Luke stares at me. “Last January? You’re bringing up something I said in January? Now?”

I nod. “And maybe I do business a different way than you do,” I point out. “But I’m not you. Different doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

“Point taken,” Luke says. “Listen, Lizzie—”

“And,” my mouth goes on. Why, oh, why, won’t it just shut up? “I don’t think you respect my family very much, either. I know they aren’t as sophisticated as your family is. But you’ve never even met them. So how do you even know? And that’s another thing. You’ve been going out with me for a year. For six months of that year we’ve been engaged. And you’ve never met anyone in my family. And yet you make remarks like the one you did tonight—”

“I apologized for that already,” Luke says, moving to put his arm around me. “I know what your grandmother means to you. And if I hadn’t—well, let me tell you, Chaz really let me know, back at the restaurant. But, Lizzie, you have to admit, you complain about your sisters a lot. And your grandmother… well, everyone talks about her drinking problem. And you know the only reason I haven’t met your family is because I’ve been busy with school—”

“You could have come home with me at Christmas,” I interrupt, “instead of going to France with your family. Or at spring break. But instead, you went to Houston to see your mother. And my family isn’t rich like yours. It’s not like they can go jetting off to New York to meet you like yours can.”

I glance at him to see how he reacts to this. He isn’t looking at me, however. He’s looking at the Honda Accord parked across the sidewalk in front of us.

“Yes,” he says in a quiet voice. “You’re right. I probably should have.”

“Because meeting my family isn’t important to you,” I say. I don’t want to say it. It’s like the words are being wrenched out of me. Like Gran, that time she got completely wasted on cooking sherry and decided to finally go after that balky kitchen pipe with Dad’s giant wrench. The sherry had given her superhuman strength, and she’d managed to loosen the joint and remove all this gunk that had been trapped inside for six months. It just started spilling out.

Just like all this gunk is pouring out of me. Gunk that probably should have come out of me last January. It’s all spilling out now. Even though I don’t want it to. I really don’t. Not on my nice clean relationship.

But I guess that’s what gunk is. Stuff that sort of has to come out eventually.

“That’s not true,” Luke begins to protest, but I cut him off.

“Don’t say you didn’t have time,” I say. “If it had been important to you, you could have made the time. It was important to me,” I go on. “And it’s important to them. They keep asking me when they’re going to meet you. It would be nice if they could meet you before the wedding.”

Luke opens his mouth to say something, but I barrel on.

“But it’s too late now. Because you’re leaving for France the day after tomorrow. And so,” my voice adds ruthlessly, without my consent, “whether you want to call it that or not, we’re taking a break. Because I need to think, Luke. I need to think about what’s going on here. What we’re doing. What I’m doing.”

“Right,” he says.

And he removes his arm from around my shoulders.

We sit for a moment in silence. But the city isn’t silent, of course. Taxis rumble by, and a siren sounds over on Third Avenue. I’m not sure, but I think I hear a window open above our heads. Ava is eavesdropping.

That’s all I hope she’s dropping, anyway.

There’s another thing I think I hear in the silence that’s fallen between us as well: the sound of my heart breaking.

When I get back upstairs to the apartment, Ava is on the couch again, innocently flipping channels while still holding the phone to her ear. She looks up and smiles at me as I come in, fending off Snow White’s enthusiastic mini assault.

“So?” she asks. “How’d it go?”

“Like you weren’t listening,” I say, dropping my keys in the fruit bowl I keep for this purpose on the bookshelf by the door.

“I was not,” Ava says with a sniff. Then, seeing my expression, she says, “Well, okay, I totally was. But I couldn’t hear. I was all ready to pour orange juice on his head if you started crying, though. Did you? I didn’t think you did.”

“I didn’t,” I say, and flop down onto the couch beside her. Snow White leaps up onto my lap, and I pat her distractedly. “We’re taking a break.”

“Really?” Ava stares at me, bug-eyed. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I just heard the words coming out of my mouth, and I went with them. That happens to me sometimes.” Try all the time.

It hadn’t made any sense, either. I mean, that I had said what I had to Luke. What had I been thinking, asking for a break? I love Luke. At least… I’m pretty sure I love Luke. I know I love waking up in the morning before he has and just staring at him and his incredible eyelashes, resting so dark and sooty against his cheekbones. I love how, when he’s awake, those dark eyes still look so sleepy, like they hold the promise of a thousand secret dreams.

