The One Who Got Away

by Caroline Overington

  Emma, Emma … jeepers, all I can remember is that she was British and thank God she was living with us, because she paid her share of the rent, which is more than I can say for Nadine, which is hilarious when you think about it because I mean, I haven’t seen Nadine for years, but when I do see her – in magazines and on the TV – she’s on the red carpet, dripping Harry Winston diamonds and rocking Gucci couture, whereas when I knew her, she had money for cigarettes and black toenail polish, and that was about it.

  Nadine Perez, twelve years ago, was broke.

  Anyway, the point is that Nadine Perez was the first person I confided in about David and she was … well, let’s say sceptical.

  ‘This man, David Wynne-Estes, I know this man,’ she said, tapping the ash from her cigarette into the brick courtyard four floors below. ‘You be careful, Loren.’

  ‘You know David?’ I said, surprised. ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘Not him. I know a man like him,’ she said impatiently. ‘A man like him, I’ve met before. These men, they’re bachelors. You must watch yourself, Loren. You’re going to get hurt.’

  Did I listen?

  No.

  Do we ever?

  No.

  Would Nadine be proven right? Yes, because just six months into what I considered our relationship – our wild, funny, mutually supportive, madly sexy relationship – David ended it.

  Didn’t expect that, did you?

  No. Me either. But that’s what happened. David called me into his office at Book-IT – his glass-walled office on the upper floor, with who knows how many Book-IT staff trying to think of a reason to hurry past and get a quick look inside – and dumped me.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, and I genuinely could not compute what he was telling me.

  ‘Oh, Loren. We’ve had a good time. But I wasn’t intending this – me and you – to be something exclusive,’ said David, ‘I mean, you’re great! But the thing is, there’s this other girl, and I want to see where that relationship might go.’

  There was another girl? But how could that even be? I was so shocked that I burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said David, rushing to close the door (not that it helped, because: glass-walled office). ‘Oh, Loren, please. Stop this. Stop this now. Don’t cry.’

  To be clear, he wasn’t upset. People were walking past and gawking in. He was embarrassed.

  ‘Please stop, Loren,’ David said, looking around for something to mop up my tears. ‘Loren, please. This is crazy. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to hurt you.’

  Again, this made no sense. If he didn’t want to hurt me, then why was he leaving me?

  ‘But we’ve been happy,’ I said, chest heaving. ‘Why not find out where this is going? Leave her and stay with me. What has she got that I haven’t? I thought we were in love.’

  Oh yes, I went there. And it gets worse. You know all those rules about keeping your dignity after a breakup? About not calling and texting and sobbing? About keeping your head high? I broke all of them. All of them. I called David long after he’d made it clear that he didn’t want me to call anymore. I texted him vague messages like, Thursday 6pm best for me to see if he might text me back, saying: Sorry, what? so I could then pretend that I’d sent the message to the wrong person (that didn’t work, either). I turned up on his street corner, where I jogged up and down in one spot in my Lycra gym pants, hoping that he might come out and see me and say, ‘Wow, Loren, you are gorgeous. Come on back to your rightful place – in my bed.’

  None of it worked. David had dumped me, and he wasn’t playing games. His calls and texts to me just stopped. Bang. So brutal. Like I hadn’t existed. I remember Molly telling me: ‘Look, it’s probably for the best. Cutting you dead, it’s harsh, but it’s so much better than letting you hang on, wondering whether he might come back …’

  Which was all well and good, but I was hurting like hell. When I wasn’t at work or jogging, I was moping.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I sobbed to Nadine. ‘What did I do wrong?’

  ‘This isn’t about you,’ she said. ‘I told you, this man is a player. Now, enough. Week after week, you’re in bed. You need to get up. You need to stop. You need to move on.’ With that, she tried to drag the covers off me.

  ‘I can’t move on,’ I said, snatching them back. ‘I’m devastated. I’ve got a broken heart.’

  ‘You have not got a broken heart. You have a broken head. You dated. You broke up. This happens, Loren. To thousands of girls in this city, every day. You know what you must do. Get back on the donkey.’

  She meant the horse. But who wanted a horse? Not me. I wanted David, a situation made infinitely worse by the fact that I was still seeing him – literally, I was still seeing him every day, because we worked together at Book-IT – until one day, when he simply disappeared.

  * * *

  ‘What the hell happened?’

