Unsuitable Men

by Forrester, Nia

  Watching him reminded Tracy of the way he’d asked her out in the first place. That was a Grand Gesture too. It’s worth half a million dollars just to have you go out with me. What a crock of shit. And she’d fallen for it, because she was just that stupid and thought it must mean someone, thought it meant she was worth something.

  And the person who really thought she was worth something, and who had shown her that every day, was across the room, avoiding her and obviously itching to leave. Every time she looked up at him, Brendan was gazing longingly toward the front door, or impatiently at Riley; and her heart ached because all she could think about was having him hold her, and how she missed that.

  He made her feel so small, but so safe when he held her. If she moved across the bed in the middle of the night, he would drag her back toward him, sometimes even grumbling at her, though half-asleep. Where you goin’? he’d say, sounding annoyed. And she’d smile and push back against him, wedging her butt into his groin.

  Letting Brendan leave and fly back to New York where they would both once again be pulled away from focusing on each other was out of the question. But when she tried to talk to him at the door, he was back to being the Brendan she’d run into at Shawn and Riley’s baby shower brunch months ago—nice, cordial, friendly, but closed off to her in some fundamental way. That was not going to happen. She would not let him send her back there into emotional exile.

  When she called Riley later, she was scarcely sympathetic, having also been thrown by Jason’s presence.

  “What should I say to him?” Tracy asked her, feeling desperate. Riley was always her life preserver, and she was refusing to play that role this time.”He won’t talk to me.”

  “Tracy, I’m tired, and I miss my husband and kid. I don’t know what you should say. Try the truth.”

  “I tried to tell him before . . .”

  “Oh, you mean the night you told him you were going back into the dating pool to find better fish? That time?”

  Tracy said nothing.

  “Goodnight Tracy,” Riley said, her voice bearing a note of finality. But then before she hung up, because Riley could never truly not be her life preserver, she said, “he’s in room 2018.”

  So as soon as she could, when various and sundry family members were occupied with tending to her mother’s needs, Tracy had changed and slipped out of the house. Finding Brendan drunk had been a blessing, really, because part of her hoped that when she was done talking, he would remember only the spirit of what she said, the generalities rather than the awful, sordid details.

  And he was—as she should have known he would be—an adorable drunk, an emotional one, not a mean one, despite that one comment about the “ugly inside” her. God, she’d only gotten all teary-eyed because it was true. And now she would have to tell him just how true.

  Tracy took a deep breath and looked at Brendan sitting across from her, his elbows on his knees, hands clasped between them, waiting.

  “Y’know the old joke about the man who has a perfect family in the suburbs? And across on the other side of town a whole other perfect family?” Tracy said.

  She could see Brendan’s eyes already narrowing in confusion.

  “Well, I’m the punch line to that joke. My mother and I. For twenty years, my mother was the mistress. She had been for three years before I was even born. And then for seventeen years after that.

  “The thing of it was we didn’t live clear across town from my father’s family. We lived fifteen minutes away. I had a single mother. So what? Lots of my friends did. So I never noticed anything until I was about twelve and I started to make the connection between those nights my mother would get dressed up and prepared for company, and I would be sent to my Aunt Rose’s house.” Tracy paused and took another breath. Brendan said nothing, still listening.

  “I figured she had a boyfriend and I didn’t care. I was glad she did, because she was happier on those nights and even if the day after, she seemed a little moody, I assumed it was just because she missed him.

  “When I was fifteen, I was in the same grade as a girl who everyone said looked like me. We thought it was funny, she and I. We weren’t close friends, but we joked about it sometimes, saying we were cousins or whatever.

  “And then one day, her mother came to the school and there was a big scene in the administrative offices and this girl who looked like me was pulled out of my homeroom. And by the end of the semester, she was pulled out of the school altogether. I think I knew, vaguely, that she had a sister and that her sister was a senior who’d graduated that year.”

