Before I know it I’m laughing, quietly and slightly psychotically. The irony has dawned on me. All this time, I have been looking for a woman on my terms. The fact that I have dated this many women over the past year. It flashes before me, little snippets of each of them. It’s like witnessing an outer body experience of my love life over the past year – all culminating with Jennifer. I hadn’t had Jennifer on my terms. But with her it didn’t matter. She was someone that I wanted more than my completely independent life. My terms went out the window within minutes of meeting her. I suppose that I had reverted to doing what comes naturally. The bloody irony that the one girl that I want to have a relationship with, something I told myself I didn’t want, is the one girl who doesn’t want me. Why couldn’t she have been the one pestering me with poems, scrawling her forename and my surname down on her telephone directory or discussing the names of our future babies?
You fucking bastard Ed. I wish you hadn’t introduced me to this girl. I was happy. I had got my life on track. No women, no complications. My job was going well. Life was perfect. I was over Jessica. My mind wanders back to the dinner party and to the moment when I first met Jennifer. And then I can’t help but smile. Thinking of her asleep, that first morning. Her smudged mascara. Her quivering lips, which she licked while she slept. She kissed me like we were in a Roy Liechtenstein painting. But, if I’m honest, life had actually been better then, with her in it, than previously. I can’t be angry with Ed. It’s not his fault, in fact far from it. I am looking for someone to blame. I’m glad he introduced us. Even being with her for that brief moment. Even if it is not supposed to be. I don’t regret it.
‘I can’t believe it,’ says Ed, as we sit in our usual coffee shop on the King’s Road. ‘She seemed so into you, you were both so “coupley”.’
‘Well, shit happens,’ Raj helpfully points out. I look at him in a way that shows his helpful observation isn’t actually that helpful at all.
‘It is just so bloody ironic. I was happy carrying on on my own before Jennifer messed all that up.’
‘Are you going to contact her again?’ Ed asks.
‘No, there’s no point.’
‘She might have changed her mind,’ Raj says, now trying to be genuinely optimistic.
‘I don’t think so. We chatted about things a bit, she’s made up her mind. But it was great.’
‘You’re nuts,’ Ed says. ‘If Kate told me that, I’d do everything possible to get her back.’
‘I know you would buddy. And that’s great. But I’ve thought about it a great deal over the last week.’
‘And?’ Raj prompts.
‘Well, sometimes you’re just not meant to be with someone. But I’m glad I had what I had with her, even though it did only last a fortnight,’ I laugh.
I can see that they’re looking at me as if I have lost the plot. I try to explain myself.
‘For the first time in a long while I felt good about a relationship. The last time I remember feeling like that was when everything had been good between Jessica and I. That’s two years ago. Since that went sour and I started dating over the last year, I just felt crap about the whole thing.’
‘What are you trying to say,’ Ed asks.
I pause for a minute, trying to find the right words.
‘That Jennifer restored my faith in relationships, it was as if she awoke some deep emotion inside me, something I had forgotten existed. It was something I hadn’t recognised in a long time.’
‘That’s cool,’ says Raj, earnestly.
‘And now, when that happens again, I’ll be able to recognise it immediately,’ I smile at the thought.
‘You seem pretty fine about out,’ says Ed.
‘I wasn’t at first bud, but now I really am, more than fine, in fact, I feel great.’
The two of them just watch me as I sit there, staring into space, smiling to myself and feeling very satisfied, very calm.
‘How about you, Ed?’ I ask, bringing myself out of my own reverie.
‘Yeah, everything’s good with Kate, she says hi to you guys.’
‘That’s good,’ I say, nodding.
He and I look towards Raj.
‘Nineteen. Argentinean. We used her in our last ad. Sweet arse.’
Ed and I laugh. It subsides to silence. The coffee shop is quite busy, but it still has that Sunday-papers-and-coffee feel about it. We all share the moment, together. I sip my cappuccino, this time it has come with the requested sprinkling of nutmeg. Ed finishes his espresso. Raj sucks at his straw, there’s a piece of biscuit stuck in it from his strawberries ‘n’ cream Frappuccino.
‘Oh,’ exclaims Ed, putting down his miniature coffee cup. ‘Did I tell you?’
We look at him inquisitively.
‘Kate’s having a dinner party tomorrow night. She has two cousins over from Canada. You’re both invited.’
Copyright
Published by Clink Street Publishing 2021
Copyright © 2021
First edition.
The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that with which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN:
978-1-913962-51-7 - paperback
978-1-913962-52-4 - ebook
Single White Failure Page 24