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    I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

    By Ruby Lang

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    About this ebook

    She's the unlikable heroine from his past.

    Ben Nakamura never forgot spiky, beautiful Natalie Chen, who was the joy and plague of his last year at university. She may even have been the inspiration for the main character of his YA fantasy series. But the Nat who walks back into his life is less angry, less edgy-and just as vulnerable.

    Can she be part of his future?

    Nat returned to Vancouver to care for her dying mother, and now, after confronting the person she used to be, needs time to figure out who she wants to become. All the more reason for her to stay away from Ben, the boy she hurt so long ago. But Ben has grown in confidence, maturity, and in all the ways that make him irresistible.

    Ben and Nat may have changed, but is it enough to keep them from breaking their hearts again?

    I Am Trying to Break Your Heart is a novella of around 22,000 words with an HEA. It deals with sensitive topics including anxiety and mental illness, grief and the death of a parent, and difficult family relationships. In addition, it contains depictions of sex and alcohol use.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBryant Street Publishing
    Release dateJul 30, 2024
    ISBN9781094470955
    Author

    Ruby Lang

    Ruby Lang is the author of the acclaimed Practice Perfect series and the Uptown series. Her alter ego, Mindy Hung, wrote about romance novels (among other things) for The Toast. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Walrus, Bitch, and other fine venues. She enjoys running (slowly), reading (quickly), and ice cream (at any speed). She lives in New York with a small child and a medium-sized husband.

    Read more from Ruby Lang

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      Book preview

      I Am Trying to Break Your Heart - Ruby Lang

      1

      I ’m friends with Mariah, our old housemate, on Facebook, Nat said.

      Of all the things Ben had expected to hear when he met up with Natalie Chen again, the last thing he’d anticipated was that Mariah and Nat were in contact—even if it was on social media. Then again, he’d never really thought he’d see Nat again or that she’d care enough to seek him out.

      How is she? he managed to choke.

      Nat rolled her eyes. She’s gotten really into yoga. Still a control freak.

      Although he’d told himself not to get sucked in, not to enjoy her, Ben barked out a laugh, then stared at his beer.

      All right, then. So, their old housemate hadn’t changed, but neither had Nat Chen. Still kind of an asshole, he might have answered if someone had asked how Nat was. And Ben still liked it enough that it hurt.

      The alumni event wasn’t very crowded. Just a casual get-together at a bar near the university where he and Nat had gotten their undergrad degrees—a more expensive bar than they could afford in the past, of course. And almost everyone there seemed to be a real estate agent looking for clients.

      As if reading his thoughts, Nat grimaced at one of the business-y people who’d started to swoop toward them, causing them to change course. Do you remember how mushrooms started growing out of the corner of the tile in the bathroom?

      Before the tile was taken out and the whole place was sanitized? Mariah went to her friend’s house to shower every day for a week—twice on some days.

      That’s probably all I can still afford, she said loudly enough that another real estate agent zoomed past them instead of pausing to hand them a card. Ben had to stifle a laugh.

      Nat’s dark eyes glittered as if she knew what he was thinking. She always could see right through him. Maybe that was the problem.

      The house they’d all shared two blocks from the university had been held together with duct tape and asbestos. Too many years of being rented to too many university students made what once was an ugly, depressing vinyl-sided house even uglier. It exuded the kind of creepy sadness of middle-aged men who went to frat parties and tried to pick up girls. But Mariah had attempted to whip all the housemates into shape by putting up a schedule that included moving the stove out once a month for swabbing and regular shining of the baseboards. And of course, cleaning that bathroom with the strange tub that stood on a wooden platform of its own.

      Ben had sex with Nat in that tub once. At the time, it’d been great, and he’d been excited and, worst of all, convinced Nat actually liked him because they’d fucked. But now that he thought about it, the tub sex on a pedestal reminded him of some sort of ritual sacrifice. He and Nat had slept together—not-so-secretly, it turned out—on and off for a couple of months, until he broke it off because she wasn’t that into it. Not that into him. Still, he’d naively thought she might have a change of heart.

      Naive.

      Maybe the word was hopeful.

      Or stupid.

      Her eyes were still a fathomless dark brown that made Ben think of velvet and chandeliers and winter nights in long ago ballrooms, her hair was uncompromisingly black, and her shoulder blades and elbows sharp enough to stab someone through the heart even while sheathed in the smooth leather of her jacket.

      Ben had gotten attached. The truth was he’d had a crush on her even before she’d started paying attention to him.

      Then again, it turned out the only reason she’d started anything with him was because it annoyed the shit out of uptight Mariah, who didn’t want messiness, emotional or physical, in what she considered her house. It was surprising they’d consented to be friends on social media, but because it was Facebook, he supposed it didn’t mean much.

      He felt a twinge of something—maybe not the anxiety that had haunted him for most of his life, but something. Abruptly he decided he’d had enough of the mini reunion.

      Well, I have to go, he said, putting his beer down on the bar.

      You just got here fifteen minutes ago. You haven’t even finished your drink, Nat said.

      Ben paused. The tone was uncharacteristic of Nat—no, uncharacteristic of what he knew of her all those years ago. Then again, so was the fact she was in contact with their old housemate. The way she’d arrowed right to him as soon as he came in the door. The fact that she was at an alumni event to begin with. The Nat Chen he remembered didn’t do any of these things. She certainly didn’t try to cajole people to keep talking to her.

      And yet this version of her very much did.

      He wasn’t sure he liked it.

      How do you know how long I’ve been here?

      I was waiting for you.

      This also wasn’t the Nat he knew who would sooner chew off her own arm or wear a color other than black than say she noticed and needed anything from anyone. Even after they’d gotten together, she’d let him know he’d be getting lucky by saying, Let’s do this, and letting him follow her to any place she’d decided to have sex. She’d almost once made him go into Mariah’s room, but luckily the front door had slammed, letting them know their housemate was home, and even now he was glad he hadn’t had to choose between his dumb dick and his knowledge that Mariah didn’t deserve that kind of invasion of privacy.

      But this Nat sometimes spoke softly. She hesitated. She looked searchingly at him. What had happened to her during the last fourteen years?

      "Why were you waiting for me?" he asked bluntly.

      She looked startled that he’d question her. Maybe he was different, too. Despite the way he’d grown up, he’d learned over the years to spell things out.

      I wanted to talk with you. See you again. Look, I know we didn’t end things in a great way.

      "No, but I ended them."

      Nat bit her lip. Yeah, but it was because I was a total bitch.

      You used to say that with pride.

      People mellow when they get older.

      I haven’t.

      I noticed. You’re kinda punchy tonight.

      Punchy? I’ve said maybe twenty words to you. And half of them were, ‘Hi, it’s Ben. How have you been?’

      And I still can’t believe you think I wouldn’t remember you when I walked right toward you.

      She’d called him What’s-His-Name a few times when they were living together. It was What’s-His-Name’s turn to the vacuum last week. (It wasn’t.) I don’t care if

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