Free The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth by Shelley Adina

I hoped I didn’t sound as mystified as I felt. “You guys care about each other. You’ve been together for a year. Why would you want to break up?”
    “You don’t understand.” Her fingers made a pleat in her quilt, over and over.
    “I guess not. Tell me.”
    “He’s a great guy. I really like him.”
    “We all do.”
    “But he wants more from me than I have to give right now. Oh, not that way,” she assured me. It took me a second to realize she was talking about sex. “It’s like he wants to make sure I remember him when I’m studying, when I’m rehearsing, when I’m eating. And the more I try to concentrate on what I have to get done, the more he texts me and turns up when I don’t expect him. It drives me nuts.”
    “Have you told him you need some space?”
    “He’d think I was giving him the breakup speech.” She glanced at me. “I don’t know what to do except just… give him the speech.”
    “But you don’t really want to.”
    She shook her head. “I really like him. But I just can’t handle it all. My classes, college, my parents, him. It’s too much.”
    “What does Carly say?”
    “I haven’t told her. The fewer people who know, the better. All I need is for someone to say the wrong thing to Jeremy, thinking they’re helping.”
    Since that was exactly what I’d been thinking of doing, I hastily revised what I’d been going to say. “If this is how you feel, though, he obviously knows something isn’t right. It’s better to be honest.”
    “Sometimes honesty can hurt the person dishing it out as much as the person getting it.”
    “Then you pray about it. And you can be loving, too. It doesn’t have to be a verbal amputation or anything like that. Jeremy doesn’t deserve it.”
    “So you think I should do it.”
    “I think just thinking about it is making you miserable. All of us have noticed. You can’t feel any worse than this after it’s done, can you?” What did I know? I’d been the dumpee in both my serious relationships, not the dumper.
    “I guess not.” Gillian sighed. “What are you guys doing tonight?”
    I shrugged. “Taking you out for a post-breakup movie?”
    “So I can cry through the whole thing? Wow. A good time was had by all.”
    “There’s always dessert down at Ghirardelli Square. We haven’t tried Kara’s Cupcakes yet. Or the Crown and Crumpet.”
    She brightened about half a degree. “True. There could be chocolate.”
    See? This is how it was supposed to work. You show your friend you’re concerned about her, you listen, you offer her chocolate. Things become more bearable. And inside, she finds the strength to do what she has to do.
    Too bad Vanessa wasn’t taking notes.
    “Thinking about Vanessa and the way she treats you is a waste of good energy,” Carly told me after I’d confided this to her a little later. Shani had gone down to the library to check out some books she needed, so I stretched out on the second bed until she came back.
    “I know. You’re right. I must be an optimist, huh?”
    “I’m glad you took her breakfast, even if she didn’t appreciate it. We can only control what we do, not how other people take it.” She smiled at me. “Want to come home with me for the weekend? Get your mind off it?”
    “I thought Shani was going with you.”
    “She’s starting to panic about her Poli.Sci. midterm. Says she’s going to spend the whole weekend in seclusion, studying.”
    “Hm.” I gave this about five seconds’ thought. “Gillian and I are going to Ghirardelli Square for cupcakes. How about you guys come with us, and your cousin can pick us up there?”
    “We’d have to bring our weekend bags, and our books.”
    “That’s okay with me if it’s okay with you.”
    With a couple of phone calls, we had everything arranged. Then, once we’d all had as much calamari as we could eat in the dining room, we grabbed our bags and headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf on the Powell Street cable car.
    Once