THREE IMAGINARY CONVERSATION WITH YOU

Heather Demetrios

1

I'm breaking up with you today.

After two years, four months, three weeks, five days, and eight hours of being Gavin Davis's Girlfriend I am breaking up with you.

You won't see it coming. Your little high school girlfriend who never says no to you, the one who blows off her friends for your college keggers, the one who just sits there when you tell her she's a drag and that dating a girl in high school fucking sucks — that girl is Breaking Up With You.

I'm breaking up with you even though Christmas is next week and I already bought you a present it's too late to return.

I'm breaking up with you even though the thought of breaking up with you hurts.

This is how it will go down:

First we'll go to The Nutcracker because your mom bought us tickets as a Christmas present and I'll decide it'd be shitty not to go because she'll feel like I'm rejecting her and I only want to reject you. This will be a terrible decision, but I'll make it anyway because when we end, your parents — who see me as a daughter who's going to be in their family forever — will be collateral damage. I want them to hurt as little as possible. Obviously what I plan to do after the show is even more shitty, but at least your mom won't feel like she wasted the money. I just know that if I don't do this before Christmas, I never will. Because if I wait, you'll get me a sweet gift like you did last year (Who buys a first edition of a girl's favorite childhood book? You.) — and I won't be able to go through with it.

I have to do this.

I've pictured it a thousand times, a thousand different ways. This is one of them.

When you come to pick me up, I'll wonder if I should wait just a few more days because of how your eyes light up when you see me in my dress. I'll think about how in a few hours those eyes are going to be red-rimmed and pleading. (Note to self: wear something terrible.) And, of course, you'll be crazy hot, wearing a tie or something and the thought of you dressing up for another girl after we break up will make me insanely jealous, which is so stupid, but I won't be able to help it. Then I'll start psychoanalyzing what that means, like, if I feel jealous, then doesn't that prove that, deep down, I want to stay together? Meanwhile, I'll feel even more uncertain as I watch you play with my little brother, who you genuinely adore and constantly compare to the kid in Jerry Maguire. You'll call him little dude, which he loves. I'll see Sam kiss you on the cheek before we leave for the theater and you'll kiss him right back and it'll be the sweetest goddamn thing I've ever seen. Fuck