I look up. “Ex? Like an e followed by an x?”
“Short for Xavier. Everyone calls me X.”
“So that’s an X tattooed on your arm? Aren’t you supposed to tattoo someone else’s name?”
He lifts his arm and frowns at his own biceps. “That’s not me. I’m in a band. X Machine.”
“Oh. So the band is named after you?” I don’t know why I’m giving him such a hard time. Maybe for the sake of this Jess girl.
He frowns some more and looks a little lost. “It’s just a cool name,” he says.
I finish adjusting my seat and flip up the kickstand. “Well, nice meeting—”
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Yvette,” I say. I don’t know why I don’t say Evie.
“Thanks for letting me borrow your bike, Yvette,” he says, and gives me a grin so spectacular it makes me (temporarily) stupid.
Technically, it’s not a perfect smile. He has a small gap between his front teeth, and the right side of his face scrunches a little too much. Still, I have no doubt it’s a grin that works wonders for him. It gets him A grades on B papers, into sold-out concerts and the phone numbers of heads of state. When the time comes, it’ll get him into heaven, even though he should clearly be headed in the other direction.
It’s a grin that works well for him. I know because it’s working well on me.
I force my brain cells to stop abdicating their duties and remind myself that he’s not my type.
Mainly because I don’t have a type. Not anymore.
And even back when I did have a type, it was never anyone so…obvious. Tall, hipster-hot and in a band? I mean, he’s the definition of a heartbreaker, right? Literally, he was just breaking someone’s heart. It doesn’t matter that he seemed genuinely pained while he was doing it.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m leaving now.”
He raises a single eyebrow and I almost laugh. For a second, I feel like I’m a character in one of my old romance books. Raising a single eyebrow is such a Classic Romance Guy Characteristic.
I grab my bike and head out and tell myself I’m not in a romance novel.
CHAPTER 10
Classic Romance Guy Characteristics: A Nonexhaustive List
Aforementioned uncanny ability to raise a single eyebrow.
Propensity to smirk. Or to smile lopsided, self-deprecating smiles.
Inability to choose appropriately sized clothing. T-shirts are often too tight and stretch distractingly across (well-muscled) chests and toned biceps.
Unusual eyes. Typically one color flecked with another color. E.g.: “His eyes are green flecked with gold.”
CHAPTER 11
The Formula for Heartbreak
IT TURNS OUT that people kiss all the time.
All. The. Time.
It happens again later that same day. I’m in the baking aisle at the grocery, picking up the (real, Tahitian) vanilla beans Mom wants. There’s a man musing on the difference between baking powder and baking soda. A woman—his girlfriend—tells him it’s cute how much he doesn’t know. She leans in and kisses him. The entire history of their relationship plays out in front of me, just like it did with Danica and Ben, and Shelley and Sheldon.
They met through a dating app and had their first date at a coffee shop. The first time he said I love you was over text, with red heart emojis. She called him right away and told him she loved him too. They went ring shopping together. He proposed to her at the same coffee shop where they had their first date.
Sometime soon, he’s going to get a job offer for someplace in South America. He’s going to tell her he wants to break up and take the job and go on an adventure. She’s going to tell him that’s what marriage is. He’s going to tell her that marriage may be an adventure, but it’s not one he wants to take, not yet and not with her.
The rest of the week goes by in the same way. I have at least one vision every day. I’m amazed at all the different ways people connect.
There’s the girl who watches the same movie three times in a row so she can keep flirting with the usher between showings.
And the boy who pretends not to know the rules of football so the other boy will explain it to him.
I figure out some of the rules for the visions. They only appear the first time I see a couple kiss. I know because I accidentally caught another Shelley/Sheldon kiss and nothing happened. I also think the couple might need to be in love. I’ve seen two first-date kisses and didn’t have a vision for either one. The number of scenes in each vision varies by couple. I think I’m only seeing the most important moments in their love story. I don’t know what or who decides which moments are most important.
I spend a lot of time searching the internet. One of the great and also terrible things about the internet is you can always find a community of people interested in the same things you are. Great because some interests are pretty wonderful. Romance novel reading, for example. Terrible because some interests are awful. I’m not going to give any examples. No matter how long I search, I don’t find any support groups for people who are suddenly able to see other people’s romantic futures.
Another week passes, and the visions accumulate and wash over me. I’m not sure how to feel. Mostly I feel every emotion. Shock that this impossible thing is happening to me. Guilt at invading people’s privacy. Fascination at seeing their private lives. Sadness at seeing their relationships end.
And that’s the thing all the relationships have in common.
They all end.
The girl who saw the movie three times? She got bored with her boyfriend after a few weeks and started going to a different theater.
The boy who pretended not to understand football? His homophobic family moved him away to prevent him from being with the boy he loved.
What I’ve learned over the last three weeks is that all my old romance novels ended too quickly. Chapters were missing from the end. If they told the real story—the entire story—each couple would’ve eventually broken up, due to neglect or boredom or betrayal or distance or death.
Given enough time, all love stories turn into heartbreak stories.
Heartbreak = love + time.
CHAPTER 12