Never Vacation with Your Ex(4)
Author: Emily Wibberley

 

I didn’t set out to ruin our relationship. I didn’t.

 

In fact, I wondered if maybe Dean could be my escape from my worst quality. I know I have a reputation as a heartbreaker. My unfortunate habit of dumping guys after a few months is well established at school, even on my social media. I play it off in public and in my head, pretending it’s not the one ugly stain that separates me from the image of myself I want to live up to. What celebrity breakup ever made the stars less famous, right?

 

No matter how much I deny it, though, I can’t hide from what it really means. There is something wrong with me.

 

I shouldn’t get the suffocated feeling months into every relationship. With Dean, I’d started to convince myself I wouldn’t. Maybe I was being impulsive. Maybe I was being rash. Maybe I was lying to myself.

 

But I really, really liked him. I wasn’t planning to break up with him from the start. It just happened.

 

“If you never wanted to see your ex again, you shouldn’t have dated the son of our closest friends,” my dad says past his arugula. “I’m sorry, Kaylee, but we’re not letting a teenage breakup derail decades of family tradition.”

 

I resist stomping my foot like a toddler, though I very much want to. I know it’s horribly clichéd to say they just don’t understand. Still, stereotypical or not, they don’t understand. I need this vacation.

 

But with Dean there, California won’t be a vacation. He’s been . . . pretty mad since we broke up. I pleaded with him for forgiveness and friendship in tearful late-night texts, only for him to block me. Wounded, I’ve let him be. I’ve gone out of my way to avoid him at school—but there will be no avoiding him when he’s sleeping down the hall from me for three weeks of family beach days and dinners. Every sunny day will feel like a storm, every barbecue a battlefield.

 

Mom looks up. The sympathy in her eyes is sincere now. “However,” she says, “no one is going to force you to come to California. If you’re uncomfortable with Dean’s presence, of course we would be devastated to not have you with us, but we’d understand.”

 

I straighten up. It’s a sudden light past the rubble of the collapsed cave of my summer. I can physically feel relief racing into me, lessening the pounding of my headache.

 

“Really? That would honestly be great,” I say. “I could stay here and spend time with Brianna before she goes to college.”

 

The idea fits into place in my head perfectly. I don’t need crystal waters. I don’t need backyard barbecues. I only need weeks with the friend I didn’t just dump. The friend who isn’t furious with me. Instead of my Malibu vacation, I will have the perfect Newport staycation.

 

Wrapped up in the fantasy, I nearly miss the look my parents exchange.

 

And then, in unison, they laugh. Really laugh, like what I’ve said is just hilarious. The world-class punch line they never saw coming. I’m stuck standing here, glaring while my cheeks heat.

 

“No way we’re leaving you on your own,” my mom manages.

 

“But I’ll be seventeen next month,” I protest. “I’m plenty capable of surviving on my own for three weeks.”

 

“It’s not a discussion,” my dad says, still smiling from the unexpected uproariousness of my very reasonable suggestion. “You either come with us, or you can spend the summer in Nevada with Aunt Caroline.”

 

Staycation dreams shatter in my head. While I can’t stand my narcissistic aunt, she’s not the real problem. Summer in fucking Pahrump, Nevada, outside of literal Death Valley, is summer without volleyball. The heat makes it nearly impossible to go outside, let alone train like a professional athlete. It’s not an option, and my parents know it.

 

“Please,” I say quietly. Defiance, I realize, is getting me nowhere. “Could they just not stay at the house with us?”

 

“We already invited them, sweetheart,” my dad replies. “They have their flights. You really want us to kick them out?”

 

I don’t really need my dad to put the question explicitly for me to know the offer is impossible, or to feel horrible for even proposing it. Darren and Terry Freeman-Yu are practically family, and I know how much it would hurt them and divide our families if I were to pout until I get my way.

 

I close my eyes. The realization hits me with sudden forceful clarity—I shouldn’t be behaving this way. This isn’t me. I’m better than this. I call on the girl within me who doesn’t make excuses. Who pushes through without letting the hardship show.

 

I can’t keep the strain out of my expression, but I do smile. “Of course,” I say to my parents. “I get it.”

 

Without needing to hear more, I leave the room. I can do this. I can put on a brave face. No one will see me stumbling.

 

Malibu won’t be a vacation, but no one has to know that except me.

 

 

 

 

 

Three

 

 

POUTING IN FRONT OF my parents is one thing.

 

Pouting in my room? Completely different.

 

I storm upstairs into my bedroom, which is one part volleyball shrine, one part yearbook. I’ve gridded photos of my friends, the beach, my games—everything, really—onto one wall with neat white lines separating them. It’s eye-catchingly geometric. Bookshelf space, meanwhile, is reserved for my not inconsiderable collection of trophies.

 

Fuming, I ease myself onto my bed and close my eyes, ready to ride out the rest of this migraine.

 

But frustration and stress keep the pressure pounding in my head, refusing to let me doze off. On the one hand, I know I’m being spoiled about dreading a three-week vacation in California. On the other, my breakup with Dean was uniquely awful. He’d cried, which was new in my experience. Not that it’s always me doing the dumping, but when it is, my exes in the past haven’t shed a tear. Exactly the way I intended—I purposefully keep relationships from ever getting serious enough for those sorts of emotions.

 

The truth is, I’m good at dumping people. I’ve practiced it unintentionally, but practice is practice, and practice makes pretty close to perfect. I’ve mastered making my breakups feel logistical, comprehensible, just the natural consequence of me having too much going on to commit.

 

But Dean was harder. Of course he was. It’s why my parents warned me over and over about starting a relationship with him—how dating a friend could ruin a friendship, and dating a family friend could ruin a family.

 

Maybe I was vain to think we would be different, that he would be the exception to my string of short-term relationships. I’ve stayed friends with several of my exes, real friends, whether it’s exchanging US history notes with Bryson or sending memes to Mark. Dean and I had the sturdiest foundation of friendship I could ever wish for, years of vacations and beach days and nights hanging out in his room while our parents talked for hours. I couldn’t imagine our breakup shaking what we’d built.