I did a breakup date so you don't have to
and probably would have done it over again.
Kasey’s shirt wrinkles resemble a face wearing an indecisive smile. The plates sitting in front of him hold untouched French Bistro cuisine, cradling the foie gras and other morsels as though they are newborn children.
I look nice. Nothing more and nothing less. I had pored over at least six outfits for tonight, but settle on an agnostic-looking top that’s white and flowy. My makeup is applied nicely. Almost surgically.
Kasey parks a hand on my knuckle. The left corner of his mouth turns up, and forms the world’s smallest dimple. The contact is familiar, but his touch has a curious anesthetizing effect.
One antipasti and main course later, and I can’t ignore that the air feels textured around me. Our conversation is normal but feels jumbled and tangled like the untouched noodles on my plate.
As Kasey takes out his spoon to taste the dessert, he dips his head down. His hair is well-kept. The combed uniform rows rest on top, sculpted by pomade. They look as error-free as my dinner outfit.
I think about the nest of a bedhead that made him so self-conscious whenever it was a pillow and a breath away. I think about when his hair started feeling different inside my hands.
When Kasey and I had gotten together, we knew that he was moving across the country in two months to pursue his passions. Our relationship had felt urgent and hungry. A parking meter on its last five minutes.
I walked for half an hour to his apartment at 1 am, where he was intently studying for finals, even after he said he’d only be able to talk for five minutes. I was steeped in desperation to talk to him, my every surface electrified, even if it was to watch how his henley defined his shoulders underneath the yellow crosshatch of the streetlights. It was almost a stupid movie trope. Me, a self-professed contrarian of true love. An unrelenting hardass at the time, allergic to hugs. And him, the quixotic, starry-eyed lover-not-a-figher.
“What’s the best date you’ve ever had…besides me?” I once asked him, jokingly.
“One of my best dates was actually my last date with my ex,” Kasey said.
“Oh really. Like what was it?” My brow furrows.
“We just like had a normal day,” he says.
“That’s impossible. I could not. I could so not do that,” I say, while physically recoiling from him in the moment.
I glibly propose that our brain chemistry was perhaps irreconcilable if he was able to participate in that sort of thing.
But still, I am curious.
“What did you guys do?” I ask.
“We hung out and stayed in bed for the entire morning. We got up, made breakfast, went to the mall. We stopped by a bunch of different stores and did coupley things, and then we grabbed bubble tea. We went home. We made love for the last time. And then we hugged, and then went our separate ways.”
I debate filling up the silence with a trail of thought, but my mind feels gutted. I have no idea how to react. After a long pause, I say, “how did you feel about it?”
“It was fine. I mean, we both knew it wasn’t right.”
“So why not just end it when you knew it wasn’t right?” I protest.
“We wanted a last day. Like a good ending.”
“That’s just weird, dude. I don’t know….why torture yourself like that psychologically?”
“How is it torture?”
“It totally is.”
The topic changes, and we don’t speak about it again.
Once, in my room that we coined as the “corner of the universe”, we laid belly-up on top of the sheets of my twin-sized bed inside my box of a room. Kasey had brought home these classic Asian snacks that were sticks dipped in chocolate, called Pocky. Instead of ingesting them, or even feeding them to each other Lady and the Tramp style, we stuck it in our mouths and sword-fought one another.
The Pockys would break and fall all over my floor and roll under my bed. I’d find them later, shaking my head with a smile at the brittle, whimsical pieces.
I’d think about the Kasey-shaped space in my room, wondering when he’d fill it again. I’d also think about how his strange, childish sense of humor — the kind I never knew I’d like — wrenches laughs out of my stomach until it feels like dirty laundry flipping around inside of a dryer.
How lucky I was, I thought, to have someone who didn’t just love. He shattered the very makeup of himself to do so — in spite of our quarrels rolling over his stagnant days and my 80-proof nights.
These fights, 2,000 miles apart, boiled us both. His steam would always run out before mine, and it still left him parched and cracked. A few minutes later, out of nowhere, his eyes would already appear lighter. He’d say things quietly like, “please stop this” or “can we forget this” or “you don’t know how radiant you are.”
