Meet Cute

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  “I didn’t read it,” Sean says. “Just so you know.”

  “You could’ve simply brought this to me at the diner, you know. Without the”—you wave your hand—“dramatic atmosphere.”

  “The bank owns the house now. They change the locks tomorrow. Since I found it when I was going through here one last time—it seemed right that you get to do the same.”

  He rubs the heel of his hand across his forehead. “Plus, that was a pretty ferocious warning—‘No exceptions’ and all that. For all I knew there was a curse on the thing, like the one on King Tut’s tomb.”

  You’re flicking through the pages now, looking at your messy eighth-grade writing. Sean shoves his hands in his pockets, walks over to the window, giving you space for whatever deep dark secrets or spells he imagines you have in here.

  “I think you’re overestimating the powers of a thirteen-year-old girl,” you say.

  “Hey, I’ve been a thirteen-year-old guy. Probably not.”

  “You didn’t read it?”

  “Nope.”

  “You weren’t curious?”

  “Hell, of course I was. Am.”

  You flip through the pages, settle on one, read aloud, overdoing the ominous voice. “‘Date: January nineteenth. Place: School Cafeteria. Lost: Jake Arruda was next to me in the lunch line. He asked if I could pass the ketchup. I passed it. I didn’t say a word. I’ve been trying to talk to him for four months. I could have told him how amazing his time was at the track meet last week. I could have asked him how his little sister was, because I know she had that eye operation. I could have told him I liked ketchup on grilled cheese too, even though that’s actually disgusting. But I choked and I lost that chance. Resolution: Next time: SAY SOMETHING!!! ANYTHING!!!’”

  You turn a few pages forward. “‘Date: May second. Place: home. Lost: Mom asked me if I wanted to visit Gran at the hospital. I’ve been there every single day and her roommate freaks me out and it smells weird. But today when I didn’t come, Mom says she cried for almost the whole time Mom was there. Resolution: Next time: DON’T BE SELFISH.’

  “‘Date: June through August. Lost: Dad signed me up for sailing at the Pettipaug Yacht club. I would literally rather spend the summer in a gulag. Result: The gulag would have been more fun. Resolution: Next time: HUNGER STRIKE.’”

  You flip your hair back from your face. “Get the idea?”

  “It’s the book of lost opportunities,” Sean says.

  You nod. “I thought it would help me remember to do stuff differently—if I got the chance.”

  He’s shaking his head, smiling a little.

  “What?”

  “Did it work?”

  “It turns out Jake Arruda is an asshat. Or was. I haven’t seen him since I was fourteen. Maybe he’s made his own resolutions.”

  “He’s on my basketball team. And no, once and always, I’m guessing.”

  You shut the pages of the book. “Thank you.”

  “Not as important as I thought it might be, I guess,” Sean says. “This is, though,” you say. “Getting to see this place one last time.”

  “Eh. I should have gone with mini golf.”

  You set the book down on the floor, walk up to him. His eyes widen but he doesn’t move. So you do, closer. He smells like soot, soap, salt air . . . a little bit of sweat. All this was not easy for him.

  “Resolution,” you say as he leans just a touch closer, looks down at your lips, then up at your eyes.

  “Mmm?”

  “Do this,” you say and put your lips to his as he wraps his arms tight around your waist.

  As first kisses go, it probably isn’t the best one ever. His forehead bumps into yours. It takes a little while to find the right angle. You breathe in the soot, your eyes water, and you lose a contact lens. You’re both nervous, and you hardly know each other, after all.

  But you will.

  — — — —

  Before you and Sean leave the house for the last time, you take pictures with your phone. Of the view out your bedroom window—the sun comes full out and the bay sparkles exactly the way you remember. You take one standing on the widow’s walk. One from the porch steps where your dad used to sit and read to you while you lay in the grass, half listening and half daydreaming. You take the Book of Lost Things with you, sure, if only to remember you were once idiotic enough to think that a summer of sailing camp was worse than logging time in a gulag. You take with you the sound of the waves slapping against the breakwater. The memory of sitting on the stone wall, stripping the husks off sweet corn and tossing them into the water, hoping to see that green flash that your mom swears happens when the last of the sun sinks down.

