True Love (and Other Lies)

by Whitney Gaskell

  I’d known for a while that my love life was not destined to be the subject of syrupy wedding toasts. The best I could hope for was to turn my hideous run-ins with the opposite sex into amusing anecdotes to be recounted at cocktail parties. This was the very reason I had stopped dating . . . or at least I had until I met Jack. But a single lapse, one toe barely dipped in the water, my hopes slightly raised that I’d met someone who was witty, smart, accomplished, and emotionally available, without any other obvious baggage to go along with it, and look what happened. He’d just broken up with my best friend.

  But then, looking at Maddy, and seeing the pain radiating from her sad eyes and bravely set chin, I realized that as confused and angry and upset as I was, this wasn’t something she could find out about. Having Harrison . . . I mean, Jack . . . break up with her had crushed her, had broken her heart. I’d never seen her so upset over a man—normally she was the one doing the breaking up, so even if she did worry about hurting a guy’s feelings, she herself wasn’t the one being rejected. How much worse would she feel if she found out that her best friend of nearly fifteen years had, less than six hours ago, been in bed with her ex? I shoved aside my frustration and disappointment, and made a rather rash decision.

  “Claire Spencer,” I said, holding my hand out to Jack in a rather formal way.

  He stared at me for a minute—I suppose considering what that very hand had been doing only a few hours earlier made a handshake seem farcical—but I widened my eyes, silently imploring him to play along. He hesitated for a long minute, looking back at me with inscrutable green-flecked eyes, not saying a word.

  He’s not going to play along, I thought unhappily.

  “Nice to meet you, Claire,” he said, and shook my hand.

  After that unpleasant episode, I escaped. I ran from the apartment, from them, like the coward I apparently was. I didn’t even have to feel guilty about abandoning Maddy (which was fortunate, as I was already overcome with guilt at having slept with the man who’d just broken her heart). Shortly after Jack had entered her flat, Maddy had asked him if they could talk privately. He’d agreed, and she nodded at me, letting me know that she was not only okay to be on her own with him, but that she’d prefer it if I left. And so I made my getaway, barely throwing a good-bye over my shoulder as I hurried out.

  I’d be lying if I said that the thought of perfect Maddy and perfect Jack sitting alone in Maddy’s perfect apartment discussing their previously perfect relationship didn’t make me a little jealous. It did. In fact, I was so overcome with jealousy, that I was—at the same time—hot, cold, nauseated, light-headed, nerved up, depressed, not to mention hyperventilating, and so incredibly unhappy at the thought of the two of them alone together that I’m surprised I didn’t literally turn an unflattering shade of pea green. Jack was supposed to be with me. Me! Not Maddy. For once, not Maddy.

  Maddy’s my friend, my best friend, and it wasn’t her fault that she was achingly beautiful. It wasn’t her fault that my clothes size runs to the double digits. It wasn’t her fault that one time when we were out having drinks, a man actually shoved me into a garbage can in order to get closer to her (and to Maddy’s credit, she was the one who pulled me out, before turning on the guy and assailing him with a tirade of salty four-letter invectives).

  But at that moment I hated her. I hated her glossy black hair, her snub little nose, her charming laugh, and—most of all—how tiny she was. I hated her for how easily everything came to her, I hated her for her ridiculously glamorous job, for her effortlessly chic apartment, for her thriving social life.

  And as for Jack . . . I knew he was too good to be true. I knew it. Only Jack wasn’t a Chaser—oh no, I’d gotten that part totally wrong. Instead, this guy who had seemed so perfect for me, such an incredible fit in every way—so much so that I had actually (although I’m mortified to admit this) thought for a minute that maybe I was wrong about the whole love-at-first-sight thing being bullshit—turned out to be the love of my best friend’s life.

  Of course something like this would happen. This was me after all, cursed Claire, ungainly Claire, poor, loveless, miserable, never-an-instant-winner Claire. I’m not the girl that stars in the romantic comedy opposite Hugh Grant—I’m the one they get to play her plump, homely sidekick. And now the pretty star of the film was about to win back the handsome man of her dreams, and look where that left me. I was alone, walking the streets of London (and completely lost at that, as I had no idea where I was going, nor where I had just come from). And then, to make matters just that much worse, it started to rain. And not a little sprinkle to give a good atmospheric feel to my present mood. Instead, huge, fat raindrops, the size of golf balls, started pouring down like the world was gearing up for some kind of biblical flood.