Whenever I traveled with my parents to Chinatown to receive yet another abysmal haircut, and we’d go to the local store reeking of dried fish and lobster tanks, I’d walk so close to the shelves I’d brush against them. I’d scour the place until I spotted Pocky on the shelves.
I would have swiped every last box in the store if I were allowed to, so we would never stop running out of time.
The dessert comes out, and it’s a particularly succulent dish. Ice cream. My friends know that I don’t have a sweet tooth, but ordering a dessert seemed fitting for the occasion. It would take us at least five more minutes to finish it; at least five more minutes with Kasey.
The malingering memory of our last date conversation strikes me smartly across the cheek. It makes me almost choke out a laugh, as I’m a little fuck that enjoys irony in a sick “my life is a pun or a punchline” type of way.
Five minutes later, the waiter would whisk the last plates away and we’d have no choice but to feast on the unbearable weight of the present. I would realize that it’s thought of not losing him, but the both of us, that cracked me open. Even if we weren’t that great together anymore.
“Can you give me one last hug?” Kasey would request, an hour later, inside the apartment. Kasey’s voice would crawl inside of itself and get smaller with each word. My room feels no longer like the corner of a universe, but only a small expanse that straps us inside.
“Yeah,” I’d reply simply.
If this were fiction, I would feel an immutable sadness crush me into tiny pieces. It would knock me off kilter when Kasey stands up. Or when he packs his things, or when he picks up his backpack, or when he trails towards the door, or when he says “oh” softly — and bends down to tie his shoes, his laces looking like deflated balloons.
In this story, I would say “please come back”. Kasey would turn around. Then I’d say something else that I would always surely mean.
Like “I owe it to us to make this work” or “relationships take endurance and commitment and I care about us” or “you made me love New York even though you were there for three days at a time”.
Kasey would put down his backpack. He’d would come over, and we embrace the living shit out of each other. I’d feel the second chance in our arms. The last time we see other would be in a place where we both treasure — a place we could enjoy to the fullest before we know that it’s the end. At a dim sum eatery or the bar at a boba shop, where we’d laugh and make it a tiny corner of the universe.
Kasey and I would end with a stronger resolution, no longer hindered by the insufferable “what if”. We’d be sure of it this time. A slow burnout is better than walking off of a cliff — not to mention that I’m also absolute ass at goodbyes.
But this isn’t fiction. Well, it’s honest fiction — but that’s besides the point.
The reality is that we’d awkwardly shift on my bed and embrace.
I would feel dampness on my shoulder and his, and we’d quake together. My skin would prickle where his sobs hit my shoulder. I would hate how audible they are. But I’d hate how placid I was. I feel like I could have gotten up in the moment and washed the windowsills in my living room. You’re stupid for doing this, my brain would howl. But I would sit motionlessly on the bed, drinking in the last moments. Because that’s all I could do.
And with that, Kasey would get up. He would pack his things, pick up his backpack, trails towards the door, lace up his shoes and close the door behind him — walking out of my life and never to return.
I dip my spoon into the ice cream, making a hollow crescent.
“Mmm,” I say. “This one is actually so delicious.”
The crows feet at the corner of Kasey’s eyes activate for a moment. He looks like both 23 and 8 years old.
He says something, but I can’t remember what it is now. It’s probably a stupid pun. We both chuckle. The laugh sits inside my gut in the most familiar of ways.
“Are you done with this?” the waiter comes by and gestures to the meal.
“Not yet,” I say.
“Of course,” the waiter replies as she saunters away.
Kasey starts talking about something else, but I also cannot remember now what it was about for the life for me.
At the cusp of expiration, you want to use all of it and pour it all out before it spoils. Eat all of the Pocky. But the only thing to do is let it happen. Savor the last crumbs, stale as they are.
I smile, look at the man I once loved and finish the last scoop of ice cream I knew that I’d ever have with him.
Thanks for reading. It’ll always be honest, and look like fiction. An unintentionally grainy selfie in newsletter form. Ask for my advice here.