The Breakup Artist Page 11

  How’s that for a mental image? I bet it’s better than anything you could find in one of those cheesy romances, eh?

  My toes curled. My skin tingled. Goose bumps rose all over my body and it was electric.

  Yeah, Maddie knew how to kiss.

  Finally she pulled away. Smiled.

  “Something for you to think about the next time you’re with your boyfriend,” she said.

  And then she was the one turning and walking away. Sure that’d been me just a minute ago, but now that she’d kissed me I wanted nothing more than to… Well to kiss her more.

  But she was gone, leaving me with curled toes and tingling lips that still held her taste. Damn.

  15

  Bad Job

  Ashley Timmons says

  Okay. So all you perverts out there who keep asking me to tell you more about that kiss? All you pervs who keep talking about how you’re going to go to the mall and get security to show you the video of me and Maddie kissing?

  Get a life. This is the Internet. If you want to see a couple of girls doing a hell of a lot more than kissing I can refer you to a few websites where I understand they have a lot of that sort of thing.

  I totally only know that because I heard it through the grapevine. Not because I go to those sorts of sites. You perverts.

  And all of you who bring up all that stuff I said about being an unreliable narrator can take your smartass comments and shove them right up that smart ass of yours.

  Oh boy. Ashley’s feeling a little punchy today as she addresses the comments. I wonder why?

  Probably because all of you took what was a magical memory and turned it into something you could think about while you were operating your computer with one hand. Sheesh. Y’all need some Jesus, and I’m saying that as a person who isn’t particularly religious in the first place.

  The kiss was magical. That’s all I’m going to say. I’m not going into the nitty gritty details because there are plenty of places out there that will go into those details if you really need that sort of thing.

  Okay. Enough about that. I know. I need to calm the fuck down. I need to not let the trolls get to me even though there are times when I want to track all y’alls IPs down, that’s something I can totally do with the backend stuff on this site, and go to your houses to personally smack each and every one of you.

  Especially all of you who seem so obsessed with “pics or it didn’t happen” when it comes to my kiss with Maddie. I know you don’t want that pic for proof. Perverts.

  Right. That was the last time. Promise. We have some important stuff to cover in today’s update, after all. Stuff that’s going to blow your mind. Stuff that’s going to make this story a heck of a lot interesting.

  We’re getting to the point where someone started to figure out exactly who I was. Where someone out there (hit her name rhymes with Mallory and she’s a huge backstabbing bitch) started waging a campaign to fuck with my life.

  So let’s get on with some of the juicy details. Sorry boys, no girl on girl kissing in this one. Like I said, you need to get a life if that’s the only reason you’re reading this.

  I was back in my room that night thinking about everything that had happened that day. It was a lot to process.

  Sure there’d been a part of me that was pretty sure I was into girls, and that I was into Maddie in particular, but the experimental validation of that moment had been pretty intense.

  Pretty unexpected, too. Like that’s not the sort of thing you expect to drop out of the blue. My first kiss with a girl. The first kiss that had ever meant something to me.

  Okay, it was a pretty big deal for me. I know it’s not as much of a deal for all you straight people out there. You’re expected to want to kiss boys, or kiss girls. Me kissing girls isn’t part of the normal plan. So yes, it was a big deal for me.

  I was thinking through all that, maybe I was even touching my lips and thinking about how great it felt when Maddie was pressing her lips against mine, when I got a ding that told me there was a special email incoming.

  I’d figured there’d be more interest in my services now that word was getting out, but surprisingly I’d only gotten that one request to separate Sandra from her man.

  I was still working on the research for that one. More on that in a later update.

  I opened up my special email client after making sure I was connected to the VPN. I had to use a browser I’d never use for my regular Internet because Craig seemed to think that was a big deal. So I used the one with the big blue E, whatever the Microsoft people were calling it this week, because as far as I knew that was only a browser that old people used.

  I looked at the subject line first.

  “Ur services r needed”

  Well okay then. The person was a little lazy. Obviously. They had a keyboard at their disposal, or a phone that had autocorrect, and they still went with shortening things. They couldn’t take the extra few seconds out of their day that would be required to write everything out properly.

  I was only on the subject line of their email and already things weren’t looking promising. Then again they could be a complete idiot when it came to grammar and spelling and I guess it didn’t matter as long as their check cleared.

  I clicked on the mail and out of habit I looked through all the usual stuff. The email address was nice and anonymous, it doesn’t really matter what it was other than to say it was the kind of email address someone obviously threw together when they didn’t want me to know who they were. Even then name was Jane Doe.

  Bingo. At least we knew it was a woman. That was a common mistake a lot of people made going with something that gave away their gender when they made up their anonymous profile.

  It was the text of the email that had the real surprise though. That had me looking over my shoulder and then walking over to the window and closing the blinds, but not before I looked out to make sure there wasn’t someone out there creeping on me through that window.

