“I did,” I concede weakly. “So much that it’s annoying. You’re annoying. Were you this annoying in high school?”
“Yes!” He grins at me. “C’mon, Marks. Are you scared you’ll be cowed by my superior insight into relationships?”
I’m not cowed. I just feel discombobulated by the fact that my high school boyfriend is sitting across from me, the image of a successful, fit, confident professional, wearing no shirt (with thick, manly chest hair he did not have the last time I saw him in such a state), talking to me as though we are adults who just had sex. Really good sex.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. We always had chemistry. But there’s the kind of chemistry you have when you’re grinding in someone’s parents’ guesthouse during a rager—the kind of chemistry you have when you’re trying to find furtive places to hook up, and every hour of not feeling each other’s skin is a frantic torture—and then there’s this.
This is … mature. Adult. Playful. Knowing.
It’s like the meet cute in a rom-com.
Except I don’t believe in rom-coms.
I learned at an early age what happens to so-called happy endings.
But I do believe in my ability to read people. When you write the tropes of romance, you can see people replicating them in real life. They can’t help it. They breathe these narratives in with the air.
But people are not characters created in a lab to be perfect for each other.
As someone who studies these things for work, I can look at a couple and see the needs they can never possibly meet in each other. The irreconcilable wounds that will drive them apart.
I can see how it will end.
I’m not saying I like knowing this. I’m just saying if I could write my friends’ relationships for them, I would.
So accept his bet?
No problem.
I could win it in my sleep.
“Fine. Five couples, five years. We each get a point for every couple we’re right about.”
“Deal,” he says.
“Since I clearly have the advantage, you can pick the first couple.”
He taps his lip, thinking.
“Marian and Marcus.”
“What’s your prediction?”
He laughs. “Are you kidding? They’re obviously in love. They have been since we were teenagers, and the way they were dancing last night—I think they finally know it. I think that when we see them again in five years they’ll be married with kids.”
I don’t buy it. Nostalgia for a high school relationship is not the same thing as compatibility. See: us. Seth is mistaking the second-chance romance trope for a real rekindled relationship.
“Nah,” I say. “At best, they might date long-distance for a minute, but they won’t end up together. She needs someone with a bigger personality. Besides, Marian is a planner. If marrying Marcus were part of her plan, she would have done it already.”
Seth pulls out his phone and starts typing. “Marcus and Marian,” he murmurs. “Rubenstein for, Marks against.” He looks up at me. “Your turn to pick.”
I go for one I know I’m right about. “Dezzie and Rob. They’ll still be together. Those two are going to die an hour apart in the same bed when they’re ninety-nine, squabbling after making passionate love.”
Something dark flashes over his face. “I’m not sure about that.”
“What? You’re the one who believes in true love. Even my calcified heart can see that if anyone has it, it’s them.”
He winces. “Don’t get me wrong—they’re both lovely people. I just got a strange vibe from Rob. He was drunkenly flirting with everyone in the room last night. Actually, now that I think about it, so was she.”
“That’s just what they’re like,” I protest. “It’s like a game to them.”
He shrugs. “Sometimes games wear thin. Opposites attract, and they seem so similar they might combust.”
I’m offended on behalf of my friends.
“They most certainly will not. Opposites attract is a tired old romance trope. In real life, people are drawn to human beings like themselves. Have you ever noticed how longtime couples begin to look alike?”
He literally guffaws. “Yep. And Dezzie and Rob look nothing alike. Did you see what they were wearing? My God.”
Before I can point out that they are still in their early thirties and have plenty of time to age into one another’s clones, he’s tapping his phone.
“Anyway, that’s two,” he says. “My pick. I’m going for Alyssa and Ryland.”
This one feels easy as well. “They stay together,” I say. It would be unsporting of me to predict that my friend’s relationship will fall apart, but in this case I really, truly believe that Alyssa and Ryland will outlast us all.
Seth raises his brows at me. “You’re awfully optimistic for someone who purportedly believes that love is a mass delusion.”
I shrug. “I didn’t say it can’t exist. I just don’t think it’s fated. And most of the time, it doesn’t last.”
