The Day Before I Broke Up With Him: Part One

Boyfriend number six: Justin. I had been hanging out with one of my friends, who happened to be a boy, David, and I had been talking to him about what I ought to do with Justin. Something was wrong, but it was like when things had gone wrong with Jason. There was no specific thing to blame it on. I just felt like it wasn't what I wanted and wasn't going to last. Justin was going to go away to university in the fall and I still had a bit of high school to cap off, so it wasn't like our little romance had much of a future anyway. The truth was, I was looking for the lesson I’d learn from dating him. It was already over, but I wanted to learn something from the tilt-a-whirl. I was hashing it over with David to find the lesson. To be overly honest, he was the worst person to play that game with. He had been boyfriend number one and the only thing I learned from him was that getting dumped hurts a lot more than doing the dumping.

He said some crap and I listened and acted like it wasn't crap. But I still thought that the lesson was somewhere if I kept my eyes open. I had a big group date with Justin later that day and I was definitely going on that, but I wanted to make some sense of what had happened between us and move forward confidently.

I didn't feel like I'd made any progress and David was about to drive me home. He pulled out of the driveway when suddenly, Chris challenged him to a race. I raised an eyebrow. A race? David was driving a Honda sedan and Chris was on a mountain bike. What stupidity was I beholding?

I was noticeably embarrassed as David pretended to race Chris. It went on for a couple of blocks before David blew him off and drove up to speed the rest of the way. How stupid could teenage boys be?

Justin was already at my house and I was officially a brat for keeping my boyfriend waiting while I was out with another guy. But I had worn a Superman T-shirt that belonged to my brother out with David. I went and dressed properly for my date with Justin.

Then we went out. We were going rollerblading with a ton of kids around Henderson Lake in Lethbridge. It was a nice summer night and I, who had never skated or rollerbladed much, was like a baby deer, and likely to spend most of the time on four legs. I was actually quite scared as my coordination has never been awesome. Justin had bragged and bragged to me about what a great skater he was.

Two of the guys we were with were shouting, “We're going to skate all the way around the lake! Right now!”

I leaned over and said to Justin, “Why don't you go with them? You'll never get a workout hanging out with me. I'm like a toddler.”

“No,” he said, going a snail's pace beside me.

I was disgusted. I wanted to bawl him out. Tell him that those two boys who were going all the way around the lake were not a threat to him. One was my cousin and the other one I had never harbored even a heartbeat of romantic feelings toward. That even if he came in dead last, I wouldn't think less of him.

And suddenly, I thought of Chris racing his brother in a car when he was on a bike.

I broke up with Justin the next day and thought to myself, I've got to get together with a guy like Chris.