Don’t Be in Love

17

Don’t Ask About His Relationship Status — Adelaide

November was only a week away. Which meant that I had to switch out my red gingham duvet for a heavier cotton blend. A fun seasonal change.

November, unfortunately, also meant one month until final exams and the semester-long projects were due.

Right when I needed time to slow down so I could catch my breath, it was running away and dragging me with it. It was even changing the view outside my window to a late, wet October filled with vibrant orange leaves, dark concrete sidewalks, and a commitment to slip its cool air through the seams of my window.

Lately, time had trotted away just as quickly as when I was with Dorian. After visiting the art studio, the silent space that usually passed between us during tutoring sessions had dwindled.

We discussed weekend plans, late-night thoughts, childhood memories, and embarrassments, like the time he and James went on their first annual Italy Christmas trip where Dorian ended up with his first tattoo. Neither of them knew any Italian, but that didn’t stop him.

“I thought I could understand enough,” he had said. “But one thing led to another, and I ended up in a tattoo shop, telling the artist he could tattoo whatever he’d like. I swore up and down to James that I knew what the artist was saying. But an hour later, I had a tomato tattooed on my upper thigh.”

I laughed at both the story and his pronunciation of toe-mah-toe .

For a split second, I almost asked him to show me. But the logical half of my brain kicked in before he could unzip his pants to show me his upper thigh.

“Non parli Italiano?” I asked with surprise. Wasn’t there some requirement for all rich kids to grow up knowing every European language?

His eyes had lit up. “Parlo dieci lingue. Italian just happened to be the last.” My heart lurched. I pushed my hand against my chest as if I could calm the beat. “How do you know Italian?”

Then my heart stilled. Like a hummingbird trapped behind a window.

Two words I avoided for over a decade: my dad.

But his face was so calm, and he was so close. His hand splayed out on the desk like he was reaching for me. That pocket of energy in my chest surged again. Suddenly, the words were out. I was an open book, and my pages were losing ink.

“My dad loved to listen to Italian music whenever he was home. It was on so much that I had memorized the lyrics but had no clue what they meant. When he got home from job sites, he’d go over the words with me, until one day, I could translate everything in the Italian dictionary back to English,” I shared.

I didn’t say where he was now. Or how he’d stolen the life my mother imagined. Or how he made her someone I despised and uprooted my life.

There was something cruel about your parents deciding to bring you into the world, and just choosing not to be with you in it.

It was easier to talk about it as if I was telling a story, rather than recalling my life. Like how Dad would cut my peanut butter jelly sandwiches into star shapes. Or how he’d sing to Mom in Italian when she cooked his favorite panko-crusted chicken, picking me up to dance in the kitchen.

I had stopped there. Dorian didn’t push.

He opened his phone and showed me pictures of paintings he was working on.

They were beautiful. Delicate. A series of watercolor and oil paintings. Corners of living rooms. Windowsill flower boxes. Men drinking coffee at the cornerstone cafes. Hands pulling books off of shelves.

“These are beautiful, Dorian,” I said, imagining what they looked like in person if they were already this beautiful through a screen. “You should sell these. They should be in people’s homes.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“I would cover my entire room in them,” I gushed.

“You would?”

“ Of course . I could even help you promote it. Reach out to galleries about their newsletters. Organize a branded website with the paintings.”

He absorbed the offer before moving on.

One of the paintings was for his older sister Jasmine and her pottery studio in the South of France. Despite her living abroad, they spoke every week. Much of their conversations revolved around their mother’s dating schemes and finding ways to irk one another.

“She knows all about you,” he mentioned. It wasn’t phrased in a romantic way. But my stomach still dipped the way a golf ball went over a hump in a mini golf course.

On the walk back home from the bookstore last night, I jumped over puddles. He held the umbrella above our heads with his left hand. I clutched onto his right, reluctantly, in order to avoid falling a second time.

“What will you be subjecting me to next? I tried painting, I have a T-shirt with a flag plastered across it,” I listed them off.

My patent leather flats smacked against the pavement as I hopped. His rings dug into my fingers as I squeezed tight, careful not to fall, but let go immediately once my feet were back on the ground.

“I’m thinking the postcard one,” he responded, his eyes snagging on one of the many postcard carousels we passed. All the tourist shops sold the same ones. Cheesy variations of the British flag with oversaturated images of the monuments. One of them was pinned to the cork board above my desk.

“I’ll have to find one with a pastry on it for Marty. He’d love that,” I thought aloud.

“I was actually thinking you could send it to your aunt,” he responded.

“I see what you’re doing, and I appreciate it, but no. My aunt and I don’t have that type of relationship.”

“But maybe you could.”

Before I left for class this morning, there was a blank postcard in my mailbox with a sticky note.

I’ll bring you a stamp when you’re ready .

Twelve hours later, there was a collection of pen dots in the top left corner of the postcard. It looked as if I forgot how to spell. Or how to use a pen.

I picked up the pile of clothes from my chair and moved them to the end of my bed. His shirt with the British flag was in there. Even covered, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The legs of the chair squeaked in debate as I sat.

