“Yeah.”
“My week was like that, only about eighty times better.”
He stared down at his computer. The song playing was “Panic” by the Smiths, which is the one where Morrissey repeats the line “hang the DJ” for about a minute straight.
“Sure, it totally seems like you’re having an eighty-times-Disney-World week,” I agreed. When he didn’t respond, I said, “So what exactly happened with Pippa last week?”
“We frolicked through rainbows together,” Char answered in a monotone.
“Char.”
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, making it stick up in tufts. “I don’t know, Elise. She was pissed.”
I fought the urge to smooth down his hair with my hand. I never touched Char first. I always waited for him to touch me.
“What did you think was going to happen when she came back from Manchester?” I asked him. “Did you think she wasn’t going to find out about us? Or she wasn’t going to care?”
“I didn’t,” Char said, “think about it. Anyway, I told her I didn’t want to be her boyfriend before she left. You know that. So why did she expect me to celibately wait for her return for a month and a half?”
“Because,” I replied, wondering if Char was secretly an idiot not to already know this, “you had sex with her after you told her you didn’t want to date her.”
“So?” he asked.
“So, what was she supposed to think that meant?” I asked. “What do you think people think it means when you hook up with them?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. What do people think it means?”
I gave a long exhale, then said, “For someone who’s supposed to be so great at reading a crowd, you have some serious blind spots.”
Char flicked a number of dials on his mixer. “If you’re such an expert, Elise, why don’t you just tell me?”
I tried to look him in the eye, but he just kept looking at his equipment. “People think it means that you want to actually be with them. In a serious way. People think it means you care about them. That’s the point of the whole thing, isn’t it?”
Char shrugged. “Guys don’t think that way.”
I didn’t know if he was right about that or not. I didn’t know how guys thought about anything.
“Is Pippa coming tonight?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer from Vicky.
“No idea.” Char put on his headphones.
I waited until he had transitioned into the next song, but when he still didn’t take off his headphones, I tugged at his arm.
“What’s up?” he asked, taking off one earphone. “I’m working.”
“I can see that,” I said. “I wanted to tell you my big news from last week.”
Things were weird between me and Char right now. Things were weird because Pippa was back. But when I told him my news, he would be proud of me. He would remember how much we had in common. Things would be good again.
Right?
I felt like a cat bringing home a dead bird to her master. “You’ll like it, won’t you? I killed it all by myself. You must like it.”
Did bird-murdering house cats get this fluttery feeling in their stomachs, too?
“I’m going to be DJing Friday nights!” I told Char, a smile erupting across my face. I couldn’t not smile whenever I thought about it. “Starting next week. I can do whatever I want with it, Pete said. It’s going to be the best.”
Char took off his other earphone. He stared at me. “You’re DJing Friday nights,” he repeated, and I thought that maybe the loud music had garbled my words. “Here?”
“Right!” I shouted, to make sure he could hear me this time.
But his expression was still confused. “Pete gave you a Friday night party? Just you, no one else?”
“Just me,” I confirmed.
Now Char’s expression was more than just confused. It was mad. He responded with only one word. “Why?”
“Because he thought I’d be good at it.”
“Why?” Char asked again, and I felt the ground slant ever so slightly underneath me.
“He said … I have a lot of natural talent, and—”
“Do you have any idea what a big deal it is to get a weekend party at one of Pete’s venues?” Char interrupted. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve asked him to move me to Friday, so no one has school or work the next day and can really go out? And then he just gives it to you? You, a sixteen-year-old girl who started DJing all of two months ago?”
I didn’t speak for a moment. Then, quietly, I said, “It’s not my fault that I’m only sixteen. And it’s not my fault that I only started DJing now.”
Char lowered his voice, too. He sounded gentle, helpful. “Why don’t you just tell Pete that you don’t feel ready? Tell him you need more practice. Tell him you’re worried about what will happen if you have technical problems and you don’t know how to fix them. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“Because,” I said, “I do feel ready.” I cleared my throat. “This is so silly, but I guess I expected that you would be happy for me.”
Char tapped on his computer keyboard and was silent for a minute. If I were someone else, I might have been impressed. But I knew enough about DJing to know that he wasn’t actually doing anything.
“Listen, Elise,” Char said at last. “I hadn’t wanted to get into this tonight. But I think we should … stop.”
“Stop?” I repeated.
“Yeah. Like, break up.”
And the world tilted again, harder. “How can we break up?” I asked. “Were we even together?”
“I think the age gap is too much for us,” Char said. “We’re at different stages in our lives, and we’re looking for different things.”
“Now?” I said. “Now this bothers you?” I felt my breathing coming funny, like I had to gasp to get enough air. “What did I do, Char? What is it? Are you breaking up with me because Pippa’s mad at you? Are you breaking up with me because”—my breath caught in my throat and I almost couldn’t go on—“because I got offered a stupid Friday night party and you didn’t?”
“You said you didn’t love me,” Char said quietly, looking at his computer screen, not me.
“When?”
“Last week. When Pippa asked you. You said no. You almost laughed, and you said no.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. And then I said, “No—I’m not sorry. You don’t love me either. You never said you did. You never once called me, or hung out with me in daylight. How could you love me? Do you?”
My body tensed. Part of me hoped that he might say yes. That he would say, “Yes, I love you, and that’s why I’m breaking up with you—because it kills me that you don’t feel the same.”
Because that would be it, then. The ultimate proof that I was lovable.
But what Char actually said was, “That’s not the point.”
“How the hell is it not the point?” I was almost screaming by now.
“You don’t need me,” Char said. “That is the point.”
He put his headphones back on.
When do you want me to take over? I wrote on a Post-it and stuck it to his computer screen.
The corner of Char’s mouth twitched, and he pulled my note off his monitor. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, crumpling the paper in his fist. “You have a full night of DJing ahead of you next Friday. You deserve to take tonight off.”
It took me a minute more of standing there before I realized that I’d been dismissed. Before I realized that a relationship can end just like that.
Dazed, I left the booth and walked outside. I would have kept walking, too, I would have walked forever, except that Vicky, Harry, and Mel were standing right there.