Easy

are you old enough for beer?)
    LM

    Landon,
    Far be it from me to knock an effective use of prehistoric economics. And I suppose friends who pay in beer are better than friends who don’t pay at all. (Re: my age—I don’t believe the job description of Economics Tutor makes you privy to that sort of personal information.)
    JW

    Jacqueline,
    Touché. I’ll just have to trust you not to get me arrested for supplying alcohol to minors.
    You’re right—impoverished, auto-lacking college students like myself should respect tried-and-true methods of transport negotiations.
    LM

    I smiled at his candid admission of being carless, my face falling when I contrasted it with the sense of self-importance Kennedy got from his car. Right before we graduated, his parents gave his two-year-old Mustang to his sixteen-year-old brother, who’d wrecked his Jeep the weekend before. As an early graduation gift, they replaced Kennedy’s Mustang with the brand new BMW—sleek and black, with every available upgrade, including plush leather seats and a stereo system I could hear from a block away.
    Dammit . I had to stop linking every single thing that happened to me with Kennedy. Realization dawned then, that he was still my default. Over the past three years, we’d become each other’s habit. And though he’d broken his habit of me when he walked away, I’d not broken my habit of him. I was still tethering him to my present, to my future. The truth was, he now belonged only to my past, and it was time I began to accept it, as much as it hurt to do so.

    ***
    As soon as we hit campus freshman year, Kennedy had pledged his father’s fraternity. Despite my boyfriend’s need for cliquish affiliation, I’d never shared that aspiration. He didn’t seem to mind when I said I preferred not to rush any sororities, as long as I supported his future-politician need for brotherhood. He told me once he sort of liked that I was a GDI girlfriend.
    “A GDI? What’s that?”
    He’d laughed and said, “It means you’re goddamned independent.”
    When he walked out of my room almost three weeks ago, it hadn’t occurred to me that he was taking my carefully cultivated social circle with him. Minus my relationship with Kennedy, I had no automatic invitation to Greek parties or events, though Chaz and Erin could invite me to some stuff since I fell under the heading of acceptable things to bring to any party: alcohol and girls.
    Awesome. I’d gone from an independent girlfriend to party paraphernalia.
    Running into clusters of my former friends was uncomfortable at best. Just outside the main library, tables of frat boys sold coffee, juice and pastries every morning for a week to raise money for leadership training. Armed with portable grills, Tri-Delts camped out in tents on their lawn to showcase the plight of the homeless. (I suggested to Erin that most homeless people are unlikely to own portable Coleman grills and REI camping gear, and she snorted and said, “Yeah, I pointed that out. My warning fell on deaf ears.”)
    I couldn’t leave my dorm and walk in any direction without passing people with whom I’d had uncomplicated relationships just days before. Now their eyes shifted away when I walked by, though some still smiled or waved before pretending to be deep in conversation with someone else. Even fewer called out, “Hi, Jackie.” I didn’t tell them I was no longer using that name.
    At first, Erin insisted that the snubs were in my head, but after two weeks, she reluctantly concurred. “People feel the need to choose sides when a relationship splits—it’s human nature,” she said, her second-year psych classes kicking in. “Still. Cowards .” I appreciated that she was willing to ignore her detached analysis in support of me.
    It didn’t surprise me that practically everyone chose Kennedy. He was one of them, after all. He was the outgoing, charming, future world leader. I was the quiet, cute but somewhat odd girlfriend… After the breakup, I became just a non-Greek undergrad—to everyone but Erin.
    Tuesday, we passed the reigning campus power-couple—Katie was president of Erin’s sorority and D.J. was vice president of Kennedy’s fraternity. “Hi, Erin! Great outfit,” Katie said, as though I wasn’t there. D.J. tipped his chin and smiled at Erin, his eyes flicking over me, but he didn’t acknowledge my existence any more than his girlfriend had.
    “Thanks!” Erin responded. “Fuckheads,” she