Rosemary and Juliet

The Epic Fuck Up

Rosemary

"Seth?" She was sitting on Sanjana's bed with her, doing what she knew had to be done.

"Rosemary? Hi, are you okay?" He sounded confused, concerned, but also somehow, knowing.

"Yeah. Well, no. It's just..." How was she supposed to phrase this? She looked at her friend desperately, but Sanjana only shrugged.

"What?"

"I need to talk to you..." No kidding, Rosemary, who would've guessed you were calling to talk to him of all things.

"What's wrong, Rose?"

"Oh, Seth. I'm sorry..."

"You're breaking up with me?" He sounded oddly unfazed.

"It's just... I'm not ready to date anyone right now, and..."

"No, stop," he interrupted, laughing a little. "It's okay, Rosemary. You have to do what's best for you."

"Seth, wait, at least let me --"

He hung up on her, and she didn't get to finish her sentence. She looked at Sanjana, her mouth hanging open.

"What happened?" Sanjana asked.

"He hung up on me?" Rosemary had never been more confused about a breakup in her life (and that said a lot, because David rambled on for so long that she was impressed she even kept up with what he was saying).

The Previous Day

VP: Hey, Rose. I heard you and David broke up. I know your name says you're okay, but I'm guessing you're not?

IO: No, not really.

VP: I figured.

IO: What annoys me is that he said it was mutual, to Seth. He dumped me though. Is that mutual?

VP: He told me it was mutual too...

IO: And I can't even cry about it. I think about it, and my systems go numb. Like I couldn't care about anything less than that breakup. But I do care. When I don't think about it, I can feel the pain of it in the back of my mind.

VP: I'm sorry...

IO: It's so fucking stupid! And I'm supposed to be on a date right now with Seth - the cool one, not Ling - and that blew up in my face and I'm wearing a cute dress and everything and why did David have to go and break every one of his damn promises to me?

VP: Rose, don't take this wrong, but there are bigger problems in the world.

IO: Sorry. I'm just upset.

Did Vrishin think she didn't know that? Because she did. It wasn't really the problem. The problem was that Alec was always about to kill himself and two guys liked her and she felt like Juliet hated her and Aadarsh kept calling her ugly and fat and stupid and saying she was unattractive and so many other things and that she hadn't recovered from her depressive breakdown and...

She had almost killed herself, and Vrishin didn't know. He would never know, because she couldn't tell him. So from his perspective, the problem, of course, wasn't that big of a deal.

But to her, it was the only deal. There was so much more to the deal than just what she said.

Present

She had dumped him, and he hung up on her. What the fuck?

"You whore! Did you just hang up on me? -RM"

"As a matter of fact, yes I did. -SW"

"What the fuck? -RM"

"Tomorrow, you should turn off your phone and just take a day to yourself. Rose, you aren't selfish often enough. Caring about everyone else's feelings are how you always get hurt. Okay? -SW"