  “That’s just perfect,” I said out loud, which garnered some strange looks from passersby—all of whom were, I noticed, equipped with umbrellas (or brollies, or whatever the hell they call the damned things over here). Unlike me. “Just perfect.”

  When I got back to my hotel, my hair was plastered to either side of my head, my wool coat was heavy and dripping a trail across the floor, and my über-hip Nikes made sloshy squishing sounds as I walked across the room. I caught sight of myself in the mirror—I looked like a drowned rat. I stripped out of everything, took a steaming hot shower, donned my favorite, ugly flannel pajamas, and—after raiding the minibar for a Toblerone and the world’s smallest (and most expensive) bottle of white wine—nestled into bed, propping myself up against a couple of uncomfortable pillows. I only had a few more hours to get through, and then I would be on a plane back home, leaving this whole miserable mess behind.

  I turned on the television and flipped through the channels. My choices were a political panel, a game show, and an old rerun of The Simpsons. I turned it off and just lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, which, I noticed for the first time, was badly in need of a coat of paint. A hairline crack cut a pattern across the yellowing plaster, although I looked at it for a long time before I realized what I was seeing. I wasn’t really thinking about Jack and Maddy and me, although I wasn’t really thinking of anything else. I was just feeling . . . miserable.

  I tried to reason my way through it, hoping that a rational dissection of the situation would make everything seem less horrible. As for Maddy, unless Jack told her, there was no reason for her to know that he and I had slept together. And why would he tell her? Either they were going to stay broken up, in which case he wouldn’t be talking to her anyway, or they would get back together. If they did end up together, he certainly wouldn’t want to share our short, sordid history with her.

  And as far as Jack and I went . . . well, that was as over as it could be. It was only meant to be a vacation fling after all, even if I had been perilously close to forgetting that, and surely there was no way that Jack would be able to refuse Maddy’s pleas to give it another try.

  But, then again . . . although Jack had dated Maddy, and was now talking to her about that relationship, he had also broken up with her. And then pursued me.

  Of course, at the time he was choosing to do this, he hadn’t seen me naked, or Maddy and I side by side. It wasn’t too hard to imagine he was regretting his earlier choice. If I were him, I’d choose her over me, too. We lived on different continents, for one thing, and for another he was seriously out of my league. No, he wasn’t classically handsome, but he was sexy and very successful. Guys like that don’t have to be soap opera hunks to get the Maddys of the world.

  The message light on the phone was blinking, which I’d been trying to ignore without much success. I doubted that it was Jack—surely if he was having a big talk with Maddy, he hadn’t yet had time to call me, that is if he ever planned to call me again. And even if it was Jack, I wasn’t yet ready to talk to him. I hadn’t had time to compose what I was going to say, and I still needed some space and perspective, which would hopefully give me the strength to forget him.

  When I c
ouldn’t stand the insistent blinking any longer, I grabbed the receiver and punched the lit button. A well-honed BBC-type voice told me I had two messages. The first was from my boss, Robert. Double shit. And I’d thought he’d be too cheap to call me over here.

  “Claire. Robert. I need to get a status check on the London story. We had an editorial meeting on Friday, and we’re laying out a special issue on dream vacation destinations, and want to fit your London piece into it. Try to get a lot of material, because we’ll want to draw this one out. Oh, and I wasn’t happy with your piece on San Antonio. Let’s meet early Monday to go over the changes.”

