I get up and approach him, wrapping my fingers around the chinks of the fence dividing us. “Thanks, yo.”
“Happy to help,” he says with a smile that probably bags him a lot of girls. “I’m Thomas, by the way.”
“Aaron,” I say, extending my hand to shake his, but we’re still on opposite sides of the gate. He laughs a little. “So what was going on with that girl?”
“I was breaking up with her.”
“Yikes. Why?”
“She’s not really right for me anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“Nothing you would care about.”
I’m half nervous Brendan and Deon will sneak up from behind me, but I’m also half curious to know why this stranger-guy named Thomas broke up with his girlfriend. “So our one-year anniversary is today,” he says breaking the silence. “I went to the mall to buy Sara’s favorite perfume. I didn’t remember what it was called, and I know I knew it before. I didn’t think it was a big deal, I knew what it smelled like and I could figure it out from there.” He pulls out a couple movie tickets from his wallet. “Then I saw these ticket stubs. I couldn’t remember if I saw these movies with Sara or my cousins.”
“Okay . . .” I wonder when this story will take a crazy twist, like he slept with her sister or something.
“If I can’t remember, I’m wasting her time. Dragging it out will just lead her on and stop me from finding someone new,” he says.
“Makes sense,” I respond. “I mean, if Romeo and Juliet didn’t think the other could offer ultimate happiness, the both of them would’ve survived.”
He laughs. “So basically make sure I find someone worth downing poison for?”
“Exactly,” I say. “Do you live around here?”
“Yup.” Thomas points to the Joey Rosa Projects.
“Do you want to play?”
“Isn’t manhunt for thirteen-year-olds?”
“Nah. We go hard, like tackle each other and shit.”
“How late you guys going to playing for?”
“Different games throughout the day, I don’t know.”
“I have to head home. Maybe I’ll find you later. It seems like you need someone to watch your back.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine from here on out.”
“How sure?”
“Bet-my-life sure.”
Thomas points behind me, and there goes Deon and Brendan. They’re winding down, but they’re close. Thomas pries open the gate and I sneak back to his side.
“I should probably run.”
“You should probably run.”
“See you later, Thomas.”
“See you later, Stretch.”
Ten minutes later, after making the stupid move of hiding inside the tunnel slide like an amateur, Deon catches me. Now I’m searching for others in staircases and the garage, when I feel magnetized back to the gate where I just was. No one is there. Not Baby Freddy or Nolan or that kid Thomas. I move on.
Not long after 4:30, Genevieve joins the Family Day festivities. The guys all cheer and whistle as she approaches. I half expect her to play-choke me like she did before we had sex last night, except for real. But as we hug she whispers, “I told my friends too.” Then she punches me. When my friends begin asking probing questions about how good I was, she and I ditch them for an unoccupied bench.
“How you doing?” I ask.
“Pretty happy, I guess.”
I stare at her bare neck until my eyes fall a bit. Normally I’m better at not staring at her cleavage whenever she wears these baggy-cut shirts, but my post-sex hormones are at a high. I’m weak to it all. She raises my chin until our eyes reconnect. “I’ve created a monster, haven’t I?”
“I swear I like you as a person too.”
She’s not smiling, though. “I’m going to miss you, Aaron,” she says.
She grabs my hand. I’m so fucking confused.
Then I see it in her face. It feels like someone has knocked the air out of me. She’s breaking up with me. She only wanted me for sex. Maybe the sex was bad. I was bad at sex because we rushed this. Maybe we should’ve never had sex, ever. It would be a hard life but an even harder life is one without Genevieve who never gives me shit whenever I run out of things to say at the end of a long day.
“What did I do?” I ask.
She places a hand on my cheek, a pity palm. “I enrolled to the art camp, dumb-idiot. I was a really late admission obviously, but I called and someone dropped out. But I don’t leave until after my birthday, so this doesn’t ruin whatever big plans you have.”
Yeah, I am indeed the biggest dumb-idiot this world has ever seen. But I’m also the luckiest dumb-idiot, because I have a girlfriend who gives so many flying fucks about her future. And she’s definitely not leaving because the sex was so-so.
Probably not.
“I think I’ll miss you too,” I say back, and it sounds really cool, like when Han Solo told Princess Leia “I know” after she said she loved him.
The pity palm clenches into a fist and punches my shoulder. If I told her I didn’t have any plans for her birthday yet, she’d probably punch me in the face. Whatever I decide on can’t be too expensive because I have to give my mom some rent money before the month is up. “You probably want to spend your birthday at the park waiting for stars to come out, don’t you?”
“That sounds pretty perfect, actually, yeah.”
“Nah. Too boring. Let’s go to NASA and try to fool around in a zero-gravity room.”
“Sounds impossible and messy.”
“I think it sounds outrageously fun.”
“You’re not winning this, Aaron.” She gets up, smiling, and walks away.
I chase after her. “I’m sure they have stars at NASA somewhere . . .”
The Great Argument of NASA vs. Park ended when Genevieve threw a “because I say so” my way. So, you know, it was never going to happen but it still sucks.
It’s darker out now, maybe after 8:00. Colorful ribbons surround us from our water-balloon fight as fireflies flicker gold around the barbecue grill we’re using to roast marshmallows. Genevieve has never had a roasted marshmallow before so I capture the moment on my phone’s shitty camera. Her face sours, and she gives me a thumbs-down. “Too burnt,” she mumbles, spitting it out.