Heartbreak for Dinner: It's Kind of a Long Story Read Free

anything of great significance took
place in my high school world other than the mandatory accomplishments every girl
must check off their teenage list before adulthood: graduation, loss of virginity,
cat fight with a girl in the cafeteria.
    All senior year I went steady with a gorgeous boy we’ll call Ricky
due to his uncanny resemblance to Ricky Martin, homosexuality excluded, of course.
Football player adored by the hoes and admired by the bros, my guy was pretty stellar
if I do say so myself. He called when he said he would and picked me up in his Mustang
every Friday night for a make-out session at the local drive-in. He bought me a
peach corsage for homecoming and lent me his Nautica jacket if I ever mentioned
feeling chilly. He looked like he walked off an Italian perfume ad on most days
and his smile was made for the wet dreams of Colgate marketing executives everywhere.
Why was it, then, I felt absolute nausea every time he mentioned how romantic it’d
be to get married and be high school sweethearts for the rest of our lives just
like his parents?
    Sidenote: It is my belief that women are the most contradicting
of creatures and are never happy with the cards they’re dealt. We claim to want
a sweet and handsome man who takes care of us and caters to our wishes. Yet it’s
guaranteed that as soon as he arrives, we treat him like bird poop at the bottom
of our shoes and leave him for a guy with tattoos on his elbows who only calls on
Tuesdays when his other girlfriends are busy.
    For prom, my guy planned a perfect evening that, like most things
in life, went nothing as envisioned. Rumor has it this was the evening my Livin’
La Vida Loca darling intended to propose. This chapter is not about prom or
Ricky or his untimely demise right after that night, so I’ll keep the backdrop short
and sweet and get to the goods sooner than later.
Ricky rented a room in the hotel where prom was held for us.
My mom refused to let me stay in a room with my boyfriend because, “I didn’t raise you like that,” so
she slept in the room with us on a blow-up mattress she placed on the floor.
As a result of the aforementioned, Ricky didn’t get lucky.
He then planned another romantic evening in an attempt to remedy that and it failed more than prom as he
couldn’t get it up due to nerves.
We broke up three days later.
And this is where the story begins.

    A few weeks into my first semester of college and still very
single, I decided I wanted to study abroad the following summer. My parents were
on board with this idea as long as I promised to fly to Cuba immediately after because
God-forbid-I-go-one-summer-without-going-to-Cuba-and-melting-half-my-face-off-in-hundred-degree-weather-to-visit-family.
I reluctantly agreed to this plan since I knew we wouldn’t be able to afford both
trips, therefore letting time pass and never bringing up my Spanish getaway and
subsequent trip to the motherland right after. Once April rolled around and I could
taste the tapas and red wine in the air, my parents began to understand that a trip
back home might be a bit heavy on their budget and succumbed to the idea that I
wouldn’t be going.
    Two months before my departure I contracted bronchitis and was suffering
from volcanic fevers as I simultaneously hocked up mini Shreks every time I coughed.
Fifteen days of suffering later I began to recover, only to trip on a boot I left
lying around my room and twisting my right ankle, which grew to the size of a Thanksgiving
ham for a party at the White House in a matter of hours. I was still on crutches
by the time my trip rolled around, but that failed to dampen my excitement of visiting
Europe for the very first time. Being an only child of the female persuasion with
two intense and overly-worried parents is rough. Leaving the continent unsupervised
at the age of 18 multiplies the crazy factor of said parents by Mel Gibson to the
square root of Courtney Love.
    “Are you sure you’re up for this?” my