  Oh God, I thought. I was screwed. I’d been so busy mooning over Jack and consoling Maddy that I hadn’t finished looking at my original list of hotels and restaurants, and now, at the last minute, my creep of a boss was expanding the assignment! He hadn’t even bothered to call and tell me about it on Friday, when he’d obviously known. I knew Robert hated me and had been itching to fire me—apparently he didn’t think my sardonic, incisive prose fit in with a magazine whose focus was pepping up the country’s seniors (and, to give him his due, he was probably right)—but to expect me to completely change the scope of the story at the last minute was too much, even for Robert. I’d be lucky if I could finish the original shorter travel piece—and to do so, I was going to have to get myself out of bed and back out into the London rain immediately, no matter how unpleasant the prospect seemed. But even if I did manage to see as much as I could over the next few hours, there was no way I was going to have time to expand my original list to include additional hotels and restaurants. I figured I could write up the sights I’d taken in on Friday with Jack, but it still wouldn’t be enough to carry a full-length feature piece.

  I was so busy panicking over the work crisis that I wasn’t really paying attention to the second message when it started to play, and so was taken aback when I heard Jack’s warm, slow voice in my ear.

  “Claire, hi, it’s me. Jack. Just wanted to see if we’re still on for this afternoon. I have to go take care of something, so I’ll call you when I’m back.” He paused, and I thought that was the end of the message, but then he continued on, sounding a little shy. “I had a great time yesterday, and I’m really looking forward to tonight. Bye.”

  The message service clocked the time of the message at one p.m.—he’d probably called just before he’d left for Maddy’s apartment. Just before we’d had our unfortunate—and bizarre—run-in.

  To my dismay, my stomach lurched at the sound of his voice.

  “Forget about him,” I reminded myself. As if saying it aloud would make it happen.

  I replaced the receiver on the phone, and it instantly started to ring. Knowing it was probably Robert again, calling to torture me, I picked up immediately.

  “Hello,” I said, between chews of the Toblerone bar.

  “Hi.”

  I froze, the chocolate bar an inch away from my lips. It wasn’t Robert after all . . . it was Jack. And I had absolutely no idea what to say to him. My insides, which only seconds earlier had been writhing with jealousy at the thought of him and Maddy together, had again turned to marshmallow fluff at the sound of his voice.

  “Oh . . . hi. I just got your message,” I said stupidly, lowering my hand.

  “I didn’t know if you’d call back, so I thought I’d try you again,” he said.

  “I couldn’t call back. I don’t have your phone number,” I pointed out.

  “Didn’t I leave it? I meant to,” he said, and then hesitated, perhaps waiting for me to respond. When I didn’t, he continued. “Why did you pretend like you and I had never met?”

  Well, he’s getting right to the point, I thought.

  “For starters, Maddy has been my best friend forever. How do you think it would make her feel to know we . . .” I groped for the right word, “um, slept together?”

  “I think she’s a grown-up and could handle the truth,” Jack said, thus demonstrating he lacked any insight whatsoever into the female heart.

  “Oh, please. It would have devastated her. She thought you were going to propose to her the other night,” I said, and then immediately felt flooded with guilt. Maddy had told me that in confidence, and I didn’t know if he was aware of her expectations.

  This is why you don’t sleep with your friend’s ex, I thought grimly. It wasn’t just the idea of your friend and your ex sleeping together that hurt, it was also that you knew they’d be sharing intimacies, and more to the point, talking about you. “Oh, she’s completely frigid, was never able to have an orgasm,” the ex might say, while the friend might agree, “Mmm-hmm, she told me about that. I recommended that she try a vibrator. But, you know, she’s always been uptight over that kind of thing.” It was the stuff that real mortification was made of.

  Jack sighed. “I’m very sorry that I hurt Maddy, and I do care about her. But I never said or did anything to make her think I wanted to marry her, and frankly, I’m amazed that she would think that, in light of . . . well, whatever. We only dated for six months, and even then, I’ve been traveling so much for work, that we rarely saw each other more than once a week.”

  I considered this. “Six months is a long time to continue dating someone you know you’re not in love with,” I said.

  “Haven’t you ever done that? Continued to see someone you knew wasn’t right for you, because he was a nice person, a decent person, and you were sick of going on bad dates?”

