Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood

            Of course not, I almost blurt out. I’m not some horror movie not-quite-final girl who follows the death this way sign only to be flabbergasted when an ax murderer chops off her leg. I’m usually a responsible, levelheaded person—usually being the key word, because right now I’m kind of tempted to run into the loving, ax-wielding bosom of a serial killer. Rationally I know that Erik is right: we won’t be stuck in here for long, and someone is bound to come get us. But then I remember how betrayed and disappointed I felt in the days after he did what he did. I remember crying on the phone with Mara. Crying on the phone with Hannah. Crying on the phone with Mara and Hannah.

            Being here with him seems just as reckless as anything else, honestly. Which is how I find myself shrugging and saying, “Kind of, yeah.”

            I expect Erik to get angry again. To tell me that I’m being foolish. To make one of those dry jokes of his that made me laugh every time. Instead he takes me by surprise: He looks away guiltily. Then he presses his thumb and forefinger in his eyes, like he’s suddenly, overwhelmingly exhausted, and murmurs quietly, “Fuck, Sadie. I’m sorry.”





Six


            Three weeks ago

            I have a grand total of zero superstitious rituals centered around dating.

            And I promise I’m not saying this to brag. There is a simple reason I haven’t convinced myself that I need to chug down a Capri Sun or do seven jumping jacks before going out with someone, which is: I do not date. Ever. I used to, of course. Once upon a time. With Oscar, the Love of My Life.

            Like Hannah often points out, it’s a little misleading for me to refer to the guy who met another woman at a data science corporate bonding retreat and two weeks later called me in tears to tell me that he was falling for her as the Love of My Life. And I swear, I do get the irony. But Oscar and I go way back. He gave me my first kiss (with tongue) when we were sophomores in high school. He was my date to the senior prom, the first nonfamily person I went on vacation with, the one whose shoulder I bawled on when he got accepted to his dream school in the Midwest, exactly seven states away from me.

            We actually made it work pretty well during four years of long distance for college. And we did get to spend summers together, except when I was on internships, which was . . . well, yes, every summer but junior year, and I had that coding boot camp at UCSB then, so . . . yup, every summer. So maybe there were no summers together, but I did end up with a killer CV, and that was nice. Better, even.

            When we graduated college, Oscar was offered a job in Portland, and I was going to follow him and find something there, but I got into Caltech’s Ph.D. program, which was too good an opportunity to pass up. I really thought we could do five more years of long distance, because Oscar was a great guy and so, so patient and understanding—till the beginning of my third year. Till the day he FaceTimed me, crying because he’d met someone else and had no choice but to break up with me.

            I wept. I stalked his new girlfriend on Instagram. I ate my weight in Talenti gelato (salted caramel truffle, black raspberry vanilla parfait, and, on a particularly shameful night, mango sherbet melted into a pot of Midori sour; I am filled with regrets). I cut my hair short, to what my hairdresser dubbed the longest bob in the history of bobs. I couldn’t bear to be alone, so I slept in Mara’s bed for a week, because Hannah tosses around way too much and I’m pretty sure she changed the sheets twice in the five years we lived together. For about ten days I was utterly, soul-smashingly heartbroken. And then . . .

            Then I was more or less fine.

            Seriously, considering that Oscar and I had been together for almost a decade, my reaction to being one-sidedly broken up with was nothing short of miraculous. I aced all my classes and my lab work, spent the summer touring Europe by train with Mara and Hannah, and a couple of months later found myself shocked to realize that I hadn’t checked Oscar’s girlfriend’s Twitter in weeks. Huh.

            “Could it be that it wasn’t real love?” I found myself asking my friends over Midori sours (sans mango sherbet; I had regained my dignity by then).

            “I think that there are lots of kinds of love,” Hannah said. She was nestled next to me at our favorite booth at Joe’s, the grad student bar closest to our apartment. “Maybe yours with Oscar was closer to the sibling variety than to anything resembling a passionate affair between soul mates? And you’re still in touch. You know that you still love each other as friends, so your brain knows that there’s no need to mourn him.”

            “But initially I was really, really devastated.”

            “Well, I don’t want to armchair-psychologize you . . .”