I look at Cassidy. Her blue eyes nearly swallow me.
“Come on,” I say. “Cassidy, you know Aimee didn’t mean anything she said to you at the party. She was just a little bit wasted. She feels bad as hell about slapping you.”
“I know she does,” Cassidy says. “She’s already apologized to me. I’m not worried about that.”
“Well, then, what’s this all about?”
After a long stretch of uncomfortable silence, Ricky goes, “It’s just that we don’t think it’s working out.”
“What?”
“You and Aimee, dude. Your relationship’s not working out.”
“Oh, really? Well, let me ask you this—since when do you have a say in whether my relationships are working out? I mean, look at you all. First, we have Mr. One Girlfriend in His Entire Life, then we have the chick who broke up with me for helping him get that girlfriend, then we have the dude who stole my girlfriend. Pardon me if I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think about my relationships.”
“Wait a minute, man,” says Marcus. “I didn’t steal your girlfriend.”
“Right. What, is she just on loan, like a library book?”
“No,” says Cassidy. “What he means is I asked him out—after you and I broke up.”
“Great. That’s perfect. When was that, about fifteen minutes later? Sure, it’s obvious to me now. That gives you the right to, like, break up my relationships with every future girlfriend I might ever have. I guess I should’ve read the fine print.”
“Hold on, dude.” Ricky leans forward. “Quit making this about you. It’s about Aimee. It’s about what’s happening to her. I mean, we know better than to try to tell you to lay off drinking, but it’s too much for her. I mean, I never used to see her drinking. Now she’s like this big lush.”
“That’s right—you never saw her drinking. You know why? Because she was never at a party. She didn’t have any friends, except for one who treated her like a dog.”
“And now she’s smashing vodka bottles in movie theaters,” says Marcus. “That’s not the type of person she’s cut out to be.”
“Yeah? What type of person is she? Do you look at her and just see this little nerd that should keep hiding in the corner and never come out? Because I see a lot more than that. I see someone whose dreams are as big as all of yours put together. And I see someone who can stand up for herself now. Before she started going out with me, she let everyone in her life walk over her like she was Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak.”
“And you know what I see,” says Ricky. “I see someone who people are calling Puke-a-reena at school now. You think you’re this girl’s savior, dude? Give it a rest. You just go around acting like you’re saving other people so you don’t have to deal with your own problems.”
“Yeah? What problems do I have to deal with? Self-righteous hypocrites like you?”
“Hold on a second,” Cassidy says. It’s more of a plea than a demand. “Let’s not get into a big argument. Guys, how about letting me and Sutter talk alone for a little bit?”
They agree and start to get out of the car, but she thinks it would be better if she and I get out instead. Which I go along with one hundred percent. The atmosphere in the car is more than a little stuffy.
We walk over and lean, side by side, against my car. “It’s a nice night,” she says, and I’m like, “I’ve had better.”
“This was my idea,” she says. “So don’t blame the guys. Maybe it was stupid, but I know you really do want the best for Aimee.”
“But you don’t think I could ever be the best thing for her, right?”
“No, I think you could if you tried. But right now I don’t think you are.”
“So in your all-seeing wisdom, you proclaim that I should break up with her.”
“I don’t proclaim it. It’s just my advice. That’s all.”
“Because I’m turning her into a lush like me?”
“Don’t put it that way. She’s not like you, Sutter. She doesn’t have to be outgoing and carouse around with a lot of people. Besides, you know you’re not in this thing for the long term.”
“What makes you say that?”
“How long did you and I date, eight months? And in all that time, you made it very clear that you didn’t have any long-range plans.”
“Hey, I don’t have any long-range plans about anything.”
“I know. That’s what I’m talking about. I knew you weren’t ever going to really commit to us, and obviously, it’s going to be the same way with Aimee. So, all I’m saying is that you’d be doing her a big favor if you just ended it before she gets drawn into something she can’t get herself out of.”
For a moment, I stand there and watch a burger wrapper blow across the parking lot. There’s one big thing that Cassidy and the others don’t know, something I can’t tell them—the story about what happened with Aimee and Randy-the-Walrus’s son. Even if I wanted to, how could I just break up with the girl when I know she has that rotten corpse buried in her past?
So I’m like, “Look, Cassidy, if you have this vast encyclopedic knowledge about me and my relationships, then you know I don’t need to break anything off. She’ll do that when she gets ready. She’ll get tired of me, just like you did.”