Read Why We Broke Up for Free Online

the street! It’s her! She’s leaving!”
    “OK, let me open it.”
    “Hurry!”
    “Be quiet about it, Min.”
    “But this is the moment.”
    “OK, let me read the directions.”
    “No time. She’s putting on gloves. Act normal. Take thepicture. It’s the only way we can know if it’s her.”
    “OK, OK,
Wind film tight with knob A
.”
    “Ed, she’s going.”
    “Wait.” Laughing. “Tell her to wait.”
    “What, wait, we think you’re a movie star and want to take your picture to be sure? I’ll do it, give it to me.”
    “Min.”
    “It’s mine anyway, you bought it for me.”
    “Yeah, but—”
    “You don’t think girls can work a camera?”
    “I think you’re holding it upside down.”
    Ten steps down the block, laughing more.
    “OK,
now
. She’s going around the corner.”
    “Hold subject in frame—”
    “Open the thing.”
    “How?”
    “Give it back.”
    “Oh, like this.
Now
.
There
. Then what? Wait. OK, yes.”
    “Yes?”
    “I think so. Something clicked.”
    “Listen to you,
something clicked
. Is this how you’ll be when you’re directing a movie?”
    “I’ll order someone else to do it. Some washed-up basketball player.”
    “Stop.”
    “OK, OK, then you wind it again? Right?”
    “Um—”
    “Come on, you’re good at
maaath
.”
    “Stop it, and this isn’t math.”
    “I’m taking another. There, at the bus stop.”
    “Not so loud.”
    “And another. OK, your turn.”
    “My turn?”
    “Your turn, Ed. Take it. Take some.”
    “OK, OK. How many are there?”
    “Take as many as we can. Then we’ll get them developed and then we’ll see.”
    But we never did, did we? Here it is undeveloped, a roll of film with all its mysteries locked up. I never took it anyplace, just left it waiting in a drawer dreaming of stars. That was our time, to see if Lottie Carson was who we thought she was, all those shots we took, cracking up, kissing with our mouths open, laughing, but we never finished it. We thought we had time, running after her, jumping on the bus and trying to glimpse her dimple through the tired nurses arguing in scrubs and the moms on the phone with the groceries in the laps of the kids in the strollers. We hid behind mailboxes and lampposts half a block away as she kept moving through her neighborhood, where I’d never been, the sky getting dark on only the first date, thinking all the while we’d develop it later. We searched her mailbox,
Lottie Carson
on the envelope we hoped, you sprinting to trespass on herworn and ornate porch, perfect for her, while I waited with my hands on the fence watching you bound your way there and back. You clambered there in five swift secs, over the iron wrought spikes cooling my palms in the dusk, quick quick quick through the garden with the whatnot of gnomes and milkmaids and toadstools and Virgin Marys all outwitted like the opposing team. You flew your way through all those stone silent statues, and if I could I’d thunk them all at your goddamn doorstep, as noisy as you were quiet, as furious as we were giggly, as cold and scornful as I was breathless and hot watching you cat burglar for evidence and come back shrugging and empty-handed so we still didn’t know, we still couldn’t be sure, not until everything was developed. Those thick kisses on the long bus home at night with nobody but us leaned out on the last row of seats and the driver with his eyes on the roadknowing it was none of his business, and kissing more at the bus stop when we parted from that date, and the shout of you moving crisscross away from me after I wouldn’t let you walk me home and have my mom bullet you all over the sidewalk from asking where in the world I had been. “See you Monday!” you called out, like you’d just figured out the days of the week. We thought we had time. I waved but couldn’t answer, because I was finally letting myself grin as wide as I’d wanted all afternoon, all evening, every sec of every minute with you,