Kiss King - Mickey Miller Page 0,103

our adventure has played out to its end.”

“That is not what’s going to happen. Maya, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying…you should do you. We had lots of fun this term. But I think at this point…where do we go from here? I’m sorry Grant.”

I hear his heavy breathing on the other end of the phone. “You’re breaking up with me?”

“We were never officially together to begin with. So, that’s the great thing about a breakup, right?”

“Maya, wait for me and we’ll talk this through.”

“We had a great time together, Grant. Unfortunately, we both knew we couldn’t last forever.”

Some of the girls and guys I know, when they want to stop seeing someone, they’ll just ghost. Me? I’m going to at least tell him what’s going on. Even though we weren’t technically boyfriend and girlfriend, I owe him that.

“Sorry, Grant. You’re a great guy. And you’ll meet someone,” I say as I pack a bag with all of my essentials.

I hang up and take a deep breath, feeling horrible. But the reality is, sometimes you have a strong connection with someone but have to move on for self-preservation. I scribble a note to Grant, expressing more of my thoughts about our friendship and saying a proper goodbye.

The door to Grant and Chris’s room is unlocked, and I sneak inside.

As I’m slipping the note under his computer on his desk, I pause with a mischievous thought. Maybe I’m thinking crazy, but this really feels like the end of an era. This will be the last time I’m ever in this dorm, and I feel like I might never come back here, and I want at least one souvenir.

A Greene State baseball jersey is hanging from Grant’s dresser. I steal it and stuff it into my bag on the way out.

I head out of the suite, then race to my art studio to pick up the rest of my painting gear. I take a cab to the train station in Galesburg and catch the evening train to Chicago, texting Eliza as I’m on the way.

Am I crazy?

No. I’d have to be crazy to stay.

I might have thick skin, but this is too much. Even for me.

What will my brothers say? My parents will undoubtedly catch wind of this too.

As much as I wish Grant and I could stay together, everything is coming to a head and this video isn’t the cause, it’s just a symptom. I’ve been toying with the decision to leave Greene for months, and this online shaming has given me the motivation I need to move on to the next phase in my life. I already started an Instagram where I put up some of my paintings for sale, and I even sold a few.

As uncomfortable as it feels right now, and as much as I already miss Grant, sometimes, two people just can’t be together. And if I leave now, I’ll always have a perfectly pure memory of what we were during this time. Maybe sometime in the future we can go back to being just friends again. Or not, because now just his voice does things to me that no man ever has and I’ll probably never recover from.

Grant made me wonder if you could be with your best friend. The conclusion I’ve reached, is no, you can’t. I’m still figuring myself out, and he doesn’t deserve to be along for this unstable ride.

As the doors to the train close, I consider just throwing my phone out the window. Maybe that will put an end to the pangs of shame I’m feeling.

Instead, I just turn it off and decide to get a new one once I get my life set up in Chicago.

33

Grant

“Her stuff is gone, April?”

“Not all of it, but the important stuff.”

“Faith, you said she came in here all in a huff?”

Faith nods. “She was really out of sorts. I hadn’t seen the, ahem, viral video at that time yet, so I didn’t know what she was so flustered about.”

“Shit,” I run my hand through my hair. “Has anyone heard from her since she found out about the video?”

Everyone shakes their heads.

“Nothing?”

My heart races. I pull my phone out and call her again, but there’s no answer.

My shoulders droop, and a panicky, anxious feeling sets in. This is surreal.

I should have never okayed putting that video up on a site for any amount of money. Stupid Flunk Day buzz. I just thought it might help Maya, and I never thought we’d get caught. We didn’t even