chapter five
WHICH EX SHOULD I reach out to first? My high school sweetheart? My college boyfriends? Don’t forget to let me know in the comments. You can also vote in the poll—”
My video is interrupted by a figure taking up nearly the entire width of my bedroom doorway behind me on camera.
“It’s only six in the morning and you’re already plotting something sinister,” Trevor remarks in a hoarse, early-morning voice. He’s in a plain white T-shirt, which has no business contouring his every muscle the way it does.
I swiftly turn my attention back to the camera, but not before shooting him a stern look over my shoulder. “Sorry. That was my roommate. Anyway, as I was saying, you can vote in the poll in my stories. Bye, everyone!” I wave, hitting End.
Trevor is appalled by the state of my room, horror-movie eyes darting from the half-emptied box in my doorway to my bed, where the remainder of its contents are scattered. He gulps when he spots the item behind me. “What the . . .”
“Behold. My hit list.” I gesture to my masterpiece like it’s a sparkling Cadillac on The Price Is Right.
Rescuing my old college corkboard from the depths of my storage space, I created an FBI-style link chart of my ex-boyfriends.
TARA’S EX-BOYFRIENDS
Daniel (childhood love)
Tommy (ninth-grade boyfriend)
Jacques (Student Senate boy)
Cody (high school sweetheart)
Jeff (frosh week fling)
Zion (campus bookstore cutie)
Brandon (world traveler—the one who got away)
Linus (Brandon rebound)
Mark (book club intellectual)
Seth (ex-fiancé)
Not to brag, but I’m basically Carrie Mathison from Homeland, uncovering treasure troves of pertinent information on each of my targets, including but not limited to: high school athletic and academic achievements, grandparents’ obituaries, etc. Next to each name is an accompanying photo from social media, as well as contact details, including handles, email addresses, phone numbers, workplaces.
The only ex I wasn’t able to find anything on is ex number one, Daniel Nakamura (humanity’s shining example of all that is good in the world), who is a ghost online.
“Should I be scared?” Trevor asks, perusing my list.
“Not unless you’re my ex.”
He doesn’t look so sure. “So these are all your lucky ex-boyfriends?”
“During our Live Session yesterday, Grandma Flo inspired me to embark on a second-chance romance quest.” I follow up with a detailed explanation of what a second-chance romance entails, as well as Grandma Flo’s love story and how it relates to my new plan. “And bonus, if my ex-boyfriend search goes as planned, maybe I won’t have to be alone on Valentine’s Day or at the gala. Maybe I’ll have a plus-one.”
Trevor rewards me with a dead-eyed stare. He’s probably regretting wasting the last five minutes of his life. “You want to date your exes because you don’t want to resort to Tinder? And because your grandma married her childhood boyfriend?”
“That’s a gross oversimplification.” I pause, biting my thumbnail. “But basically, yes. Grandma Flo says men only get better with age. Sure, some of these guys were boneheads years ago, but what if they’ve turned into amazing people?”
Even more than that, this quest for a second-chance-romance hero fills me with something I haven’t felt since the early days with Seth: butterflies. Ridiculous as it may be, thinking about my exes is nostalgic. It’s that innocent, childlike anticipation of seeing your crush in the morning at school. That delicious flutter in the base of your stomach when they give you a passing glance in the hallway.
Both Crystal and Mel were hesitant about this plan, righteously reminding me that career fulfillment alone should be enough to make me happy. But unlike their respective influencer careers, I’m not die-hard passionate about nursing, even though I enjoy it. I’ve always been a bit of an anomaly, finding purpose not through what I do but through my relationships with friends and family. But when everyone is absorbed with their own lives, where does that leave me at the end of the day? Alone in my twin bed, listening to my roommate’s sex-capades?
If I’m being honest with myself, I’m sick of being single. And if my time as a singleton has taught me anything, it’s that just because I don’t need someone in my life doesn’t mean I don’t want one.
Realistically, I should be lauded for my willingness to take on a whole separate human’s personal traumas in addition to my own. That’s strength.
Trevor turns his attention back to the box at his feet. “What does all this junk have to do with your exes?”
While poking around in my storage space last night, I found a large box appropriately labeled The Ex-Files.
I explain to Trevor how this box has been with me since middle school. To be fair, it started as a shoe box (decorated with magazine cutouts of my celebrity crushes). Over the years, it got bigger, with physical artifacts from each successive relationship. Love notes, movie ticket stubs from first dates, articles of clothing, you name it.
Trevor bends over and fishes out a true-to-size royal-purple penis wax candle, appropriately named the Pecker Flame. He examines with caution, and I note how it fills his large, callused palm with commendable girth. He can most definitely handle a hose, I think to myself before blinking that errant thought to the abandoned cellar of my mind.
His brows pinch together, completing his confused face. “Please tell me this isn’t a mold of your ex’s . . .”
I wince when he tosses it back into the box as if it’s a used dildo. “God, no! It’s just a candle. I got it as a gag gift from my college roommate on the night I met ex number six, Zion.”
Trevor manages to find an ancient Fruit by the Foot wrapper. He holds it between pinched fingers, quietly disturbed. “And this?”
“From the night ex number one and I had our first kiss,” I say, taken by the memory.
Trevor officially thinks I’m a loon.
I turn his attention to the mementos of boyfriends past scattered atop my bed and hold up a boldly patterned body-con dress. He watches leerily as I hold it in front of my body, willing it to magically fit again. “I wore this the first night I had sex with ex number seven, Brandon.”
“Where’s the rest of it?”
“Okay, Dad.” I roll my eyes, moving on to my next find. Will I wear this cobalt-blue, zip-up, backless peplum top again? Probably not. Do I want to keep it indefinitely because I wore it on my first date with Seth? Absolutely.