Most of all, I love that I’m one of those dreams, me, Lizzie Nichols, who no boy in my high school ever even asked out, because I just wasn’t the kind of girl you asked out in high school… unless you were a gay boy and you didn’t want anyone to know that, of course.

Oh yeah. I forgot. Gay boys asked me out. A lot. I was always the fat girl gay boys asked out to make their mothers happy.

So what was I doing? What was I doing telling this guy—this guy that I love so much, and who, more important, loves me back—that I wanted to take a break? Am I crazy?

Why couldn’t I, for once in my life, have kept my mouth shut?

But the words just came out, and once they were spoken, I couldn’t stuff them back. Well, I mean, I could have, but…

I didn’t want to.

And that was maybe the weirdest part of all.

“Oh my God,” Ava gasps. “How did he take it?”

“He was okay with it, I think,” I say. Actually, maybe that was the weirdest part of all. “I mean, he says he understands that my work has to come first right now, and that I don’t have time to be planning a wedding at the moment. But… he’s still leaving for France. It’s not like he offered to stay. Even though I told him I’d be happy with a much smaller wedding that didn’t cost as much, so he wouldn’t have to go work there. He’s still going.” Is it wrong that this bothers me as much as it does?

Ava makes a face. “Men are all such dicks.”

Yeah, okay. So… not wrong.

“Tell me about it,” I say. I look at the phone Ava is holding to her ear. “Are you still on hold with Sistina?”

“Oh, no,” Ava says. “They’ll be over with the food in half an hour. This is your grandmother. She wanted to know how to record something with a season pass on TiVo. So I told her how to do it. It is tricky, after all. Then when she told me how much she likes Byron Sully from that old show, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, I told her how to do a Wish List for the actor, so that anything with him that comes on will be recorded. She seemed really grateful. I told her you were downstairs with Luke, so she said she’d hang on till you got back upstairs. Do you want to talk to her?”

I take the phone from Ava, feeling more stunned than ever. “Sure,” I say. “Hello?” I murmur into the receiver.

“So,” Gran’s voice crackles into the phone. “You haven’t shtupped him yet?”

I nearly choke on my own spit, I’m so shocked by the question. “I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry,” Gran says. “This Chaz character. Why haven’t you shtupped him?”

“Because,” I say, horrified, “I happen to be engaged to his best friend.”

“Is she asking about Chaz?” Ava wants to know from the couch. “I was wondering the same thing. I mean, when are you two going to get busy? Now that you’re on a break.”

“It’s not that kind of break,” I say, irritated.

“Well, what kind of break is it?” Ava wants to know. “I mean, if you can’t fu—I mean, make love with other people, what’s the point of it?”

“It’s just… it’s to… ” I stare blankly at the television screen. Ava is watching an old rerun of Celebrity Pit Fight, in which Ava is wrestling with Da Brat in what appears to be an outdoor vat of pudding. “It’s so that we can concentrate on our professional goals at the moment, and not be bogged down with romantic problems.”

“Oh God,” Gran groans over the phone.

“Oh,” Ava says, brightening. “Like me and Alek. Well, like me, I mean.”

“Exactly,” I say. “Only Luke and I aren’t broken up. We’re just on a break.”

“Who is that I was just talking to?” Gran wants to know.

“No one you know,” I assure her. “Just a friend of mine. Her name is Ava.”

“She sounds just like Ava Geck,” Gran says with a snort. “You know, the skanky crack whore. What’s Ava Geck doing in your apartment?”

“She’s just staying here for a few days,” I say. The call waiting goes off. I say, “Gran, can you hold on a sec? Someone’s on the other line.”

“What else have I got to do?” Gran wants to know.

So I pounce on the other call. “Hello?”

“Lizzie?” It’s Shari. “Are you all right? I called as soon as I heard.”

I blink. On the television screen, Da Brat has seized a handful of Ava’s golden hair (extensions) and is using it to drag her through the pudding.

“Of course I’m all right,” I say. “What are you talking about?”

“I was just talking to Chaz,” Shari says. “His call waiting went off, and it was Luke saying you two are breaking up. I called as soon as Chaz told me. I thought you’d be upset. But you seem awfully calm about it.”