Page 2 of You Started It
CHAPTER TWO
It’s been just over twenty-four hours since Ben dumped me. I haven’t left my room or bed since it happened, except to use the bathroom. A lot. I’ve decided to torture myself by scrolling through three years’ worth of pictures, zooming in on Ben’s face, trying to determine if he was ever happy or just faking it all this time. But all it’s doing is making me feel worse. Am I supposed to delete all my photos of us?
Wait, what if Ben has already erased me from his socials?
“Are you decent?” Amo Eli asks from outside my door.
“Yeah,” I respond from bed, forcing myself to put my phone down as my uncle enters my den of heartbreak.
“Where’s Benjamin?” Amo Eli asks, his eyes darting around my room. “I was worried I’d come in here to find the two of you macking.”
“Amo, if you’re going to insist on speaking like you’ve stepped out of a sitcom from the nineties, could you at least get the terms right?”
“What? Mackin’ the ladies—it’s, like, kissing and…other things.”
“No. Mackin’ is like flirting, obnoxiously, trying to get with the ladies.”
“And what else?” he asks, now seated on the edge of my bed.
“What else, what?” My face scrunches up as I try to both read my uncle’s expression and find a polite way to get rid of him.
“What are the other meanings of the word ‘macking’? You know you want to tell me.” He places a hand on my leg, shaking it. Just like that, I lose my cool, bursting into a fit of tears. “Habibi, what’s wrong?” he asks, scooching closer. He lays his bear paw hands on my arm, which I’m using to mask the tears.
“Nothing. Except everything. My life as I know it is over!”
“It can’t be that bad,” he says, moving my arm away from my face. And there it is—a pitying look. I guess I’d better get used to receiving those now that I’ve been dumped.
I sit up and draw my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “Ben broke up with me.”
“Hmar,” my uncle says, his upper lip raised like he’s a matador trying to intimidate a bull. As much as I appreciate him taking my side, calling Ben a donkey isn’t all that helpful. And even if he is a donkey, he’s my donkey. Or at least he was. “Do you want to tell me why?”
“Not really.” I size Amo Eli up and, unfortunately, am unable to stop my face from reacting. “Going somewhere?”
“You don’t like my outfit?” He pulls on his bright pink polo and runs a hand over his teal shorts.
“It’s just a little casual.” It’s loud is what it is. Doesn’t quite go with the pickle-up-his-butt persona and minimalist home decor.
“We’re going to a clambake. Sort of a ‘goodbye to summer’ party. You want to come?” he asks, his brown eyes open wide.
I can think of a million things I’d rather be doing than hanging out with my uncle and his boyfriend. They’re in the lovestruck phase, where everything they do or say is adorable to one another. I hate it. Ben and I were never that mushy. Well, Ben wasn’t. I tried to suppress those giddy feelings. He didn’t really believe in public displays of affection, which made the few times he held my hand in public special.
“I’ll pass. But thanks.” Wouldn’t want to get in the middle of someone else’s flourishing relationship.
First, it’ll be overnight visits. Then Eric will start moving his things in gradually. Next thing you know, my uncle will be sitting Mom and me down before saying, “Here’s the thing…” It won’t be long before we’re left to figure out a new plan.
“What about Mom?” I ask. “What’s she doing tonight?”
“She’s giving the salon a deep clean and restock for fall.” He leans in. “Between you and me, your mother needs to get a life. So back to Benjamin. What happened?”
I get up and start picking all my discarded clothes off the floor. “He wants to break free. Experience senior year without ties or binds to me.” I aggressively collect my clothes until there’s a huge pile against my chest. “As if three years together, planning and building up to this moment, means nothing to him. He got a taste of what it’s like to be ‘one of them.’ A person who goes through life without goals and a ‘let’s see what happens’ mentality. He’s not cut out for that lifestyle. He needs grounding. He needs structure. He needs me,” I say, standing in front of my uncle and dropping the pile while pointing to my chest.
“Sit.” Amo pats my bed and I grudgingly sit next to him. “You remind me a lot of your mother, you know?”
“You’re supposed to be trying to make me feel better,” I say.
