Page 6 of Don't Cross Mo Ellery

Chris went out so I could do this part by myself.

Before I go, I take a handful of tissues and one more look around the sleek condo his parents bought. I notice for the first time that there’s hardly any trace of me here. The bathroom with classy aquamarine tiles and hip-kitsch tropical bird wallpaper. The bedroom with the memory foam king mattress I’ve slept on every night—the mattress that conveniently springs right back, as though I was never on it. The kitchen with every cool gadget I could possibly want, if I knew how to cook. The living room with the floor-to-ceilingwindows and the tasteful, faux-industrial light fixtures that I would never have chosen.

Chris is out there somewhere, waiting for me to leave. He doesn’t want me here anymore. He doesn’t want me anywhere anymore. I glare at the coffee table with its streak where my butt used to be. Traitor.

I’ve never felt so alone.

I grab the one piece of evidence that I lived here—the photo of Chris and me from graduation ten years ago. The two of us smile for the camera, and for the first time, the thing I notice isn’t how happy we look; it’s that I haven’t changed at all. I look exactly the same. I could still be that eighteen-year-old kid, and not in a cute way.

My straight, boring brown hair hangs to my shoulders, which always seemed like the responsible choice for a person who isn’t particularly tall or short. My eyes are blue, but not the exciting, piercing variety. My boobs are shrug-worthy. My smile is crooked, in a way that says my childhood dentist was more into golf than teeth. Next to me, Chris looks goofy—a little skinny, a little scraggly, a little too earnest.

The two of us used to match, but I stayed the same while he went and got muscles and Invisalign. Now he binges YouTube videos about clothes so he knows what to wear for his body type and also I think he plucks his unibrow.

He’s the main character.

I’m a flyover girlfriend.

No wonder he wants to move on.

Okay, he didn’t say thatexactly, he said a bunch of stuff about how the only constant is change but the heart is resilient(Ugh),how people sometimes drift apart, how we both need to spread our wings and fly, how we’re like muscles and gas transfer.

The metaphors were, frankly, relentless and sometimes confusing.

But the overall message was clear.

I stay an extra moment to run an antibacterial wipe over the coffee table. I have the sudden desire to erase every last trace of myself from this condo. That, plus it just doesn’t seem sanitary to have a butt streak where you put your pizza. Not that Chris eats pizza anymore.

And doing something—doing anything, really—will keep me from spiraling about how quickly my whole life has collapsed into disaster.

Just three hours ago, I couldn’t get the copier to work. Right now, I would give anything to go back in time and swear at that copier. But I don’t get to have nice things anymore. Not copiers. Not Chris.

I’m losing everything, I want to howl, but it’s not true; I still have Hannah, who was already my best friend before Chris and I even met. Han is my ride-or-die. And yeah, she’s fancy now, an up-and-coming influencer with a whole wellness brand that actually helps people, but we’ve held each other’s hair while puking, and nothing will ever change that.

Down on the street, I gaze up at my fancy condo life one last time. I can almost see myself waving at me from the seventh-floor window-with-skyline-view. Then my Uber driver honks, tapping his wrist, and the fantasy shatters for good.

Leaving the ashes of my former life behind, I head to Hannah’s two-flat in Loganville. She bought it with her boyfriend and her other boyfriend and his girlfriend who is also her first boyfriend’s girlfriend when the neighborhood was up-and-coming and something something low interest rates. The four of them are living their dreams.

When I first told my parents Hannah was in a polycule, they thought I was talking about a geometrically unusual building, and I didn’t have the heart to explain that it was how some people dated these days. And honestly, it seems like a whole second job just keeping track of everyone’s feelings, not to mention all the associated terminology, but it works for them and they’re all awesome people and always seem happy and in love. I can’t even hold on to one boyfriend, and here’s Hannah with a small city of lovers happily taking care of one another in an amazing piece of real estate in a great neighborhood.

I tamp down my jealousy as I ring their doorbell. They all live in the upper apartment and rent the downstairs one to help with the mortgage, and I know for afactthat it’s currently vacant.

When Hannah opens the door, she looks exhausted, like she’s been up all night. Even worse, she kind of wedges herself in the doorway, blocking me from getting in.

“I thought we weren’t meeting up till later?” she says. “I didn’t lose track of time, did I?”

I actually completely forgot Hannah was taking me out for fancy cocktails for my birthday.

“Chris and I broke up,” I blurt, my eyeballs smarting with tears. “And I got fired.”

“Oh, babe, not on yourbirthday,” she says, enveloping me in a big hug, while still, incidentally, not letting me inside. “I’m so sorry, he doesn’t deserve you, never has. And we already hated Kendra, right? So we just hate them both?”

“I’m not ready to be mad yet,” I say, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. “I need some time to wallow in self-pity mode. In nobody-wants-me-and-I’m-going-to-be-broke-soon mode. Speaking of being broke—do you think we could talk inside for a sec?”

Hannah glances over her shoulder and grimaces. “It’s sort of a tricky moment. We’re, um... negotiating boundaries. It’s a tough state of the union, hardest one this year so far.”

State of the union. They literally have names for their arguments. I feel like such a teenager next to them.

She squeezes my hand and says, “I know this is the worst timing, but could it wait till cocktails tonight?”