  Tracy saw something pass fleetingly in Brendan’s eyes; a realization of some kind. But then it was gone and he was listening again.

  “Around that time, my friends and I were starting to like boys, talk about hair and make-up and the usual things. And I had a really close girlfriend who I was inseparable with. We liked this boy who we thought was way out of our league, so there was no real competition, I thought. Because it wasn’t as though either of us had a chance in hell of getting to go out with him.

  “But then there was a school dance, and he asked me to dance and didn’t ask her. And he spent the whole night talking to me, and didn’t pay attention to any other girls and I was over the moon. But my friend . . . she was upset and we had a huge fight the next week at school in front of everybody. And then she told me what everyone knew. Everyone except me.

  “That my mother was a slut. And I was a bastard and a slut like my mother; and that I had driven that girl who looked like me out of the school because it made her mother sick to her stomach to have her daughter attend the same school and be in the same class as her husband’s bastard.”

  Tracy swallowed and looked around the room, trying to look anywhere but into Brendan’s eyes. She knew how they would look. He would be feeling sorry for her. And that was something she didn’t want to see.

  “Anyway, you know I had to go right home and ask my mother. And when I did, she turned white, and couldn’t say anything and so I knew it was true. And I hated her. I hated that she let me go to that school without knowing. And after that, things were very different for me there.

  “It was like, in saying aloud all the stuff that people had been saying behind my back, my friend . . .” Tracy laughed a mirthless laugh, “. . . my ex-friend at that point, had made it a live, true thing. And so everyone started treating me like a slut. Even that boy I liked, who I thought liked me.”

  Brendan made a move as though to come to her and Tracy shook her head, so he sat down again. When she continued he might not want to come to her. It was better that he not touch her now, because it would hurt like hell when she told him the rest, and he let her go.

  “So I became a slut,” she said matter-of-factly. “The first time I had sex, it was with that boy. And then I had sex with other boys, not because I was interested, but because they were other girls’ secret crushes, or their boyfriends. I had sex for the first time when I was fifteen and by the time I graduated, I’d probably had six or seven sex partners. And that’s only the ones I had actual intercourse with.

  “It was like I had a double-life. I had no friends, so I studied a lot. But I had these secret hook-ups with guys that only they and I knew about. And I felt powerful and spiteful and I hated them and I knew they didn’t give a shit about me.”

  “Tracy, you don’t have to . . .”

  “I know it’s tough to listen to,” she said, wryly. “It’s tougher to have to tell you, believe me.”

  At that Brendan was quiet and allowed her to go on.

  “Occasionally a parent would get wind of a rumor and complain about me, or call my mother. And I lied so convincingly that she believed me and told me that it was because I was beautiful and they were all jealous.

  “In the middle of senior year, I met Malcolm for the first time. I met him as Malcolm at first, not as my father. I found out later that his wife had died and so he was free. So he came to visit my mother openly, and took
her out and for awhile she was happy. Or seemed to be.

  “But his daughters were pissed. The one I knew from school, Charlene? She moved away to be with her sister who was in college, and finished high school there. And Malcolm finally married my mother and she pretended we were this perfect little family. But he cheated on her too, big surprise.

  “And she wanted me to treat him like my Dad, but to me he was just the man who’d made a whore out of my mother. And in some ways, made me a whore, too.”

  “Tracy, you’re not a whore,” Brendan said.

  “Really?”she asked, her voice lifeless. “What if I told you that I did the same things I did in high school all through college and beyond? That as recently as a year ago, I was still doing those things?”

  Brendan said nothing. But his face had changed. It was finally starting to sink in.

  “Well I was,” she nodded. “I picked up men all the time. I hardly ever dated. And even when I did, I couldn’t connect with anyone. So I picked men up and I’d fuck them and move on. And as long as I followed my rules of being safe—always using protection, getting tested every three months—I felt like I was just someone in charge of her own sexuality.