  Because there was something in the text of that email that sent a chill running through me. Something I’d never seen before, and it had me wondering if someone really had gone to the trouble of figuring out who I was and now they were fucking with me.

  Let me just copy and paste the text of the email here. It’ll be a lot easier.

  “I need u 2 tkae care of Ashley timmons. Hr boyfrnd is Steve Holtzman. U kno what 2 do.”

  This anonymous girl on the other end of this email exchange needed me to take care of Ashley Timmons. This was even worse than yesterday when someone wanted me to take care of Sandra.

  And that’s why I was worried there was someone out there who was doing their best to fuck with me. The first job I got since all this breakup artist stuff started going crazy on the private boards was one of my best friends, and now someone was going after me?

  Yeah, that sounded like someone who knew who I was and they were having fun with the fact that they knew who I was rather than announcing it to the world.

  My hands shook as I reached out to answer the email.

  There was a part of me that wanted to turn on caps lock and let this asshole know exactly what I thought of her. Only I didn’t do that because it would’ve been monumentally stupid.

  I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t going to give myself away just because I was confronted with someone who obviously knew a lot more about me than they were letting on. I wasn’t going to fly off the handle and confirm their suspicions, damn it.

  I was going to play this cool. I was going to be professional. I wasn’t going to panic and give anything away.

  “Why her?” I sent back.

  You’ll notice I used proper grammar and punctuation there, too. Remember, kids. If you learn to touch type in keyboarding class like you’re supposed to you’ll never have to look like an idiot again because it won’t take you more than a fraction of a second to type out your words!

  I had to wait for like a half hour for the person
to get back to me. It was a killer half hour. It was a half hour where I found myself going over everyone I knew who might’ve been able to figure out who I was.

  I guess the most obvious one was Craig. He was the one who set me up with all these toys that were supposed to keep me nice and anonymous, after all.

  Only I had a hard time believing it was him. For one if he had a problem with what we were doing he would’ve told me about it a long time ago. We’d known each other our whole lives, and sure he’d developed a little crush on me once upon a time, but he was over that. Long over that.

  Besides, I paid him well to make sure something like this didn’t happen. It helped that we’d been best friends for as far back as I could remember, but I figured it didn’t hurt to provide a little monetary reason for him to play nice.

  No one else should know. No one else had any way of knowing. No one else could’ve possibly figured out my secret, and yet there was that email. Mocking me by existing. Someone wanted to break me up with Steve.

  Next I went to people who might have a reason for wanting me to break up with Steve. The only problem there was there were only two people I could think of who belonged on that list.

  One was Steve himself. Maybe he wanted the plug pulled, but he wasn’t man enough to do it himself.

  Not that I could say much on that score considering I wasn’t woman enough to pull the plug either. It was really rich talking about him not having the guts when I’d gone all this time without having the guts myself.

  The problem with that was the name. Jane Doe. Steve wasn’t devious enough to pull some misdirection like that. Which meant it had to be someone else, and there was one other person I could think of who might want me out of my current relationship. It was someone who made me shiver when I thought about her wanting us broken up.

  But it made sense. Maddie had asked me about the breakup artist when we were chatting behind the gym. She brought it up again today. What if there was a good reason why she had the breakup artist on the mind? What if that good reason was she planned on using the breakup artist to push me to do something that I probably should’ve done a long time ago?

  Or it could be even worse than all that. What if she had a sneaking suspicion that I was the breakup artist from our conversations and this was her way of calling me out on it?

  I was overthinking all of this, but can you blame me? I was in the middle of really overthinking it when another message came through.

  “Why not?”

  A simple response. To the point. Two words that put me between a rock and a hard place. Maybe the person on the other end of this exchange knew the sort of existential funk they were causing when they asked me that.

  Why not? Why shouldn’t I break up with Steve? It’s not like I was happy with him. It’s not like I was even into his gender if recent events were anything to go by.

  Why not indeed?

  Of course this person was asking why the breakup artist would have a problem breaking up Ashley Timmons and her boyfriend which was a whole different jar of pickles to twist open. After all, why would the breakup artist have a problem with this couple in particular?

  If the breakup artist had a problem with breaking up a couple was there a reason? I couldn’t back out right away without looking suspicious.

  “Fine,” I sent back. “Tell me why you think Ashley and Steve should break up and I’ll get back to you when I’ve had a chance to do some research.”

  This time the response was more immediate.

  “Why do you need to do research?”

  This time I let some of the anger I felt flow through me onto the keyboard. Who did this idiot think she was questioning how I did my work? That wasn’t how this worked, damn it, and I was going to give her a piece of my mind!

  “Because that’s what I do,” I said. “I don’t break up people who don’t deserve it. Which means I’m going to have to look into Ashley and Steve and see if there’s a good reason to split them up.”

