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of Bronte’s emotional immaturity, but she would not come to admit that for ages.
    He had been as ambivalent about breaking up as he had been about getting together. Her histrionics about the shattered pieces of her perfectly good life seemed nigh on hysterical compared to his blasé “Aw, babe, come on. It’s just fading out.”
    Having no firm opposition against which to batter her breakup frustration was, at times, as depressing as the very failure of The Relationship. He did not even care enough to break up with fervor. In December, when Bronte finally accepted complete defeat, she told him, with a surprising absence of drama, that she would prefer if they never spoke again.
    Bronte decided to render him permanently nameless, thus—retroactively at least—relegating him to that part of her brain reserved for The Purposely Forgotten: the bitch from tenth grade who lied and told everyone Bronte was sleeping around; the guy at Cal who had pursued her for months, finally seduced her, then never called again. Those types of people, in Bronte’s opinion, deserved perpetual anonymity. Her joking epithet, Mr. Texas, was now his permanent soubriquet.
    The lingering misery came more from Bronte’s having to finally admit the extent of her own delusional stubbornness (real and vast), rather than trying to pin her heartbreak on his broken promises (essentially vague).
    He loved her. So what, y’all?
    January found her immersed in her new job by day and a fetid depression on nights and weekends. Carol’s words were her constant companion: Just you wait and see.

Chapter 3
    By the time spring rolled around, Bronte was feeling almost forgiving (of herself, for her own idiocy). It turned out that Chicago, the city, was really not to blame for her debacle either, at least not during the months between April and October. (November through March might have added to the depth of her wretchedness, but that was just sour grapes.)
    With the birds singing and the buds just beginning to bloom on the tree-lined streets of her new, cool neighborhood (worlds away from his supposedly cool but really just antiseptic, middle-aged skyscraper neighborhood), Bronte was returning to her heretofore typical optimism.
    These days, she was even starting to look at the bright side of her hibernation-cum-depression of the past few months: because all food had tasted like sawdust as a result of her self-loathing—she had lived almost exclusively on a menu of Grape-Nuts for breakfast, tuna salad (with Dijon mustard, no mayonnaise) for lunch, and the occasional salad for dinner—she was now the new-and-improved, super-skinny Bronte.
    She had also managed to thrive at her killer job (what with all that free time in the evenings and on the weekends, she was like a goddamned drone). The small ad agency had a fabulous roster of clients, primarily in the fashion and travel industries, and she was just about to snag another hot new client, her fifth since moving. All of which meant if (when!) she moved back to New York, to her real real life, she wouldn’t have to do so with her tail entirely between her legs.
    Relationship-wise? Yes.
    Career-wise? No.
    She tried to let all of that put a smile on her face as she strolled into her favorite used bookstore in Wicker Park and then wondered absently if she was too skinny. From the head-to-toe perusal she got from the Goth, pierced guy slumped over his comic book at the unvarnished plywood checkout counter, somebody seemed to think she was looookin’ gooood.
    Perfect , thought Bron. Just what I need is to be attracting lascivious looks of approbation from pale, pierced twentysomethings .
    Great.
    So it happened that she turned toward the science-fiction section with a bit more snooty-toss-of-the-head-toward-Goth-Guy than she had intended, which just goes to show that you shouldn’t spend too much time dissing the Marilyn Manson checkout dude because your face may look bitter and pinched like that when you turn