  “I never went for men who chose me. I always chose them. I’d never take them home. It was always someplace other than where I live. And I always made sure someone knew, even in a general way, where I was. In college, Riley found out what I was doing and she was . . . I guess you could say, inconsolable?” Tracy stopped and put her face in her hands for a moment, remembering what that had been like, and the tears she’d been holding back spilled over onto her cheeks. She noted that Brendan wasn’t trying to come to her any longer. Well, that was about what she’d expected. She felt numb. There was no point not going on now.

  “I mean, I always understood that sex and love could be connected, but I never felt that, y’know? I didn’t even like some of the men I had sex with. And for sure some of them despised me.”

  “I don’t want to hear anymore,” Brendan mumbled.

  “And that’s what you saw that night when Lounge Two-Twelve opened, Brendan. The aftermath of me fucking some stranger who . . .”

  “Tracy, stop.”

  “. . . thought of me as a whore, and who told me so right to my fa. . .”

  “Stop!” Brendan put his head in his hands, his breath audible.

  “You want to know who I am?” Tracy said, harshly. “Why I don’t let you in? Then you have to be prepared to hear it.”

  Brendan was shaking his head. “This doesn’t make sense. You were never that easy, Tracy. I cracked on you almost every time I saw you, and . . .”

  “Because I never let men choose me, Brendan. I told you, I chose them. And besides . . .” she stopped.

  “What?” he asked leaning in. “Besides . . . what were you about to say?”

  She looked up, tears still in her eyes. “I liked you. I always liked you, so much, and I didn’t want to ruin that and even when you hit on me, you were different somehow. You never disrespected me, or . . . you were just different.” She shrugged. “And after what happened between us at the Grammys that time, I knew for sure I wouldn’t know how to . . .”

  Brendan’s head was still down, his shoulders hunched. Tracy could hear him breathing.

  “I didn’t know what to do with someone like you, Brendan. Or where to put you in my life. I’m still not sure I do. But I had this great excuse. My mother, even though she eventually married Malcolm, always told me about how men could turn your head—that’s what she would say, they can ‘turn your head, Tracy’— if they were charming enough, that if you weren’t careful, they would make you lose your way.

  “So I told myself you were that man, and that you would make me lose my way. And it made sense because with you I feel things. And sex with you is not just fucking, it’s something different and I don’t know what to do with that, Brendan. I just . . . I got scared.”

  He looked up at her again and Tracy saw that there were tears in his eyes too. But she didn’t know yet what they meant. Did he cry because she wasn’t what he thought she was? Or was he feeling sorry for her?

  “And Jason. He looked like a good, safe bet. He didn’t move me at all. He didn’t make me look at him and want things like what Riley has . . . a baby and a family. I look at him and I’m stone-cold. And I can handle that. But with you, I feel like I’m out of control and . . . there’s other women around, and for the first time in my life, I feel jealousy and all of that’s new for me . . . you don’t understand how confusing it is.

  “And Jason looked like the guy my mother said I should want and I told myself it would be stupid to pass up the safe guy in favor of the one who makes me feel like I’m losing control.”

  Brendan said nothing. He just looked at her. And his expression was unreadable, except that there were still tears in his eyes. Tracy knew she’d asked him not to respond to what she said right away, but she wished she had some indication, something to go on.

  Was he disgusted with her now? Would he ever want to touch her again? Would he even want to know her?

  “Are you sleeping with Jason?” he asked, unexpectedly.

  She shook her head, relieved to be able to say no, and have it be the truth.

  Brendan’s shoulders sagged somewhat, as though in relief. “Anyone else since we’d been together?”

  “No,” she said looking him in the eye. “You?”

  “Meghan,” he said after a moment. “But that was only after you said . . .”

  And that —embarrassingly—was when she really started to cry; a messy, sloppy, snotty, loud cry that had her wiping her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. She didn’t even hear the rest of his sentence, if there was a rest, because she was crying so loudly.

