by S. L. Finlay
“Maybe he needs space?” William offered.
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“What do you need?” William asked.
I thought for a long moment before answering, “I need to know he is okay, and that we are okay. I need to know that so I can just get on with it.” I told him.
“Get on with what?” William asked.
“Get on with my work and study and my life. This has a really big impact on me.” I told him.
“Maybe you need to talk to him about it? Tell him that it’s impacting your work and study life. He would want to know something like that.” William told me.
“Would he?” I asked.
“Well, I would want to know if I were him.” William offered.
I nodded my head, then reverted back to work mode.
“I won’t let this impact my performance at work anymore, boss.” I told William, making sure I added the ‘boss’ so he knew I was talking to my boss and not my partner in that moment.
“That’s fine.” William said, hardly looking at me, “you don’t let that happen.”
It occurred to me that he didn’t care about my work performance then. I stood there looking at William for a long moment before I asked if I could leave.
“Yes. You may leave.” William told me coolly, without a word, I walked out of his office with a funny feeling in my tummy.
After work that evening I went home and cried a little in my room alone. I didn’t want to have to deal with this really. I felt frustrated. I just wanted things to work out, to know that we were fine and that in the long term, this would just be a little blip on the radar.
I was so tired though, and so drained from giving myself to work and from giving myself to study and from giving myself to these two men that it all just felt like too much. I wasn’t just off my game, I was like one of those athletes who is always away on injury. This sucked.
Eventually, I decided I was done feeling sorry for myself. I had to do something about this. I had to regain control of everything before I lost my mind. I picked up my phone and I dialed Joel’s number. He picked up on the third ring, greeted me, then told me that he really couldn’t talk now.
“Well that’s too bad.” I told him, “because we’re already talking.”
“No, I mean, I have something on. I can’t talk to you properly now.” He told me.
“What do you have on?” I asked.
Joel let out a long, slow sigh.
“Well, I think you should come over and talk to me. I at least deserve to hear what is going on.” I told him.
“You don’t want me to do that.” Joel told me.
“Why?” I asked, feeling a little surprised by the abruptness of his answer, but not wanting to let on. Not wanting to show any feelings up front that might not work in my favor right now.
“Because you won’t like what I’ve got to say.” He told me.
Again, unsure what to say, I asked him, “why is that?”
“Because I am angry with you, and I have a lot of things to say that I know will upset you.” He told me.
“So your answer is to just avoid me?” I asked.
“Yes.” He answered shortly.
“How will that achieve anything?” I asked, “you won’t get a resolution to any of your problems then. They’ll just keep going, you’ll just keep getting angrier and angrier as you sit on those problems.” I told him.
There was silence for a long moment before Joel told me, “Fine. I’ll come over tomorrow after work.”
“That sounds good.” I told him, “would you like to stay for dinner?”
“That won’t be necessary.” Joel told me coldly, but I didn’t feel the brunt of his words. I was just happy he was going to see me. I needed that, I needed to see him and to feel like we could sort through these things, like we could do anything together, his anger would only be temporary I thought as I hung up the phone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I was blindsided by William. One day everything was fine, we were getting on wonderfully both inside and outside of work, he was even offering me support while Joel was being difficult. Then the following day he was distant at work, not treating me with the same kind of warmth and kindness he always had.
I was confused by it, but mostly I was too busy to stop and think about how odd his behavior was or what it could mean. I just kept working away then, and at the end of the day when I went in to ask daddy William - rather than boss William - whether he had dinner plans, and if he would like to go out for dinner I was surprised by what I found.
When I walked into his office through the door he had left open - something he often did throughout the work day to signal that he was available for us if we needed anything - I found his office empty.
“Where has he gone?” I asked the empty office, surprised. It wasn’t like William to go home early but I could see his suitcase was gone, which usually meant that he had left for the day. I stood there, thinking about if he had told me he would be off early, but I couldn’t remember him saying anything. He had apparently just disappeared. I was his PA, I should know if he had planned to leave early.
Turning around, I went to find the other PA to ask her where William was.
I found her at her desk, typing up an email. I didn’t want to interrupt her when she was in flow, so just stood there until she finished typing and looked up.
“Hey, where’s William? Did he go home early? He’s not in his office and his briefcase is gone.” I asked.
The other PA made a face then clicked into his diary. She couldn’t see anything there, so kept making faces as she checked a few things on her diary before finally telling me, “I’m not sure.” in a voice that told me she was as frustrated about not knowing as I was - although I was sure those feelings of frustration were not coming from quite the same place as mine were.
“Should I ring him?” I asked, as if her giving me permission would make it look more professional, and less like I was worried where my secret work boyfriend had disappeared to at the end of a work day.
“What do you need?” She asked, “is it something I can help you with?”