He shifts to face me and I match his pose, humoring him. It’s not like I have anyone else to confide in. My whole world has been Ben for the last thirty-seven months. I never bothered to nurture any other friendships because I didn’t need to. It was me and Ben against the world. Or at least, it was supposed to be.
“Your mother is a stubborn mule like you are. And there’s a time and place for that. But other times you have to step back and listen to what the universe is telling you. What Benjamin is telling you. Jamie, my little firecracker, this boy has made it clear he doesn’t want to be with you. Why spend another second wasted on him?”
“Because he’s wrong. He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s confused. He hasn’t acclimated yet back to real life. His head is still in the clouds.”
“Khalas,” my uncle says, his voice rising slightly. “Stop making excuses for Benjamin. I don’t even see what’s so great about him anyway.” Eli clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes like the drama queen he is. “He’s what my generation called a wannabe. Let him go. You, my love, will find someone deserving of your attention. Someone who loves the real you.”
Love the real me? How could someone love the real me when I’m not even sure who that is without Ben?
“He is right about something though,” my uncle continues. “This is your last year of high school. A great opportunity for you to live a little, make new friends, see what the world has to offer.” He eyes my notebook, then me. “Without a plan. Or lists.”
“I can’t believe you compared me to my mother at a time like this.”
“Did you hear anything I said?” he asks. “Ya Allah.” He checks his phone. “I have to go. What’re you doing tonight?”
“You’re asking me, a recently dumped seventeen-year-old, what my plans for tonight are? Are you trying to make me cry again?”
“No. I’m trying to make sure you do something other than sulk in your room while looking at pictures of you and Benjamin. The guy has no style. No sense of humor. He did you a favor. Look around, Jamie.” Whenever my Canadian-born uncle gets passionate about something, which is often, a random Arabic accent surfaces and he starts pronouncing my name Jam-e, dragging out the J.
“I’m looking.”
“The person you turned into for Benjamin wasn’t the real you. The real you is spunky. Messy. Chaotic. Loud. Brilliant. You tried to be something you weren’t for him. But you couldn’t keep up the charade. That’s why your room looks like this. It’s your safe space. Where you let it all out. A reflection of the real Jamie.”
“What are you even saying?” I fold my arms over my chest, trying hard not to roll my eyes.
“I’m saying you watered yourself down to be the version of Jamie that Benjamin wanted. He took all your best qualities and put them in a box. You’re free of that now. All of it.”
“But you hate that I’m messy. You called me a tornado yesterday.”
“So? You remember everything I’ve ever said?” His lips set in a hard line. “You are who you are and you need to find people who get you.”
“Sure. You make it sound so easy.”
“Hey,” he says, his thick brows furrowing. “I know more than anyone else how hard it is to find yourself. I grew up with Arab parents in the nineties. ‘Gay’ wasn’t and still isn’t a word in their vernacular. But,” he says, his expression softening, “you don’t have to deal with that bullshit.”
No. I just have an absent father and a mother who I constantly butt heads with—probably because I look just like the man who left her.
“You’ll see, with some time and distance, this is probably the best thing to ever happen to you. And when that moment comes, I expect you to find me and say ‘You were right, Amo.’?” He points to his face for a kiss. I oblige, giving him a peck on his scruffy cheek. He places a kiss on my forehead before standing.
“For what it’s worth, in the UK, ‘macking’ is slang for surfing a large, powerful wave.”
“Sounds like a mack daddy of a ride.” My uncle smirks before tripping on a shoe and shooting me a look full of wrath. “Clean this room.”
“I am who I am!” I shout back as he exits.
And what I am is someone who makes the rules, so sorry, Ben Cameron, you don’t get to decide when things are over. That’s not how this works. This is my life you’re messing with.
He’s the one who turned me into this person. Someone who had to set goals and meet them. It’s like a drug. I can’t stop now. If the plan falls apart, it’ll have a domino effect on the rest of our future together—and my own. Matching undergrads at University of Toronto to go with our matching law degrees from McGill University. You’re not getting the win on this one, Ben. You started it. Now, I’m going to finish it.
I grab my notebook and open it to a new page with a new tab.
Goal: Get Ben Cameron back in time for winter formal.