She goes on a ski trip to Colorado with her parents, and you are not invited. She calls you from the lodge while you are at home, writing.
“I’m taking a hot bath,” she says. “Drinking a gin and tonic. Thinking about you. I’m going to get myself off. I miss you.”
“I miss you too,” you say.
“Do you want to get off with me?” she asks. The idea is tempting—your cunt clenches and relaxes, a reflex—but your roommates are in the kitchen, feet from your door, and you don’t trust yourself to be quiet.
“I don’t know if I can, right now.”
“You know,” she says, her voice leaking through the receiver like gas, “if you’re not turned on by me, you can say so.”
“I’m not—what?”
“If you don’t find me attractive, maybe we shouldn’t be together at all.”
You are sitting up straight now. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“I’m saying that it’s really hard to be with someone who isn’t into you, and I don’t think I should be.”
“You are breaking up with me.” You feel a sudden ballooning in your chest, somewhere between panic and elation. You hang up the phone. She calls back immediately, and you reject the call. Again, and again. You start sobbing, and John comes in. He asks you what’s going on.
“I think she just broke up with me,” you say.
The phone keeps chirping. John gently pries it out of your hand. “Why don’t we turn this off?” he says. You try to turn it off but you are having trouble remembering how, so you open up the back and remove the battery. The whole thing goes black, mercifully silent. You are sobbing in disbelief, your body aching from the whiplash turn of the conversation. He hugs you tightly, and you sit there together.
After an hour, you put the battery back in the phone. Almost immediately, it rings. You pick up. She is weeping.
“Why weren’t you answering my calls?” she sobs.
“You just broke up with me,” you say.
“I didn’t break up with you!” she howls, and then from the background you hear her father’s voice, enraged. “Is that that fucking bitch? Get off the goddamned phone—”
And then she starts screaming at him to go away, and the phone goes dead.
John stares at you but doesn’t say anything.
You will eventually lose track of the number of times she breaks up with you like this.