A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter eight

e i g h t

*

By the time everyone else gets up, I’ve regained my composure thanks to Arjun, who put on some clothes and walked around the camp with me. I talked him through everything that happened, right from the start. And I really mean the start – I took him right back to seven years ago, when George and I met on our first day of Year Seven in a brand new school, and I ended with last month.

The moment I saw George in a coffee shop with a guy I didn’t know, a couple of towns over. The moment he told me, when I asked what he’d been up to in the hopes he was a cousin, that he had been working all day. The moment I realised he was lying to me, and some desperate part of me hoped it was a new lie, and the moment I knew it wasn’t.

I didn’t cry again when I told Arjun the whole sordid story, even when I re-enacted that horrible last conversation with George. I found out that the guy’s name was Will and he thought I was just his boyfriend’s needy school friend. I found out that they had been together for as long as George and I had been together.

Arjun listened. He’s a good listener. By the time I was done, I was exhausted. I felt as though I had been carrying a weight I didn’t know about until he bore half of the load. He listened and he empathised, and he reassured me that I wasn’t crazy for the amount of online Will stalking I did as soon as the truth was out, when I tortured myself scrolling through his feed, filled with photos of him and George.

Our circles didn’t overlap at all. He was at a different school in a different town, not even one of the schools that played sports matches against ours; we had no mutual friends, no-one to realise something was going on.

Though hardly anyone at school knew George and I were together. We had kept our relationship on the down low – only Lily had any idea – and I thought it was what I had wanted: I was still figuring out what we were and who I was, and I liked that George never pushed it, that he let me take it slow. But after that, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was just George who had wanted to keep it quiet, that he had wanted to have his fun with me without jeopardising what he had with Will.

It felt good to share with Arjun in that strange, surreal moment before anyone else woke up, and now we’re back in the van for a three-hour drive to Joshua Tree National Park, and he has seen the rawest part of my heart.

I feel better. A bit less tense; a bit more me. I’ve never been the kind to stress. I’ve always been the type to take life in my stride, to roll with the punches and see the silver lining in every cloud, and that has made the past month suck even more. I think I lost myself almost as much as I lost George.

Half an hour into the drive, I turn to Arjun and ask, “When do I get to hear about Taylor?”

He looks at me like he forgot he ever mentioned his ex, and then he lets out a quiet laugh. “Nothing remotely as dramatic as your break-up story,” he says. “We were together for a bit more than a year, until a few months ago, and she ended it when she decided I was too boring.”

She. Taylor’s a girl. I try to banish the niggle of disappointment that I have no right to feel.

“That’s really harsh,” I say. “Really harsh. Boring? Seriously?”

“Apparently.” He shrugs. “The relationship had run its course, to be honest. We got together in Year Twelve, and I think it was doomed from the start. I reckon the only reason we stayed together so long was to save face and avoid the awkwardness of breaking up while still doing two A-levels together.”