  I was standing outside David’s office, looking in. The entire staff was doing the same. His desk – a desk that I knew intimately from all the times he’d called me in to sit on it – had been wiped clean.

  ‘Where is everything?’

  All the things that normally covered his desk – the baseball signed by Derek Jeter, the two computer screens he needed to watch the stock market, the miniature rake resting in the sandbox – were gone.

  David’s posters – WINNERS GET UP ONE MORE TIME– were gone, too.

  ‘Why doesn’t anyone ask me what happened, because I happen to know.’ It was whiny Marvin, the least likeable of the unpaid interns we had slaving at Book-IT.

  ‘What do you know?’ I said.

  ‘The guy who worked in there,’ said Marvin, ‘the jerk with the dollar-sign cufflinks like he’s Michael Douglas in Wall Street and hello, it’s the new millennium?’

  Yes, that was David.

  ‘Well, he got a call to come in on the weekend, and then when he got here, lawyer types were waiting for him,’ Marvin said. ‘Guys in suits. Guys with ties. They had this big, closed-door meeting. Next thing, he walked out.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Because I got a call to come in, too. I was standing right here when he came out of there. The lawyers, they told me: “Go in, pack up all his stuff, and take it to him.” Which I did. He lives on Mercer. You should see the apartment. It’s got all this fancy furniture: that famous leather chair with the footstool, one of those arc lamps.’

  Yes, I remembered.

  ‘But what did he say?’ I said anxiously. ‘Was he upset, or …?’

  ‘He wasn’t upset. He just said, put those things there, and those things there, and while I was doing that, he told me that it was no big deal, he was planning on leaving New York anyway.’

  That hit me like a hammer. David was leaving New York? But why? To go where? And how was I going to get him back if that happened?

  ‘He’s going back to his home town.’ Marvin shrugged. ‘He said something about his mom being sick, and he felt sad to be going because he would have stayed a bit longer to keep the company out of trouble.’

  ‘Out of trouble? What does that mean?’

  ‘He didn’t say, only that he thought they’d regret asking him to go because he was the one holding everything together. Like, how arrogant can you get?’

  I looked back into David’s empty office. His title at Book-IT had been Vice-President, Capital Raising, meaning he was in charge of finding investors, and since we were a start-up – i.e. not making any money – he could well have been holding the place together.

  ‘Maybe he’s right,’ I said, ‘maybe we are in trouble.’

  I rushed home from work to tell Nadine.

  ‘So they must have caught him,’ she said, because Nadine is smart like that.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, because I’m dumb like that.

  ‘The amount of money he was throwing around – the apartment on Mercer, all those fancy clothes and paying for every round –
it had to be coming from somewhere.’

  ‘But he was really high up, and they were paying him a lot,’ I said indignantly, and loyally.

  ‘Sure they were,’ said Nadine, grinding her cigarette butt against the fire escape. ‘Believe me, Loren, nobody gets marched out of the building on a Sunday unless they’ve been stealing.’

  * * *

  David left Book-IT in the summer. I stayed on, as did most of the staff. Whatever calamity he predicted might come from his departure never eventuated. We went from strength to strength. I got promoted from a cubicle to an office, and I promoted myself from the smallest bedroom in our little apartment to a one-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side.

  There was no contact between me and David, and I do mean none. He had lost his Book-IT email when he left and I couldn’t find a forwarding address; he’d had to hand back his cell, and I didn’t have his new number. Nadine encouraged me to quit moping and enjoy New York, which I did, to a point, but when your heart gets broken, it gets broken, and there’s not much you can do to fix it, except give it time.

  And then bang.

  Yes, you guessed it. I ran into David. Literally. I crashed into him, on the corner of Park and 45th.

  David was first to speak. ‘Hey, hey, hey, easy there, girl,’ and then, as we collected ourselves, he said: ‘Oh my God, it’s Loren Franklin! What are the chances? How the hell are you, Loren? How long has it been?’

  It had been four years.

  ‘You look amazing,’ he said. ‘What the hell are you doing with yourself?’

  Truth be told, right at that moment, I was struggling to get a word out. It was just such a shock to see him again, and he hadn’t changed at all. He still had the dark hair, the blue eyes, the deep voice, and I don’t know, I just couldn’t seem to get a hold of myself.

  ‘Me? I’m not doing anything,’ I said, ‘I’m just walking along.’

  ‘Oh come on. You must be doing something. You’re not still at Book-IT?’