I was worried she would do this - classic PA move, taking any work that William really didn’t need to do on - I stared at her for a long moment before shaking my head.
“No, it will be fine.” I said before sitting down to my own computer and sending out a couple of emails.
But then, for the first time that day, I couldn’t concentrate on my work. All the other times today had been taken up with me madly doing things, scrambling to get my work done on time. Now I was just staring at a computer screen blankly, thinking about where the hell William could be and why he wouldn’t have told me, as either his girlfriend or his PA.
I flicked around my computer trying to do different tasks and failing. I would read the same paragraph of an email three times before minimizing my emails, realizing it was a waste of time. Then I would do some data entry for a little bit before I couldn’t focus on the numbers on my key pad. I kept trying to do things that needed to be done for work then failing. Eventually I stopped all together.
Sighing heavily I reached for my phone. I would just call him. I had to know where he was for work anyway, it made sense that I would be showing up on his caller ID, even if the real reason I wanted to know where he was was more personal than professional.
My phone rang out - I got his voice mail - and I felt frustrated as hell. Looking over to the other PA, I thought better than to leave a message when I hadn’t told her I would be calling him.
“I have to go to the toilet.” I told her, still holding my phone as I walked away, but having ended the call.
I walked away from her in the direction of the toilets but thought better than to go in. I kept walking and went out the offices back door, wedging the door open with a shoe that was left there for that purpose and calling William again.
When I got the voice mail this time, I resolved to leave a message,
“hi William, could you call me back when you get this?” I asked before I hung up, knowing he would know my voice without me having to say who he had to ring back.
After leaving the message, I felt calmer. I paced a little outside before going back in to finish my work day. When I sat back down at my desk I realized I had less than an hour left, so typed away a few emails, did a few menial tasks then picked up my things and headed out for the day beside the other PA who, despite working her buns off, would always make sure she was finished and out the door at five PM every day.
That evening, poetically as I was heating up my microwave dinner for one, my phone finally rang. On the screen was William’s number.
I answered with a too-excited sounding, “hello!”
“Hi, Mel?” He asked, as if I were a stranger, not someone he talked to every day and who he knew well enough to know their voice by heart by now.
“Yes, it’s me.” I answered, hearing my voice drop away from excitement as I filled with foreboding. This wasn’t going to be good.
“Hi, good.” He said, then there was a silence for a long moment before he told me, “I have to talk to you about something.”
“Sure, go ahead.” I said.
“I don’t think this is going to work out.” He told me, “I am a lot older than you are, and although this is nice to have, I don’t think it’s a great relationship for you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that I don’t think you should be seeing two people. You’re a nice girl, and eventually you’ll want to find someone to settle down with.” He told me.
“Right.” I said, half agreeing with him, but feeling odd about it. Why did he think it was okay to tell me what to do like that? Yes, he had taken on this role of ‘daddy’ in my life. He was a caregiver who adored me an looked after me, not just someone I called daddy in bed. But, this was a bit outside of his prescribed role. He wasn’t my actual father.
“I think you should keep seeing this other guy.” He told me.
“Do you?” I asked.
“Yes, I do.” He told me.
“Hmm…” I said, “but what if he doesn’t want to keep seeing me? Then you’re sort of, breaking up with me for nothing.” I told him.
“It won’t be for nothing.” He told me, “you will find someone else, someone better suited to you.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, fighting back tears as what he told me was starting to sink in.
“I don’t want to hurt you, I am truly sorry.” He told me, his voice sincere, making what he said hurt all the more.
I let out a sob involuntarily, “then don’t break up with me!” I cried in a voice I knew sounded hysterical, but I didn’t care.
“I’m really sorry, I just-” He began.
“-you’re not sorry!” I half shouted through sobs, “if you were really sorry, you wouldn’t be doing it!”
I could hear William making a deep sigh into the receiver. “Listen, I will talk to you another time, I can’t do this now.” He said before he told me goodbye and hung up.
Angry and upset, I threw my phone across the room. It hit a skirting board and bounced off. A part of me - the responsible adult part - worried that I had broken the screen, but I didn’t give that thought much time before I started bawling my eyes out like a little girl who had just had her favorite toy taken from her, and who thought that was the worst thing in the whole world.
When the shock wore off and I stopped crying like a baby, I sat up in my bed where I had gone to do most of the crying and thought about what I should do in this situation. Finally, I was done crying and I was ready to find some solutions to my own problems.
William was leaving me because he thought I really should settle for a conventional relationship, despite the fact that I had been clear that that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted something different, something similar to what he had had in his youth while living in New York city. I wanted two men, I wanted to explore a relationship I hadn’t allowed myself to have for a long time. I wanted to take those ‘good girl’ breaks off for a little bit, and see what it was like living a life not made for ‘good girls’. A life made for me, by me was what I really needed.