  I bit my lip and examined my Toblerone. I knew exactly what Jack was talking about. I was a single, thirty-two-year-old woman after all—up until my recent moratorium I’d been dating for sixteen years (I was a late bloomer—it wasn’t until the glasses were replaced by contacts, and the boys I’d been towering over finally had their growth spurts, that I saw any action). During that time, I’d been on my share of painfully bad dates, wondering all along, Do my friends who set me up with these guys really think that a man who bathes in Polo cologne, wears a chunky gold bracelet, and neglects his nose hair is a good match for me? So, yes, if I occasionally went out with a man who was able to chew with his mouth closed and hold an intelligent conversation, I might continue to see him even if he didn’t get my insides humming.

  “Please believe me, Claire. I wasn’t using Maddy. I did like her—she’s a great person in a lot of ways. But there was just never that spark between us,” Jack continued.

  Aha! This was one of those Mars-Venus approaches to dating. Yes, I might have dinner again with someone I didn’t click with, if he was nice enough and I’d enjoyed spending time with him. But unlike Jack and most men in the same position, I wouldn’t sleep with someone I wasn’t interested in. Dinner, yes. Sex, no.

  Well, okay, there was that one time. His name was Peter something . . . damn, I totally blanked on his last name. There hadn’t been that many guys in my past, shouldn’t I be able to remember all of their names? In any event, Peter was an ungainly man with a weak chin, narrow shoulders, and a potbelly, and I didn’t find him remotely attractive. But I was still licking my wounds after being dumped by the odious Sawyer, and Peter was sweet. Spending time with him was like a salve for my bruised ego. He was bright and witty and took me to interesting places—the symphony, the Museum of Modern Art, a weekend at his parents’ picturesque weekend house in the Hudson Valley. We dated casually for a few months, and did sleep together during that time, although in order to get through the encounters, I tried not to think about the way his paunch rubbed against me, and instead closed my eyes and pretended he was Matt Damon. And when I started to get the feeling that he was eyeing me for something a bit more permanent (I think his taking me to meet his parents was the clue), I ended things with him as gently as I could. I felt like a shit for doing it, and for feeling relieved that I didn’t have to sleep with him again.

  It was completely different for men. In fact, it was probably the promise of a steady diet of sex with a supple beauty like Maddy that kept Jack around for as long as six mo
nths, even if he truly wasn’t interested in her. A vivid picture of Maddy and Jack together suddenly began rolling in the cinema of my mind—her lithe, compact body straddling his long, lanky one, her head tossed back and breasts thrust forward, silky hair cascading down over creamily perfect skin, Jack’s eyes wide with admiration and lust. I squeezed my eyes shut and gritted my teeth, trying to banish the unwanted imagery from my thoughts. Knowing that the two of them had been together made my mouth taste bitter, and I mentally catalogued all of my flabby bits and what they must have looked like to someone who was used to Maddy’s sleek, nymphlike body.

  “She thought there was,” I said, my tone more glacial than I meant it to be. After all, I could hardly be angry that a man I didn’t even have an established relationship with now had slept with someone before he met me. Could I?

  “I know. And as soon I figured that out, I ended things with her. I never lied to her,” Jack said. He paused. “Or to you.”

  “It’s just . . . this is just so . . . awkward. Maddy is an old, old friend, and she’s already upset by your breakup. I don’t want to add to that. And I don’t like drama,” I said.

  “I know it’s all weird as hell. But I would like to see you again. We . . . you and I, I mean . . . I think that there’s something there,” he said.

  The rabid swarm of butterflies that had taken up residence in my stomach since meeting Jack began careening around again. Damn . . . I didn’t know a man could still do that to me. I thought that when you got to a certain age you were immune to those nervous emotional flutterings. And this wasn’t just any guy. It was Jack, also known as Maddy’s dreamy, to-die-for Harrison (Why did she call him by his last name? Why?). For her sake, for the sake of girlfriendhood everywhere, the next words out of my mouth should have been, I’m sorry, but I can’t see you anymore. Or maybe I should go into more detail and say, You seem like a very nice man, and under different circumstances I might like to get to know you better, but if I continued to see you it would hurt someone who is very important to me, and I’m just not willing to do that. Yes, that sounded good, particularly if I said it with a crisp finality that would put an end to any further discussion, and would leave Jack admiring me for my strong moral code. And when I started to speak, that’s what I truly meant to say.