Seven Hundred Goodbyes

More than seven hundred breakups in seven years, and my ex finally had enough: he made me drink the forgetting water.

He was afraid it would taste bitter to me, so he took the first sip from his own cup.

A second later, the look he turned on me went glassy. "Do you have a boyfriend?" I nodded. "Is it me?" I shook my head. Sebastian's face soured on the spot.

He clearly didn't remember me, and he still wouldn't let me leave.

He snatched the forgetting water away from me and poured it down the sink. "There could be a knockout drug in it." "I don't trust the guy I was before I lost my memory." He didn't know.

What I had actually put in that cup was weed killer.

Because just the day before, I heard him say to the girl he'd grown up with: "Once she's forgotten me completely, I'll marry you." Chapter 1 Sebastian came up from the basement.

His sister came straight up to him, pressing for answers. "Well? Sebastian, did it work? Do you still remember Theodosia?" Sebastian rolled his eyes. "Toadosia?

I've never heard a dumber name." Noelle lit up and was about to clap. Then he switched gears. "The one in the basement, though. I like her. What's her name?

Who's she with?" Noelle almost fainted from rage. "That is Theodosia Whitlock! And the person she's with is you, you idiot!" Sebastian's eyes went bright. "Seriously?

I'm her boyfriend?" Then he frowned. He pulled out his phone and unlocked it with his face. The lock screen was the factory wallpaper.

He opened the photos and there wasn't one picture of the two of them. He scrolled every social app to the bottom. Searches for "Theodosia," "babe," and "baby" all came back empty.

Sebastian clicked his tongue. "Tch. No normal couple looks like this." He put the phone away and patted his sister's shoulder. "Kiddo, I know you're covering for me.

Locking somebody up is a crime, and you're family, so of course you'd find a way to get me off the hook.

Say she's my girlfriend, say it's what we both wanted, that kind of thing." Noelle blinked, then jumped on it. "Right, right, right!

Sebastian, I'm only looking out for you, so let her go, okay? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." Sebastian said flatly, "Yeah, no.

Those are two different things." "Took enough work to lead this horse home. I don't care whether it drinks." He was warming up now. He leaned in. "So how old is she?

What flowers does she like? What size does she wear in a wedding dress?" Noelle stamped her foot. "Sebastian Beaumont! Are you putting on a show for me?

Did that forgetting water work or not?" "How would I know? Right now it just feels like there's a piece missing in my head—" Sebastian rubbed his temples, irritated. "Forget it.

If you won't tell me, I'll go ask somebody else." Noelle hurried to block him. "I'll tell you!

The truth, okay?" She took a deep breath. "Theodosia is… I guess she counts as your first love." "But she's a mean, manipulative gold digger!" "Seven years with her and you never had a single happy day.

You'd be up all night at the drop of a hat, or out drinking and crying your eyes out." Chapter 2 "You even got into a fistfight with our brother over her.

Our brother, the most eventempered man alive! He almost cut you off for good.

Do you know how scared I was that day, watching you knock him flat on the floor?" Noelle's voice caught. "Sebastian, forget her. I'm begging you.

You and Clara are the ones who belong together!

With that Whitlock girl you are never going to be happy, not for the rest of your life!" Sebastian kept his eyes down and said nothing.

Noelle set her jaw. "Fine, fine, fine, you stubborn mule!

Mom and Dad and our brother get back from overseas in a couple of days, so you keep her hidden and you do not let her out." She sneered. "After all, that ex of yours is very good at playing innocent and playing pitiful." Right as her last word landed, I came up the basement stairs.

Three sets of eyes collided. Sebastian froze first. "Wait. Didn't I lock you up?

How are you out here?" I managed a smile. "You didn't lock the door… If it bothers you, I can go back down?" I've known since I was little that something is wrong with me.

There's more spite in me than I can hold. I hate rich people from the bottom of my heart, every one of them. I hate anyone whose life comes easy.

Even more than that, I hate the classmates who got picked up by their parents and turned back to wave, smiling. But on the outside I did it well. People liked me.

I knew that if I let even a little of the real thing show, anyone would drop me in disgust and run. And the only person in the world who took all of me was my brother.

When my parents got sick of me for stealing the neighbor kid's toy train, when they wanted to send me away, he was the one holding on to me and refusing to let go.

When they fought, then caught sight of the trains I'd scribbled on the wall and took it out on me, he was the one who slipped into my room in the middle of the night and put ointment where it hurt. "Once I'm making money, I'm coming to get you.

We'll take a real train, somewhere far, far away." My brother promised me that. He had a beautiful smile.

His whole face curved with it. "I'm never going to leave you." Then, at twentyfour, he went off the top of a building.

The note he left was one line. [I love you so much, Theodosia. I'm sorry.] From that day on, "twentyfour" became a terminal I never meant to pass.

And I understood clearly that people come close to you in order to leave.

So when I got Sebastian's love letter, I took a look at this boy who had just transferred in from a private day school. So clean.

