Never Vacation with Your Ex(3)
Author: Emily Wibberley

 

Dean Freeman-Yu. Dean, who I’ve known and vacationed with in Malibu since we were in diapers.

 

Dean, my very recent ex-boyfriend.

 

“Tell me you’re not going on vacation with the guy you just dumped,” Bri prompts me.

 

I feel like I’m watching my Malibu escape go up in flames, their devouring heat licking my face. I shove my phone into my sweatshirt pocket.

 

“I absolutely am not,” I say.

 

 

 

 

 

Two

 

 

MY HEAD IS FULLY pounding by the time Brianna drops me off in front of my house, but it’s just bearable enough to get through what I have to do next.

 

Storing my volleyball bag in the hall closet, I walk through the entryway of the home where I’ve lived since seventh grade. While the Victorian-inspired design took me years to feel comfortable in, I eventually inscribed memories into the ornate banisters, the dark-wood furniture, the Newport coastline waiting outside.

 

In the living room, I pass the framed photo of my mom on her knees in the sand after winning her third consecutive Olympic gold medal. The shot is stunning. It never fails to pull complicated emotions from me, mostly good ones. I remember being there in the stands nearly a decade ago. It’s her only Olympics I can remember. I was full of pride, inspired in a way I never forgot. It was one of the coolest days of my life.

 

I find my parents in the kitchen, seated on the barstools, eating takeout. My dad is in slacks and a crisp blue button-down, which means he spent the day showing a house. He’s one of the top Realtors in the state, the square-jawed face of John Jordan plastered out in front of the city’s priciest historic coastal homes. In person, he looks just like his posters, with perfectly white teeth and no hint of gray in his chestnut hair.

 

I speak before they can turn to greet me. “You weren’t serious,” I say. “Right? Just one of your hilarious jokes? The Freeman-Yus aren’t coming to California with us this summer because that would be an awful, terrible idea—right?”

 

My parents face me, eyes wide.

 

“Why wouldn’t they come, hon?” my mom asks in honest confusion. She’s fresh out of the shower, sun-bleached hair dripping down her shoulders, which show her intense sports bra tan lines, the streaks of pale white between golden brown. She retired from professional volleyball after her last Olympic win and has run a volleyball clinic here ever since.

 

I literally gape, met only with earnest, empty stares. “Because I, like, just broke up with Dean?” I remind my parents. “Did you forget?”

 

My dad laughs without sarcasm or spite. His charming good cheer never feels forced despite how often he reproduces laughter just like this for clients. “Of course we didn’t forget,” he says, prodding his salad.

 

I fold my arms in defiance of his easygoing amusement. I don’t understand what game they’re playing.

 

With my parents’ perfect relationship and professional lives—Judy and John Jordan, the Olympian married to the enthusiastic and entrepreneurial real estate king—it’s easy to imagine they would change behind closed doors into ruthless, judgmental people. Instead, I’m fortunate to have the great relationship I do with my parents, free of the pressures and petty judgments I know my friends get from their families. Being their only child, I’m used to it being just the three of us, doing everything together. When I took up volleyball, it made them so proud. They’ve been friends, inspirations, mentors to me my whole life.

 

It’s why I’m caught up short standing in my kitchen, looking from my pressed and polished dad to my tanned, limber mother, struggling to figure out why they’re cheerfully conscripting me into the worst vacation plan in history.

 

“Okay,” I say slowly, fighting my headache. “Then why?”

 

“We go to Malibu with the F-Ys every year,” my mom explains gently, starting to look like she’s worried I’m suffering from some sort of head injury. I’m suffering, but not from memory loss. “It’s the whole point of the trip,” Mom goes on.

 

I match her incredulous stare. Their confusion is starting to confuse me. I mean, I understand how traditions work. We have gone with the Freeman-Yus every year to California for two or three heavenly weeks in the house my parents own in Malibu right on the beach, except for the summer when we were ten and they visited Dean’s grandparents in Taiwan instead. I’ve played countless games of cards with Dean’s family in the living room and pickup volleyball with the parents on the sand in the shade of the cliffs. Dean’s sisters feel like they could be my own. I even suffered memorable humiliation in front of his whole family when I face-planted during the group surfing lesson we all did one year.

 

Still.

 

“Surely an exception could be made,” I say sternly, “for, I repeat, the summer right after I broke up with Dean. Have you even thought about how awkward it’s going to be? He’s my ex-boyfriend.”

 

My mom’s face softens only slightly. “Kaylee,” she says delicately. “Maybe you should have thought of this before you and Dean started dating?”

 

Despite her reassuring voice, I know there’s no sympathy in her words. They close in on me like pillowed prison walls with my migraine pounding on them outside.

 

“In fact.” My dad speaks up, squinting like he’s recalling hazy historical details. I’m in no mood for his playful posturing. “I think I remember specifically warning you this would happen when you got together,” he goes on. “I said, Kaylee, don’t date Dean because you’re just going to dump him in two months and then Malibu will be awkward. And what did you say?”

 

I frown. There is, unfortunately, no way I’m getting out of replying.

 

Mom looks down into her salad like she’s letting me save face.

 

I sigh.

 

“I said, You don’t know we’ll break up,” I grind out.

 

It hurts to remember in ways I don’t think my parents understand. I’d reassured them not just because I’d wanted to chase my romantic whims without considering the family consequences. It was because I believed it myself, because I really, really wanted it to be true.

 

I’d wondered if Dean would be different. With our family histories, with how long we’ve been friends—with the years, nearly the decades of memories I have of him growing from the bookish kid whose bar mitzvah party was Lord of the Rings–themed into my tall, leather-loafer- and beige-cardigan-wearing classmate never without his chunky black camera and over-the-ear headphones—I thought he might. He knew my likes, my dislikes, my secrets. I felt completely comfortable with him. He was my best friend.