  Of course I knew there was a hell of a good reason to split us up. I wasn’t into the relationship anymore. It was something that had to be done whether I liked it or not.

  “Fine. How about this? Pretty sure Ashley is totally a lesbian. Chew on that, breakup artist.”

  I’d like to say I reacted well to that bombshell being dropped on me. I’d like to say that I sent a well thought out response that countered with reasons why Ashley Timmons couldn’t possibly be a lesbian.

  Yeah, it would be nice to be able to say that, but that’s not what happened. Instead I took one look at that bit of intel and promptly blacked out at my desk.

  16

  The Plot Thickens

  Ashley Timmons says

  Was the ending of my last update a little melodramatic? Maybe. But you have to admit that it got all of you really invested in the story. I mean I’ve never seen that many comments on any of the other updates I made, and that’s something considering how many of you have sniffed blood in the water and seem to be making it your life’s work to read every update about my life and tell me how horrible I am.

  Besides, it’s not like it was much of a cliffhanger. I know y’all have had to wait a couple of days for an update and some of you have been screaming at me in the comments, but I’m obviously still here.

  Duh. If I’m writing this then I guess it wasn’t a big deal that I passed out at my computer. I just figured that was a good place to leave that update and I was getting tired of writing that night.

  You try writing when you know your only response is going to be a bunch of monkeys screaming at you and flinging poo down in the comments section. Sure some of you are nice, but most of you make me not want to continue with this story.

  But I’m going to. Not for you, but for me. I need to get this out there. I need to tell the real story of what happened and maybe then people won’t think of me as the horrible villain everyone seems to think I am.

  So we’re going to pick up right where we left off. That’s right folks. We’re doing that lame thing where we went to commercial break and it looks like something terrible is going to happen to the hero, but when you come back it turns out everything was totally fine.

  If you watch old scifi it’s like that total cop out they did in Star Trek The Next Generation when they were fighting the Borg. That big weapon they had ready to go? The cliffhanger where they acted like they were going to kill off Captain Picard if he asked for too much money in the between-season contract negotiations? Then it all turned out to be nothing?

  Yeah, this is totally going to be like that, which is the best thing I think I can do to all of you jerks out there who are hanging on my every word. Because I totally woke up from my blackout, safe on my floor.

  I didn’t hurt anything in the fall. It was just a weird situation where one moment I was in my chair and the next moment I was looking up at my chair from the floor and reading about all the flammable materials that would turn my chair into a bonfire if it came in contact with an open flame and all the chemicals in my chair that were known to the state of California to give me cancer.

  A comforting thing to wake up to when you just blacked out, but whatever.

  I got up. Looked at the email. Particularly at the part where the anonymous person on the other end of the email was going on about how I was totally a lesbian.

  I wasn’t sure how this person could possibly know that considering it was something I’d only recently discovered for myself. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I was upset about the fact I was a lesbian, or that I was going to try and hide it from the world once I figured out what the hell to do about Steve, but it was a little panic inducing to think that someone else might’ve figured it out.

  I wasn’t ready to come out yet. I might’ve just figured it out for myself, but I figured that’d mean I’d have time to get used to the idea before I started easing into telling other people about it.

  I sighed. It was time to get down to some good old fashioned de
tective work, which is what I did best.

  So I typed. It was the most difficult email I think I’ve ever written, but I forced myself to get it out.

  “Send over everything you have on Timmons,” I said. “And we’ll go from there.”

  I hit send. Paused for a moment. Debated whether or not I really wanted to take the next step, because this next step was going to be painful. It was going to involve coming out to someone, and that wasn’t something I thought I’d be doing tonight.

  This information sort of accelerated my whole timetable for this whole admitting being into girls thing. I didn’t care for having that timetable accelerated.

  There was nothing for it though. So I walked over to my window. Pulled it open. Picked up some little rocks I always had sitting on my windowsill just for this purpose and tossed them at Craig’s window.

  I hadn’t done something like this in a long time. Usually we just texted or IMed each other if we needed something. I hoped the fact that I was hitting his window with the little rocks again after all this time would communicate to him the gravity of the situation and get him to put whatever video game he was playing the fuck down and get over here to help me the fuck out.

  The only problem? It took him a little longer to respond than I figured. I knew he was in there. I could see the flickering glow that meant he was playing one of his games. It was dark in his room otherwise, but it’s not like it was all that odd for his room to be dark when he was playing games.

  Craig might have the whole good looking nerd thing going for him, but that didn’t change the fact that he was still a nerd at heart.

  Now I was wondering what the hell was going on over there. He’d never been so obsessed with his games that he ignored me when I was trying to get his attention this way. It was almost enough to make me wish I had a bigger rock to toss at his window.