Did You Get What You Deserve?

It was time to break up with Keith, so after school I asked him to come to the park with me. I figured it was better to do it on neutral ground, where either one of us could walk away. As we sat under the trees, I sighed, feeling sorry that this had to happen. His arms were draped around my neck as I leant against him, and he was fiddling with the locket I was wearing.

“When did you get this?” he asked. “I’ve never seen it before.”

I froze. It was the locket James bought me while we were going out. I had taken it off when we broke up, and it had sat at the bottom of my drawer ever since. I had only started wearing it again that morning.

“Oh, I’ve had it for ages,” I said, “but I haven’t worn it for months.”

“Is there anything inside it?” he asked, already trying to open it.

I sat up.

“No, Keith, please don’t-” but the locket had already fallen open. Inside were two pictures of James and me. In the first, he had his arm across my shoulders and we were both laughing at some forgotten joke. In the second, we were kissing. Keith stared at the pictures for an eternity. Then he looked up at me, at my red face.

“Is there something you want to tell me, Alec?” he said evenly.

I sighed.

“Yeah. God, this isn’t how I wanted it to happen. That’s why I asked you to come here with me, Keith. I don’t think we can go out any more.”

“So you’re dumping me?”

Even though that was how I put it in my head, it sounded awful said out loud.

“No, I’m not dumping you. Dumping makes it seem like we had a huge fight, like it was horrible. And I don’t want this to be horrible. It’s just-” I struggled for words. “It’s just that...”

Keith sighed, shaking his head. Then he smiled and kissed me on the nose.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” he said. “There’ll be other girls for me, and I know you’re only doing this because there’s another guy for you.” He stood up and extended a hand to pull me to my feet. “So go, tell him the good news. And we can just stick to being friends.”

We walked to the edge of the park hand-in-hand, but when we parted there to go our separate ways I knew his last statement was a lie. We couldn’t just snap our fingers and go back to friends. We hadn’t even been friends to start with. Or maybe that was all we had ever been. Just really good friends...

“James.”

He looked up, startled.

“I did it.”

He blinked, then smiled. Sitting up, he closed the book he had been reading and put it on his desk, then patted the bed beside him. I pushed the door closed and sat down beside him. He put his arm around me and pulled me close to his side.

“Are we good now?” he whispered into my hair.

“Yes,” I whispered back, “we’re good.”