  “Tracy . . .”

  “No, no . . .” she shook her head and stood to leave. “I get it. I . . . I told you I was going to . . .”

  Brendan stood as well and took a step toward her but she held up both her hands like a traffic cop.

  “Nope,” she said, trying to interject some humor into her voice. “If you touch me, I won’t last a second. I’ll be all over you and you’ll feel bad, and I don’t want it to be about that.”

  Brendan nodded and kept his distance and Tracy turned to open the door. Walking away from that hotel room, and away from him felt like the hardest thing she had ever done, but it also didn’t escape her notice that Brendan simply let her go.

  “Please don’t tell me you drank that entire bottle all by yourself,” Russell said, taking note of the merlot sitting on Tracy’s coffee table and her relatively full wineglass nearby.

  “So what if I did?” Tracy asked, taking another swig from her glass.

  “Oh girl. This is not a good look. Drinking at noon, alone on a Saturday?”

  “Russell, I’ll have you know, I drank this over about three weeks, okay? Contrary to what you may have heard, I’m perfectly fine.”

  “Well you look a hot mess,” Russell said dryly holding a handful of her hair and dropping it again. “When was the last time you got your hair done?”

  “The week Malcolm died.”

  “A month ago, Tracy?” Russell said, incredulous. “Okay, get dressed, we’re about to go get waxed, buffed, massaged and tweezed.”

  Tracy smiled. “That actually sounds pretty good,” she admitted.

  “It will be. C’mon, let’s go get you something to wear.”

  Russell pulled her up off the sofa and dragged her upstairs.

  An hour later, Tracy was groaning on a massage table while a masseuse worked out the kinks and knots in her lower back. She’d spent many more nights than she wanted to admit on her sofa over the past three weeks, and most of those nights were pretty close to sleepless. The good news was that she had lost the seven or so extra pounds she was worried about, and had clocked some serious time at work. Those three a.m. emails to her boss were paying off. He now believed she was beyond dedicated.

  “A
fter this we need to go to Serendipity 3,” Russell said from the table next to hers. “You feel like a frozen hot chocolate?”

  “Well, you’re camp director for the day,” Tracy said. “So whatever you say.”

  “Not sure I know what to do with this new I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-anything attitude of yours, Tracy.”

  “I do give a shit,” she said, not really knowing whether that was true.

  “Sure. But about what? That’s the question.”

  Tracy couldn’t disagree with that. Since she’d left Brendan in that hotel room almost a month ago, she’d been on a quest of sorts; a mission to re-order her priorities, clearing the decks, so to speak. Little things like eating regular meals, hair appointments and housecleaning didn’t make the cut, but she’d been a beast at work. And even though she’d been dodging his phone calls, Jason Miller had not pulled out his investment, which was a lucky thing since it would have raised some questions around the office. In some ways it would have been better had he decided to go elsewhere, because it seemed wrong somehow that she’d held on to the Miller account but lost Brendan.

  Apart from work, there wasn’t much else going on. She hadn’t seen Riley or her godson in ages either. Riley was still angry, even though Tracy explained to her that she’d taken her advice and told Brendan everything; the whole unvarnished truth about who Tracy Emerson really was, under all the expensive clothes, expertly-applied make-up and cool, calm demeanor. Brendan now knew the full ugly and not surprisingly, he couldn’t deal with it.

  And as the weeks wore on, the more she thought about it, the more upset Tracy became. Not that he was shocked by her past—after all who wouldn’t be? She was upset because when she told him she might go out with another man, instead of trying to persuade her not to, instead of claiming her as his, he’d thrown his cards in and walked away, but only after screwing her like she was nothing to him, refusing to kiss her . . . It wasn’t as though she’d never experienced that before, but coming from him it was unimaginably painful. It was almost as though he had sensed something about her that he did not yet consciously know: that she was the kind of woman that men treated like a whore.