GROW UP GINGER

I ran out of his apartment and down the stairwell because the elevator would have been too slow.

I ran out onto the street. The morning was cold and the city smelled like rain.

I ran until my lungs hurt and I couldn't run anymore, and then I walked, and then I sat on a bench at the bus station and cried the way you cry when you have just understood something you can't un-understand.

I had been a summer.

There was a woman somewhere in this city who was going to marry him. Catherine Stuart. A name I had been about to see on a course catalog without ever knowing she was the reason none of this could be what I had thought it was. He had been planning his wedding to her while he slept beside me. He had been planning both things at the same time.

And the worst of it — the part that took longest to stop hating myself for — was that for one second in his kitchen, I had thought about staying. I had thought about winning. I had thought about being the girl who pulled him away from a fiancée he had never loved. About being the one he chose.

I had thought about it.

I had been about to.

That is the part I never told anyone.

There were six of them in the chat. Six. Drew and whoever the others were. They knew my face. They had been calling me the prize for a month. They had known about Catherine the whole time. They had been laughing at both of us.

I thought about every other thing he might have on his phone. Every other photo. Every other piece of me he had taken without asking. I thought about the locked door of his bathroom and the moments he had asked me to wait in another room. I thought about the way he had always wanted to be the one who held my phone. The way he had asked, casually, what my Igram password was — just so I can tag you — and I had given it to him.

I had given it to him.

The bus came. I got on it. I went home to my aunt's house in Veneza, and I sat on my old bed, and I deleted my Igram. I deleted Snapper. I deleted every social media account I had ever made.

I told myself: He won't be able to find me.

I told myself: It's over.

I cried again, quieter this time, into my pillow. Then I packed a bag, because I was leaving for the city in two days, and I had a new life waiting.

I was eighteen.

I had no idea what putting it behind me would actually require.

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