I was starting to see how I had always been a good girl in my own mind and how I had let that take me over too much. The concept of the good girl is a societal construct where women have to behave a certain way - to be virtuous - and they would be labeled good girls and looked after by society.
It was total crap, but I had bought into it hook line and sinker a long time ago and had not really challenged the ‘good girl’ construct until I was inside of my polyandrous relationship with two men who were totally different, and who both made me very happy.
Then I realized that Joel could help me. We hadn’t spoken for a little while it was true, and he was unhappy with me, but even though he was unhappy with me I was sure he would help me through a break up, especially when he hadn’t always loved the relationship to start with.
So I found my phone on the floor in the other room - its screen was thankfully not cracked. I gave him a call. Joel, annoyingly, didn’t answer the phone and my call hit voice mail.
“Hi Joel, could you give me a call back please? I had some bad news and I really wanted to talk to you about it.” I said, feeling a bit pathetic to be leaving that on his voice mail but leaving the message anyway.
I hung up then texted him with a similar message. I know that sometimes people take a while to check their voice mail and I didn’t want his taking a while to mean that I wouldn’t hear from him.
My phone rang about ten minutes later, it was Joel.
We exchanged pleasantries before Joel asked me, “what’s the bad news?”
Feeling a little strange about the abruptness of the question I told him, “William broke up with me.”
“Oh.” He said by way of response.
“Yeah.” I said, “I am really upset about it. I don’t know what to do.”
“Fair enough.” He agreed. “That’s hard.”
“Yeah, it is. I just want to curl up and cry, but I don’t think that’s very constructive.” I told him.
“No, it’s not.” He told me before an uncomfortable pause and the question, “so, why did he break up with you?”
I cleared my throat and told him, “because he thinks I should have a more conventional relationship. Like, with just one guy. He said I will want to settle down eventually, and I should do that.”
“Right.” Joel agreed, “that makes sense.”
“Does it though?” I asked.
“Well, yeah. You want to have kids, they will only need one father.” He told me.
I thought about his comment, because it made me a little uncomfortable, but I couldn’t quite work out why. I couldn’t even hold it in my mind for long before I let out a long sigh.
“What?” He asked me, “Don’t you want to do that?”
“I don’t know what I want five or ten years from now.” I told him, “I only know what I want right now.”
“And what’s that?” He asked, almost automatically.
“I want to be with both of you. You both make me happy.” I told him.
“Oh, well, I have something to tell you then.” He told me, and I braced myself for what I knew wasn’t going to be good news.
That was the day that both my daddy and my boyfriend left me. William because he didn’t want to get between me and leading a normal life, and Joel because he had decided he wanted to live that normal life himself. He had been alright with this at the start, but since then - even after the break up - he wasn’t okay with what was going on. It turned out that after everything that had happened I didn’t really know how to go back to being a couple, and he didn’t want to just be a couple either. He couldn’t go back to that after sharing me, and he was left feeling like this was all too much and it would be easier to just start again with someone else.
My heart broke, then it broke again.
For the next week, I didn’t go to study or to work, I spent my time in bed. I alternated between crying and eating ice cream while watching old re-runs of 90s sitcoms.
Eventually, I knew I would go back to work, but for right now, I wasn’t going anywhere that didn’t have a bunch of comfort blankets and some ice cream.
But then adult life would come knocking, and I couldn’t be a crying little girl forever.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I had called the other PA to let her know I wouldn’t be in the week after the break up. Although I didn’t tell her exactly why I wouldn’t be in, I made the call first thing on Monday morning. Immediately following my phone call, my phone wouldn’t stop ringing. It was William calling again and again and each time I would ignore his call, but he would leave multiple voice mails and text messages me asking me to call him back.
The week passed in a blur of ice cream and crying inter spaced with awful television and the odd - much less frequent than they should be - shower.
It was on the Thursday, when I had been watching daytime television and had fallen asleep when I was woken up by my doorbell ringing. Groggily I sat up, wiping my hair out of my face and rubbing my eyes as I slowly got to my feet. The doorbell rang again.
“Yeah, I’m coming!” I called, groggy on my feet.
When I pulled the door open though, I came face to face with William.
“Great!” I declared, feeling frustrated right away and wanting to close the door in his face but stopping myself from doing so.
“Hi!” William said brightly, obviously ignoring the pajama pants and the hoodie I was wearing as he smiled at me warmly, as if this sort of reception would make me warm towards him. “Can I come in?” He asked.
I sighed, pushed the door open and walked back into my lounge room. He followed behind me without saying a word. I sat back down on the couch, ignoring the comforter I had left there and motioning for William to sit down across from me on a chair I never used because it was too hard.