Like someone had pinched moonlight into bone and wrapped it in fresh snow. Then I took a look at the line scrawled across the "love letter": [Hello. I think you're great.

Here's to your mental health, and may you live to be a hundred.] With a big heart and a big thumbsup drawn at the end. I turned around and reported him to a teacher.

But Sebastian hadn't transferred in to study. He was always circling me at the edge of things, keeping track of me.

Even in the SAT crunch, my parents wouldn't spend money on practice tests for me.

So Sebastian bought a huge stack of the most expensive prep books and practice tests and crammed them all into my desk.

Because he saw me in the cafeteria saving money, taking the cheapest thing on the line every time, Sebastian stole my lunch card and loaded two thousand dollars straight onto it.

Later I got placed in AP, and Sebastian, dead last in the grade, just had his family step in and muscle him into the same class.

Chapter 3 After that I couldn't look up without seeing him. In class, between classes, I could always catch him watching me out of the corner of his eye.

I actually wondered whether Sebastian was playing some game and had picked up a quest that required him to win me over. Fail, and it's game over.

Once I tried the direct approach and asked Sebastian why he cared about me so much.

He only blinked, and then grinned, bright as the sun. "No reason." "I just want to be good to you. I like seeing you happy.

Is that not allowed?" In that moment something in me finally moved without my permission. I started to believe it.

Maybe Sebastian would be the second person in the world, after my brother, who could take all of me. So much so that the one who took the first step was me.

One day after school a few punks cornered me, laughing, pulling at my jacket.

I ran for my life and ran straight into Sebastian, and I threw myself at him and locked my arm through his. I shouted back at them: "This is my boyfriend!

His family owns a big company! You come near me again and you're done!" Sebastian went stiff for a second.

Then he put me in the back seat, told the driver to go, and took me home with him.

When the car door opened, his sister, still at the age where she was glued to her big brother, was standing on the porch.

She looked at me hanging on his arm, a complete mess of tears. Then she looked at Sebastian, rigid, the tips of his ears red. From then on, Noelle made no secret of hating me.

She decided I was a deep, calculating, bad woman who would stop at nothing. I was. I wanted that liking too much.

I wanted to close my fist around it, cut my chest open and sew it inside. So it could never, ever leak away. So I buried the real thing deeper.

I made myself look sunny and open, no shadows anywhere. I kept that skin up carefully. A day, a week, a year. The first time I slipped was the summer we graduated high school.

It was also the third day we were officially together. Separation anxiety. I wanted to put a couples app on Sebastian's phone.

Live location, monitoring for how long he used each app, screen sharing… One look and his eyebrows knotted. "Hold on, is this a relationship or prison?

This isn't healthy… Theodosia, where is this even coming from?" My pulse spiked. I backtracked right away and said I was just following a joke everybody else was doing.

Sebastian stared at me for a while before he let out a breath. "You scared me.

I thought you'd gone off the rails." He ruffled my hair. "If you want to know where I am, just call and ask me. Anytime. Okay?" But after that I only ground myself down harder.

I could always tell easily when other people were "not that into me." The way my mom put down every piece of clothing I tried on, without even thinking.

The way I'd come home from school every day and call out "Dad" to my father on the couch watching TV. He'd drink his beer without looking up. He couldn't be bothered to grunt at me.

Sebastian was good to me. But he never reached for my hand first, never kissed me first.

So when Sebastian went to the restroom, I still couldn't stop myself from going through his phone. And while I'd been ordering, Sebastian had been texting somebody else.

I'd always known Sebastian had a girl he'd grown up with. Their families had been close for decades, but he rarely brought her up in front of me.

So I'd never known they talked about me, too— [Clara Ainsworth: Bash, when exactly are you going to break up with that Theodosia?] My finger stopped on the screen.

Chapter 4 I scrolled up through the messages. And that was how I found out. The reason Sebastian transferred to our school in the first place was his brother.

Sebastian had looked up to his brother his whole life.

So when he happened to hear that a new hire at his brother's company had jumped on his second day, and that every whisper pointed back at his brother, Sebastian's first reaction was fury.

He started digging without hesitating, wanting more evidence to throw back at them.

What he found was that the new hire was his brother's age, and that the two of them had once been classmates. And that his gentle, wellmannered brother had been a bully.

So the new hire ground his way into a good college, then fought and clawed his way into the company everyone was dying to get into.

He thought he had finally come out the other side of it, out from under the shadow of his school years.

Then he looked up and found that his direct boss was the bully from his nightmares. That new hire left a note behind. And a little sister.

The same age as Sebastian. [But that's all on your brother. It has nothing to do with you!] [Bash, you said yourself you don't even like her. It's guilt.

You're making up for something.] [Don't drag it out.

The longer you drag it out, the harder it is to shake her, and you'll never shake her, for the rest of your life.] I closed the phone.

That day, Sebastian broke up with me for the first time