Trevor shakes his head, overwhelmed when I brandish my shoe box full of old Valentine’s Day cards and love letters. In fact, he even starts ordering the books on my shelf, probably to escape my chaos. “What is it with women and Valentine’s Day?” he mutters.
“Let me guess: you’re part of the ninety-five percent of people who like to moan and complain about Valentine’s Day being nothing but a tacky commercial holiday, blah blah blah. Am I right? And before you go on to slander it, I feel the obligation to tell you it’s my favorite holiday of all time. I take it very seriously.”
His lips tighten in amusement. “I never said it was tacky. I just mean—”
“You think love should be celebrated every day, not just one day,” I finish for him.
Based on his miffed expression, that’s exactly what he was going to say.
“Everyone says that,” I note. “And yes, it’s true. But life gets busy. Why not use it as an excuse to take stock of all the people you love in your life and go the extra mile to make them feel special? Even something as small as leaving a cute note. I don’t get why celebrating love openly has to be considered tacky. If anything, the world needs more excuses to eat chocolate and celebrate love for the sake of it, don’t you think?”
He studies me for a moment before shrugging. “Sure, if you say so. But you need to throw this stuff out. You have no room for it.”
“But what if I get back together with one of them? I can’t just toss out tokens of our past. How cute would it be if I still had the menu from the very first restaurant we went to?”
He ignores this, still alphabetizing my books. “Didn’t you say you’re always the dumpee? If all these guys broke up with you, why would you want to get back with them?”
“Because they were all great people. And I can only assume time and maturity have made them even better. They all have soul mate potential. Most of them, anyway.” At least I think so, if my memory serves me correctly.
“Even the guy with the shark face?” Trevor jabs a thumb toward Seth’s photo. It’s his LinkedIn photo, and I chose it specifically because he looks like a smarmy, country-club arsehole named Tripp who pops his collars and paid someone to take his SATs. His face is crossed out with ominous, double-thick marker the color of blood.
“Shark face?” I repeat.
Trevor leaves my now organized shelf and steps around the box, officially entering my room to examine the photo closer. “Don’t you think he kinda looks like that shark from Finding Nemo? With the teeth?”
I clutch my stomach in a burst of evil laughter. Where has Trevor Metcalfe been all my life when I needed someone to trash-talk my exes? “You have a point.”
He points to numbers two and three, who are crossed out. “What happened with these guys?”
“Jacques is married, which is fine because he broke up with me via chain email in ninth grade,” I say, conveniently leaving out the fact that when I reached out last night, he immediately unfriended and blocked me. “And Tommy . . . you can see for yourself.”
I show him Tommy’s Facebook profile, which is full of politically frightening memes. Trevor does a brief scan of his timeline, searching for any redeemable qualities. Based on his frown, he’s failed. “Okay, I understand why he got the ax,” he says, passing my phone back.
“Yup. I’m single. Not desperate. Besides, he probably still hates me after I keyed his car.”
Trevor takes a startled step away from me. “You keyed his car?”
“I’m not proud of it. But I was fifteen years old,” I point out. “I went full Carrie Underwood. It was a nice car too. Red with a sunroof. Dad nearly flipped his lid when the cops showed up at our doorstep. I felt awful. Spent my whole summer working to pay for the damage.”
His mouth shapes into a full grimace. “Poor Tommy.”
“Lest we forget what Tommy did to deserve it.” Spikes of heat pierce my neck. “He kissed another girl at the semiformal. The night we planned to lose our virginities to each other. Then he called me crazy when I got mad at him over it. The gaslighter. So I felt compelled to show him what crazy really is.” I’m about to rant about the stigma of calling people “crazy” willy-nilly, but Trevor is still grimacing, tilting his head back and forth, seemingly unconvinced my actions were justifiable.
“Anyways, I gotta get to work. I’m meeting Jeff, number five, on my lunch break.” I slid into his DMs this morning after he posted a twenty-part, eloquently written tweet about ocean pollution.
Trevor peers at Jeff’s photo on my ex list. He’s sipping a Corona on a beach in white sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt. “White sunglasses straight from the Douchebag 101 starter kit. If that’s not a red flag, I dunno what is,” he remarks, pausing to check his phone, which just dinged in his pocket.
He smiles again as he reads the message, only it’s a wider smile than the one I caught when he was texting yesterday. People don’t casually text and smile for no reason. Maybe there’s hope for his black heart after all. I’m tempted to ask for the identity of the woman who wields the power to make Trevor Metcalfe smile like a little boy, but I refrain.
While I wait for him to finish his text, I pull out that exact pair of white Oakleys from the depths of the box like a magician. Trevor barks a laugh when he lifts his eyes. I put the glasses on for dramatic flair. “Oh, come on. It’s early-2000s chic. You don’t think they suit me?”
He shields me from view with his hand. “No. Very disturbing.”
“You’re really killing my vibe, Metcalfe.” I head past him toward the doorway.
I wait in the hallway as he follows me out of my room. We’re face-to-face. My forehead technically only reaches his chin, reminding me I’m vertically challenged thanks to the Chens, my dad’s side of the family. I study the rise and fall of his chest for a long beat before meeting his gaze.
The orange tint of Jeff’s sunglasses sets Trevor’s eyes alight, like tiny flecks of gold. My breath hitches when he gently pulls the glasses off my face, warm fingertips grazing my cheekbones. Even without the protective shield of the lenses, his eyes still sparkle like a pot of riches.
He clears his throat and takes half a step back. “It’s just . . . They’re exes for a reason. Aren’t they?”
I think about Trevor’s words for the first half of my day shift. People love to say exes are exes for a reason, so they don’t have to dwell on the past. But personally, I’ve always thought second-chance love stories were the most satisfying of them all.