“I’ve got to go back to the house for a sec,” he said now, leaning close to my ear. He moved his hand from around my waist, so it was now cupping my knee. “Come with me, okay?”

I nodded, and he finished off the beer, slapping the cup down on the table. Jonathan was a big partier, another thing I had trouble dealing with. I mean, I drank too. But he was sloppy about it. A puker. In the six months we’d been together I’d spent a fair amount of time at parties outside the bathroom, waiting for him to finish spewing so we could go home. Not a plus.

He slid out of the booth, moving his hand off my knee and closing his fingers around mine. “I’ll be back,” I said to Jess and Chloe as someone brushed past, and Jonathan finally had to cease contact with me as the crowd separated us.

“Good luck,” Chloe said. “I can’t believe you let him drink that guy’s beer.”

I turned and saw Jonathan looking back at me, impatient. “Dead man walking,” Jess said in a low voice, and Chloe snorted.

“Bye,” I said, and pushed through the crowd, where Jonathan’s hand was extended, waiting to take hold of me again.

“Okay, look,” I said, pushing him back. “We have to talk.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

He sighed, then sat back on the bed, letting his head bonk against the wall. “Okay,” he said, as if he were agreeing to a root canal, “go ahead.”

I pulled my knees up on the bed, then straightened my tank top. “Running in for something” had quickly morphed into “making a few phone calls” and then he was all over me, pushing me back against the pillows before I could even begin my slow easing into the dumpage. But now, I had his attention.

“The thing is,” I began, “things are really starting to change for me now.”

This was my lead-up. I’d learned, over the years, that there was a range of techniques involved in breaking up with someone. You had your types: some guys got all indignant and pissed, some whined and cried, some acted indifferent and cold, as if you couldn’t leave fast enough. I had Jonathan pegged as the last, but I couldn’t be completely sure.

“So anyway,” I continued, “I’ve just been thinking that-”

And then the phone rang, an electronic shriek, and I lost my momentum again. Jonathan grabbed it. “Hello?” Then there was a bit off umm-hmming, a couple of yeahs, and he stood up, walking across the room and into his bathroom, still mumbling.

I pulled my fingers through my hair, hating that my timing seemed to be off all night long. Still listening to him talking, I closed my eyes and stretched my arms over my head, then curled my fingers down the side of the mattress closest to the wall. And then I felt something.

When Jonathan finally hung up, checked himself in the mirror, and walked back into the bedroom, I was sitting there, cross-legged, with a pair of red satin bikini panties spread out on the bed in front of me. (I’d retrieved them using a Kleenex: like I’d touch them.) He came strolling in, all confident, and, seeing them, came to a dead, lurching stop.

“Ummpthz,” he said, or something like that, as he sucked in a breath, surprised, then quickly steadied himself. “Hey, um, what-”

“What the hell,” I said, my voice level, “are these?”

“They aren’t yours?”

I looked up at the ceiling, shaking my head. Like I’d wear cheap red, polyester panties. I mean, I had standards. Or did I? Look who I’d wasted the last six months on.

“How long,” I said.

“What?”

“How long have you been sleeping with someone else?”

“It wasn’t-”

“How long,” I repeated, biting off the words.

“I just don’t-”

“How long.”

He swallowed, and for a second it was the only sound in the room. Then he said, “Just a couple of weeks.”

I sat back, pressing my fingers to my temples. God, this was just great. Now not only was I cheated on, but other people had to know it, which made me a victim, which I hated most of all. Poor, poor Remy. I wanted to kill him.

“You’re an asshole,” I said. He was all flushed, quaky, and I realized that he might have even been a whiner or weeper, had things gone differently. Amazing. You just never knew.

“Remy. Let me-” He reached forward, touching my arm, but for once, finally, I was able to do what I wanted and yank it back as if he’d burned me.

“Don’t touch me,” I snapped. I grabbed my jacket, knotting it around my waist, and headed for the door, feeling him stumbling behind me. I slammed door after door as I moved through the house, finally hitting the front walk with such momentum I was at the mailbox before I even realized it. I could feel him watching me from the front steps as I walked away, but he didn’t call out or say anything. Not that I wanted him to, or would have reconsidered. But most guys would have at least had the decency to try.

So now I was walking through this neighborhood, full-out pissed, with no car, in the middle of a Friday night. My first Friday night as a grown-up, out of high school, in the Real World. Welcome to it.

“Where the hell have you been?” Chloe asked me when I finally got back to Bendo, with the help of City Transit, about twenty minutes later.

“You are not going to believe-” I began.

“Not now.” She took my arm, pulling me through the crowd and back outside, where I saw Jess was in her car, the driver’s door open. “We have a situation.”