  You take with you the memory of how the house smelled when you woke up in the morning—coffee, the gasoline pungency in the air as motorboats headed out—usually combined with the faint—or not so faint—tang of dead fish and seaweed that your dog, Charcoal, rolled in before bounding, licky and loving, onto your bed. You’ll remember how your grandmother told you the story of all the furniture and art she and your grandfather bought for this house—for you and your children and their children . . . how they’d thought it would be there forever.

  But you know now that any object you can carry out of the house could get lost or broken, sold or stolen.

  What you get to keep is the friendship—and someday more—of that boy whose life unexpectedly collided with yours, who made it a resolution to right a wrong, whatever way he could.

  — — — —

  The next day Sean strides into the diner all alone and orders vanilla ice cream with hot fudge sauce.

  You adjust your crooked name tag, smooth your sweaty hands down your apron, flip back your hair, lift an eyebrow. “What, no iced tea?”

  “Resolution,” he says, leaning forward with his elbows square on the table, fist cupping his chin, as though he’s fighting everything that might keep you apart, “take chances.”

  “You mean like driving a stick shift when you have no clue how?”

  “Among others.”

  “Deal,” you say.

  — — — —

  Resolution: Just don’t be so afraid.

  You will take chances.

  You will find your way.

  You will lose opportunities. You will find luck.

  You will lose your heart.

  He will give you his.

  That? You get to keep.

  The Department Of Dead Love

  — — — — — —

  NICOLA YOON

  THE DEPARTMENT OF Dead Love looks nothing at all like I expected. For instance, Cupid is not hanging by his entrails out front, bow and quiver lying cracked in a pool of viscous, semisweet pink fluids. The building is not a drab and windowless gray monstrosity designed to cow you into submission the moment you enter it like so many government buildings are. The DODL is not even just one building. It’s a campus of them, and they are quite beautiful, actually. The committee of architects who designed the campus believed that aesthetic beauty could stave off despair.

  They were wrong.

  Nevertheless, the buildings are exquisite. Unrequited Love is the color of lavender tea steeped a little too long and shaped like a cresting wave. Breakups is an orange starburst of a building, like a firecracker just exploding. Bereavement is the most sedate of the buildings—a periwinkle blue lily at dusk.

  Most people agree that Young Love is the prettiest of all the buildings. It’s the tentative green of a new leaf and shaped like a single blade of grass. Separated from the main campus by a wide blue lake and a wooden suspension bridge, it’s only intended for anyone eighteen or younger. Before the building was commissioned there was a great debate about whether young people should be excluded from the general populace. After all, they too experienced unrequited love. They agonized through unexplained breakups. They suffered the debilitating loss of death. In the end, it was decided that the intense nature of young love
warranted a building all its own.

  The DODL’s beauty is not limited to the buildings. It extends to the employees. HeartWorkers, as they’re called, must have excellent Empathy Exam scores and complete a long apprenticeship before they’re allowed to tend to the brokenhearted public. City workers though they may be, they are an attractive, generous, and joyous people, always ready with a smile and a hug and a “Time Heals.”

  That’s the department’s motto, by the way. Time Heals. It’s inscribed on the facade of each building. It’s stamped on all the stationery. It’s inscribed in cursive on small golden plaques in each stall of every bathroom on every floor. I would know, as I’ve been in them all.

  By now you’re asking yourself, What brings this young man here to Young Love? More specifically, what brings him to the Office of Emotional Recovery located on the very highest floor? Even more specifically still, what brings him to the cubicle of Gabrielle Lee at the Relationship Autopsy desk?

  It was a breakup.

