their ex into a monster in their mind?

Am I Ricky’s monster?

I sit back as Matty continues to talk about me and Ricky’s relationship to Monroe and Tyler as if it’s some storybook romance, a canon fairy tale with a whole fandom complete with cosplayers and fanfic.

Seeing Ricky now, unexpectedly in such close quarters with a boyfriend on his arms, is jarring, and because even though he hasn’t been my boyfriend for over thirteen months, I guess I just assumed Ricky still loved me the way I still loved him because it was embedded in our DNA.

It was our history, our future. The poem he wrote in his journal I found the morning he left, hell, everything in that journal, all the love letters to me I was never meant to read but have read over and over again the last thirteen months told me a story that we would find our way back to each another.

Yet here he is, with a boyfriend. While I was cycling through boys like parts on a factory belt in an attempt to avoid dealing with his absence and fill the hole—insert obvious joke here—he left, actually moved on.

Maybe that’s why he said that in his postcard; he thinks I would cause some sort of scene at Topher and Sienna’s wedding, that I would see Cam and act like a complete psychopath and push him into their tiered wedding cake and light the whole villa on fire or something. Which, fair point.

But no. Ricky is wrong.

My fingers tap the pocket of my shorts where my phone rests.

Tap-tap-tap on the screen.

I go to pull it out, hide behind it, scroll endlessly, get lost in DMs and comments and tweak drafts of whatever content I have set to go live later today, tomorrow, three, four, five, six days from now, anything to distract me from Ricky, Ricky, Ricky .

Benny crashes next to Tyler. “What’s the game plan?”

“There isn’t one now,” I deadpan into my screen, responding to a new comment. “He’s got a boyfriend. There’s nothing to p—” The word gets lodged in my throat.

At once, in an uproarious fashion, Matty and Benny yell at me to fight, and the rest of the plane looks in our direction.

“Incognito mode, guys, really,” Monroe says in exasperation, shaking her head. Then she turns to me. “You’re giving up? That easy?”

Not looking up, I shrug. “Nothing to give up.” I heart a few more comments.

“This defeatist attitude will not win you any heart,” Benny says.

“You have to be doggedly persistent for the guy you love. My aunt and uncle are selling their house because Sienna is gone and Ricky lives in Seattle now. What if this is your last chance?” His eyes widen.

“Ohmygod, the rom-com basically writes itself. Picture it: Italy. Last-chance romance. Star-crossed lovers. Very My Best Friend’s Wedding .

You’re Julia Roberts. It’s divine intervention! Cosmic design!”

“I don’t know that reference, but I’ll take your word for it.

” I’m razor focused on the comment section, particularly drinking in the thirsty comments from guys who post “woof” with heart-eyed emojis.

A piss-poor substitute for actual affection, but alas, here we are, trapped in a steel box of emotion with our ex and his new boyfriend over an ocean, so this will do.

“It’s a classic,” Matty says.

“Of course you know that movie,” I say.

“We have a long flight to Naples,” Benny says. “We can stream it. Consider it a study session. Win back what’s yours.”

Monroe waves him away. “Pin in that. Back to reality. You do love him, right?”

Matty plucks my phone from my hands. “Pay attention, dude.”

Tyler’s eyes widen, shell-shocked.

“Ricky isn’t a prize to be won.” My hands are shaking. “I love him. Even after he . . . broke me.” An echo of the howling ocean breeze from our last night together fills my ears. Everything we were, and could be.

Matty puts his hand on my shoulders. “If you don’t want to do this—”

“I do, though.” Heady and out of breath, I say, “I have to try.” Loving Ricky is all I’ve ever wanted, and I’m not about to let some temporary boyfriend get in the way of a lifetime of history and the only future I’ve ever wanted.

Benny is right.

This could be my last chance, and if it is, I can’t regret a single moment.

“He’s my home. I have to get him back.”

FROM THE JOURNAL OF RICCARDO DELUCA

“HOME”

When I leave your house, you say,

“Don’t be sad, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

But tomorrow isn’t now,

Now is the stretch in between,

the silent waiting,

unbearable weight of having you

and being apart again,

when all I want is to be home

because my home is you.

Every time you leave my house,

though you’re right next door,

a piece of you stays here.

I care for it like I do for my own body,

the way I watch your Nonna tend to her garden,

tenderly, from the roots,

clearing out debris so it has room to grow,

so when you return, what you left behind is not just safe

but thriving.

Sometimes I worry,

what will happen to the home

you built for us when I leave.

Tomorrows aren’t promises I can keep.

What then? Will you keep it for me?

Is that too much to ask?

Will you live here and find yourself

and wait for me to come home?

That’s too much to ask.

You ask me where I go when I’m far away.

I say, “Home, with you.”