“I don’t want to do this either,” I grumbled.

The postcard resting on my desk was giving me a headache like an unopened Pandora’s box. I had zero desire to touch it though; its existence made my head throb. I’d rather dangle from Big Ben’s clock than dip a toe in the past via a postcard.

There wasn’t a word in the English language that I could start with that sounded right. “Dear Auntie Laila” was too formal. Especially for an aunt who was in her twenties the last time I saw her. I also hadn’t called her “Auntie” in ten years. It was difficult to call your aunt anything when she stopped acting like a relative the moment her older brother decided to move on from his family.

Unfortunately for her, she was my only other relative in the area. Twenty-five years old and trapped caring for her fifteen-year-old niece.

Another ink dot appeared.

What were you supposed to say to someone who despised you for upending their life with your presence, but was the only family you had left?

I had no clue.

The drawer screeched as I opened it wide and dropped the blank postcard in, shutting it hard enough to hear it hit the back of the desk: a place I wouldn’t have to think about it.

“Jameson,” I bowed my head from across the hall.

“Adelaideson.” James mimicked my manner, pretending to tip his imaginary cap.

“We’re starting to scare the first years,” he commented, motioning to a few girls giving us odd looks.

Correction: they were giving me the odd looks. He received daydreaming glances and arm-grabbing attention.

“I think it has more to do with you being part of the we in that statement than anything else,” I explained.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” His dark brows furrowed.

“It means that you’re watched.” Thick coat sleeves swiped my arms as we navigated the hallway.

He shook his head. “Maybe when I’m with Dorian, but other than that, I’m quite left alone.”

“James, my friend, you forget yourself,” I sighed.

“Oh please, tell me, friend ,” he laughed.

“You may not be forward and proud like Dorian—”

“Are you calling me shy and insecure?”

“I haven’t finished! Forward, extroverted people usually take the limelight, but that doesn’t mean no one is paying attention to you. You’re the heir of a very iconic fashion house. And you’re well-dressed, polite, and handsome.”

He was handsome. The autumn sun coming in through the tall corridor windows bounced off the angles of his cheeks. A blush painted his pale jaw. It made his skin and platinum hair pop. Like a glittery red heart on a white envelope.

“What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t be surprised that people pay so much attention to you. Dorian isn’t the only one everyone’s looking at.”

He skipped over the parts about himself and went straight to Dorian. “You underestimate him. He may seem like that, but he’s not.”

Dorian almost never came up in our conversations. It was as if we had an unspoken agreement to never bring him up, especially in public. But the more I saw him, the more my initial ideas of him were scratched out and replaced with question marks.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I asked.

“Why would I mind?”

“Because it involves your friend’s personal life.” I smiled innocently.

“Alright, let’s hear it. I’m intrigued.”

“What is going on with Victoria?” I asked.

“Victoria Sutton?” he guessed.

“Are there other Victorias?” My face was hot.

He shook his head. “No other Victorias. What do you want to know?”

“Are they together?”

He pressed his lips together in a line. “It’s complicated.”

“Oh my gosh, you two are the same. Do you plan your answers?” Dorian said the same thing by the pond.

“I’m being honest! Victoria is a complicated woman in general, let alone in terms of their relationship.”

“So they are together?”

“No, they’re not. She’s just very … persuasive.”

“Are you telling me that she seduces him into being with her?”

He pressed his fingers into his brows. “I’m trying to say this without completely embarrassing my mate and putting words in his mouth.” There was a pause, and then he continued. “Dorian met her when we were seventeen. She was the first person he truly dated. I could see it on his face when he fell in love with her. And when he loves something, it consumes him. She consumed him. Dragged him to every celebrity event, pulled him into every picture, said his name to whomever in order to benefit from it. She used him, and it took a while for him to realize that. But every few months, she manages to pull him back in.”

My first reaction was to swallow the irritation crawling up my throat like a thorned vine piercing every muscle it passed. The idea that someone had been dragging him along for five years made me sick. It created an anxious patter that made it difficult to breathe and I didn’t know if it was because I was beginning to care for him or because … I didn’t know.

My second reaction was logical. He was a guy. A support of The Chase. That constant want . Victoria may have used him originally, but now it sounded like he was using her for the benefits of a relationship without the relationship.

“Speak of the devil,” James muttered.

It was like we summoned her.

Long blond hair swished back and forth as Victoria Sutton turned down the hall in a tweed skirt. She looked just like her Wikipedia page. The quintessential model. Tall, thin, high cheekbones, full lips, perfect posture. Someone who greeted you with two air kisses on the cheek and had hair from a shampoo commercial.

It took only one second. One second that Victoria spent giving James a smug smile, and me, an odd look. One I couldn’t piece together. One I couldn’t spend long enough dissecting.

Her floral perfume hit me before she was facing her phone again, turning down the hall.

“She knows you hate her, doesn’t she?” I asked.

“One hundred percent.”

I turned to him. “You can’t actually put up with this.”

“There’s not much I can do. Dorian loves her.”