“To really sell it,” Alex says, “we’d have to pretend in front of more than just Ethan and Jen, though, and more often than when we saw them.”
“Your family?” I ask.
He nods. “And friends. Everyone, honestly. Pittsburgh might be a midsize city, but it is a surprisingly small world. Someone’s always connected to someone else, and that someone else has some connection to you.”
“I’ve noticed that,” I tell him. “Not so much for me, since I’m newer here, but for people who are established here. I think it’s kind of lovely.”
“Yeah, well,” he grumbles, “trust me, after a while, it starts to feel suffocating.” After a beat he says, “Maybe they won’t last, though. So we wouldn’t have to lie for long.”
Alex makes a good point. To really hold the upper hand on our exes, we’d have to keep up the romantic ruse for as long—no,longer—than Ethan and Jen. Maybe their relationship is a fling that’ll fizzle in a week, like Alex said. But what if it lasted? We’d have to keep pretending we were romantic, too. My stomach sinks at the thought of that possibility, the two of us trapped in a lie told on Ethan and Jen’s timeline, caught in playing out a future that isn’t ours, not only because it’s untrue but because it’s still inextricably constrained by our past.
I want my petty vengeance on my ex. But I want to be free of him even more.
“I’ll admit,” I say to Alex, “that I don’t have much figured out about what I want down the road. But I do know I don’t want it to be dictated by my ex.”
Alex grunts in agreement as he leans back and unearths the lighter from his pocket.
“And,” I add, “I don’t see any scenario in which acting romantic to get back at Ethan and Jen doesn’t do just that. Plus, neither of us wants arealrelationship right now. Why pretend something we don’t want? I think it’ll just make us—”
“Miserable?” Alex flicks his lighter, and its flame dances to life.
“Exactly.”
“Then that’s that,” he says, watching the flame fade as his thumb lifts, then with another flick of his thumb, reappear. “Whether we’re in front of them or not, no pretending, no performing, just being ourselves, two… friends.” Alex peers my way, his eyes holding mine.
It feels like that lighter’s flame is suddenly right beneath my ribs, sparking, warming. A glimmer of light in a part of me that’s felt so utterly dark.
Slowly, I reach for his cigarette that’s gone out, take it from him, and bring it to my lips. Alex leans in and lights it for me. I’ve smoked weed and cigars—I know how to inhale and how not to. I do the latter and blow out. “Thanks, friend.”
He stares at me for a beat, then carefully plucks the cigarette from my fingers, smiling softly. I smile, too.
Holding my eyes, Alex brings the cigarette to his mouth. “Ugh.” He looks accusingly from the cigarette to me. “You lipped it. Where do you even get this much spit from?”
“I have robust salivary glands. And it’s the least that cigarette deserved.” I rub my tongue around my mouth, frowning indisgust. “Blech. That tasted like the burned edge of a gas station hot dog wrapped in mildewed mint leaves.”
He snorts. “Mildewed mint leaves.” Alex wipes the cigarette’s filter dry with his thumb, then brings it to his mouth and draws in one last lungful before he shoves it into the planter beside him. “They’re foul,” he admits, grinding it hard against the dirt. “Butnothingis as foul as a gas station hot dog.”
“Gas station hot dogs,” I argue, “have a time and place.”
“And it’s called rock bottom.”
“Exactly.”
“Same as cigarettes,” he says. I watch him squeeze the dregs of tobacco from the filter, brown crinkled slivers flitting into the wind. “And before you judge me,” he adds, “formyrock-bottom vice causing cancer, I’ll have you know research has proven gas station hot dogs are carcinogenic, too.”
I bite my lip guiltily. “I had one earlier today,” I tell him, “a gas station hot dog.”
He gives me a deeply disappointed look. “Ted.”
“No judgment!” I remind him.
Alex is silent for a moment, before he nods. “No judgment but… no more.” He tips his head toward the planter and his smoked-to-the-filter cigarette. “Of either of them. Sound like a deal?”
I stare at the ghost of his vice as the wind sends it rolling around the planter. My stomach rumbles, the ghost of my own poor choice making known its imminent plans to haunt me.
I meet his eyes and tell him, “Deal.”
CHAPTER 4NOW