  An abrupt one.

  An unexplainable one.

  When relationships end, a negligible percentage of them get to have a Do Over. No one knows what the rules for getting one are, but if you are granted one, you get to have your memories reset and do your relationship over.

  So. That’s why I’m here. I’d very much like to do my relationship over.

  — — — —

  “I don’t understand. Everything was perfect when she ended it,” I say as soon as I enter the cubicle. It’s what I’ve said to every HeartWorker who’s interviewed me so far. It takes a very long time to get referred to Relationship Autopsy. You have to make it past the Other Fish in the Sea; It’s Not You, It’s Him/Her; and Did You Really Love Him/Her Anyway? desks. The counselors there are excellent at helping you cope, recover, and move on so that you don’t end up here.

  But I don’t want to cope or recover or move on. I want to understand. And then I want another chance.

  The HeartWorker in the cubicle—Apprentice Gabrielle Lee, according to the nameplate—puts down the tablet she’s holding and looks up at me. I’m surprised by how young she is. I’d guess she’s around my age, seventeen or maybe eighteen. All the HeartWorkers I’ve met so far in Emotional Recovery are considerably older. Then I remember that she’s an apprentice—the sole apprentice ever to have a position in Relationship Autopsy. Her Empathy Exam scores must have been perfect.

  “Please have a seat,” she says. Her face is a polite blank, no everything-is-going-to-be-all-right smile here. I’d heard that Autopsy workers weren’t quite as cheerful, not quite as indulgent as others. Less ready with a smile and a platitude. I can understand that. It’s a tough line of work, sorting through the detritus of dead relationships all day, trying to find the reason for their demise.

  I sit. Unlike all the other chairs in all the other DODL offices, this chair is straight-backed and hard and uncomfortable. This is not a place to get comfortable in.

  She picks up the tablet she’d been reading when I walked in and begins: “It says here that Miss Samantha Fuentes broke up with you ten months ago. Is that correct, Mr. Marks?”

  “You can call me Thomas.”

  She just waits for me to respond.

  “That’s correct,” I mumble, looking down at my hands. Even now, after all this time, thinking about the night we broke up makes my stomach lurch.

  “And you were together for five months, four days, and twenty-one hours. Is that also correct?”

  Did I imagine the arch tone in her voice? I look up and meet her eyes. They’re clear brown and almost too big for her small face. I can’t read any emotion in them.

  “Yes,” I say. “That’s correct.”

  “So at this point you’ve been broken up for more than twice the length of the relationship.”

  Was that a question? I’m fairly certain HeartWorkers aren’t supposed to judge you. It’s in the Charter. Of course things might be different for Autopsy workers. No one knows much about them.

  Nevertheless, I’m definitely feeling a little judged. I take a closer look at her. Her skin is pale brown, almost the same shade as mine, but with pinkish undertones. Her hair is short, with soft curls that frame her face. She reminds me of something out of a fairy tale—a pixie or a woodland sprite.

  If I noticed pretty girls anymore, I think I might think she was pretty.

  I scan her desk hoping to find something personal so I can get a handle on her personality, but there’s nothing, not even a bowl of you’ll-feel-better-soon-but-for-now-bury-your-feelings-with-candy candy. Apprentice Lee is not trying to convince me that everything is going to be okay. Maybe she realizes that if you’ve gotten to the Relationship Autopsy offices, you already know that. There’s something kind about that honesty.

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s been over for more time than we were together and I’m still not over it. I don’t think I’ll ever be over it.”

  Her face softens, wide eyes meeting mine. I almost expect her to say Time heals, and I’m glad when she doesn’t.

  It’s not that I need to convince her to perform my Autopsy. She’s going to do it anyway. But I want her to understand why I need to be here. That way maybe she’ll agree to grant the Do Over when the time comes.

  “Have you ever been on a roller coaster, Apprentice Lee?”

  She nods.

