The next morning, Whitney Houston woke me up. Not the real one, but the ringtone I had set up on my phone for calls from my boyfriend the first time we kissed. "I will always love you" seemed pretty spot-on at the time. I picked up the phone and, sleepy as I was, could only say "Hell" instead of "Hello."

"Morning, Chicken," he said, "I spent the night at Maya's. Can you come and get me?"

For those of you who don't know who Maya is, she's his other girlfriend —he says she's the rare sequel that improves on the original.

"So you've got to be beat. Is that why you're calling?" I replied.

"Not really. But I don't like it here. Are you coming or not?"

I couldn't believe it had come to this, so I said, "Yeah, get ready, I'll be there in 10," and hung up. But I slept for another three hours that morning and didn't hear from him until the next Sunday when he showed up at my door with a bunch of flowers and a box of Smints. He looked like he had just come back from a shipwreck.

"I broke up with Maya," he said.

"Aw, what happened, too young for you?"

He gave me a puzzled look —I was wearing my scuba diving gear, flippers and all. "Are you leaving? What are you wearing ?"

"Wow, wow, wow... Excuse me, Your Honor. More like what are you doing here?"

He looked at me as if he had never hurt a fly. "Nothing. I just got here. Can I come in?"

At that moment, I felt my brain physically split in half. I wanted to slam the door in his face, but I really liked the flowers. So I said what my mother used to tell me every time I came home from school, "Take off your shoes and go wash your hands."

🎻