  “You know when you get to the top of the first drop, how the car pauses there for a few seconds to build up anticipation and then it starts to plunge and you get that sick, terrified, hollow feeling in your stomach? I mean, in your mind you might not actually be scared, but your body doesn’t care about that. It only knows there’s been some mistake and it’s falling. That’s how I feel all the time now. I need it to stop. I need to know what happened.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, but presses her hand flat against her chest like she’s trying to keep something in. “Thomas,” she says, “you can call me Gabby. Come back tomorrow and we’ll get started.”

  — — — —

  I’ve loved Samantha Fuentes my whole life. Well, almost my whole life. My mom says she saw the whole thing happen. I was six. We’d just moved to Sapphire City from the Plains. I’d been moping around the new house for a few days, so she took me to our neighborhood playground and insisted that I introduce myself.

  “Make some new friends, for heaven’s sake,” she said.

  Every playground has rulers, and the king and queen of this one took one look at me and decided I was not a good subject. Maybe it was obvious that I wasn’t from the big city. Whatever it was, no one would talk to me, let alone play with me. For the next week, every time I went to the playground, all the other kids ignored me. On the eighth day, Samantha broke ranks and sat next to me on the swing.

  My mom says I gave my heart to Sam in that moment and that she’s been holding on to it ever since.

  I tell this—our supercouple origin story—to Gabby pretty much as soon as I sit down in her cubicle the next day.

  She leans forward in her chair, rests her face in her chin, and listens closely.

  “Did you tell her how you felt?”

  “No, I was six. I didn’t know how I felt. I just knew I wanted to be her best friend. And we were.”

  “When did you realize you wanted to be more than friends?”

  “Puberty.”

  “Did you tell her then?”

  I laugh. “No way. Are you kidding?”

  She frowns and a small dimple forms just between her eyebrows. “I’m not kidding,” she says, confused.

  “Well, probably you were a good-looking and well-adjusted thirteen-year-old, but I was not. Pimples the size of mountains. Braces. Oh, and I was awkward. Not just a little bit awkward. A lot bit awkward.”

  She smiles wide and it transforms her face from pretty to slightly goofy. For a second, I forget she’s a HeartWorker.

  “But Samantha was thirteen, too, right? Wasn’t she awkward?”

  “N
ope. She’s always been perfect.”

  The look on her face says I’m hopeless. “So you suffered from unrequited love for a while?”

  “Yup.”

  She picks up her tablet and swipes for a few seconds. “I don’t see a record of you visiting UnReq about it.”

  “No. I thought it was only a matter of time until she would love me back. I mean, we were so perfect together. And my pimples couldn’t last forever.”

  “Pimples aren’t a character flaw,” she says.

  I study her perfectly clear face. “Says someone who never had them.”

  “That’s not true.” She says it gently, but I can feel a pained history behind the words. Kids can be cruel to each other. To themselves.

  She clears her throat and looks back down at her tablet. “Tell me about your friendship.” Her voice is more official than it was a moment ago.

  I tell her how we went to elementary and middle and high school together. We had long conversations about nothing. We agreed on books and movies and games and people. So many of our conversations started with “Do you remember that time . . . ?”

  I love having all that history with someone. I remember her first middle school crush. I remember that red-and-blue-and-yellow-striped skirt that she loved so much that the elastic waist wore out.

  We were inseparable until high school and high school boys. Sure, I was a high school boy, too, but somehow I didn’t count. And she had crappy taste. The guys weren’t mean. But they definitely liked themselves more than they liked her. They never noticed how she stuck her tongue in the gap in her front teeth when she was thinking. Or how she kind of walked like a duck when she was tired. Or how she scratched at her palm when she was uncomfortable and wanted to be anywhere but where she was. I was the one she complained to about them. It drove me crazy.

  I look up at Gabby. “Why did she date those guys?” I ask. “How come she doesn’t know she deserved better?”