  As a matter of fact, yes, I was, but for some reason I said: ‘No,’ and then: ‘I mean, yes! Yes, I’m still at Book-IT. Not at the same job.’

  I was talking gibberish.

  ‘So they promoted you?’ he said. ‘It was only ever a matter of time. You’ll end up running that place.’

  ‘Why did they fire you?’ I spluttered, thinking: Oh, gee, Loren, did you really just say that?!

  David threw back his head and laughed. ‘Is that what they told people? They didn’t fire me! I quit. I had to go home to Bienveneda. Mom had a bit of a health scare. But now I’ve started a business there. Capital Shrine. I do capital raising, investment, same as I used to do for Book-IT, but now I do it for me.’

  ‘Oh right,’ I said, and then – inexplicably – ‘and you come to New York?’

  Like he wasn’t standing in the streets of Manhattan? Like capital raising doesn’t happen in New York? I wanted to slap myself.

  ‘I do,’ said David, smiling. ‘I come quite often. I’ve been thinking about getting a place here because you know, the hotels are a bit dingy and small.’

  I didn’t know. I’d never stayed in a New York City hotel. I heard from people that they were small, but would David be staying in a small room in a dodgy hotel? I didn’t think so. To look at David – and I couldn’t take my eyes off him – was to see a man doing well for himself. Maybe I couldn’t have put a price tag on it then, but his elegant suit must have been expensive, and the cufflinks were still there.

  ‘But hey, what about you?’ he asked. ‘Still in that little apartment of yours? The one you shared with Nadine? You know I saw her at something the other day … not saw-saw, in person, but in a magazine. Magnificent.’

  I felt a twinge of jealousy. I knew the shots he meant. Nadine had made the cover of Fancy. She wasn’t wearing much: knickers and lipstick, and she had a cigarette dangling from her bottom lip. It was all very black-and-white and arty, and no, of course I wasn’t still sharing with her. Nadine had taken off one weekend for what she said was a test shoot for a Hollywood pilot, after which we’d never seen her again, except in magazines. Nadine had made it.

  ‘And what about Emma what’s-her-name?’ said David. ‘Do you still see her?’

  I didn’t. Emma was also gone, off to Boston to do her MBA.

  ‘So, you’re all alone?’ he said, in mock sympathy.

  ‘Ha-ha! I’m not alone, no …’

  What was I talking about!? I was living alone in my newly leased, one-bedroom apartment, which I somehow found myself telling David came with a washer–dryer combo that wasn’t in the basement but in the kitchen …

  ‘Woo hoo,’ said David, smiling.

  Was I standing there on that busy corner, surrounded by honking cars and dog-walkers, rabbiting on about my washer– dryer combo? Apparently yes. To myself, I said: Just shut up, Loren, can you just shut up? Because you’re coming across as such an idiot. No wonder this guy left you.

  But hey … he wasn’t leaving now. No. David was still standing where we had stopped, on the street corner, chatting and smiling. The pedestrian lights had changed not once, but twice. We were in people’s way and he did not care. Let them push around us. David was busy, gazing at me.

  ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to go. But hey, what a coincidence. And do you know, when I was flying in from LAX yesterday, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be cool if I ran into Loren Franklin? And here you are. So weird. And you look so great. But hey, listen, I have to get moving. But it was so good to see you.’

  ‘Right. It was so good to see you, too.’

  David smiled. ‘And hey,’ he said, leaning in to kiss my cheek, ‘if you’re ever over on the West Coast, promise me you’ll look me up?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Good stuff,’ he said, and then he was gone, swallowed up by the sea of people that is Manhattan on a midweek day.

  And me? I almost collapsed. Had there been a wall behind me, I would have slumped against it and slid down, down, down, right onto the ground. David Wynne-Estes had returned to the city for one day and he had walked straight into me.

  Forget the fridge filled with cold and dead things, over which we’d once met. Was this an omen? Also, what was it that David had said: If you’re ever on the West Coast, promise you’ll look me up.

  Like I was ever on the West Coast. I was never on the West Coast. The West Coast was where I’d grown up. The West Coast was in my past. My future was in New York City. No way was I going back to Bienveneda. I mean, that’s just madness.

  * * *

  Who agreed with my decision to try to chase David down after that chance meeting? Well, I was no longer in touch with Nadine, but I could imagine her response, as she sucked back on a ciggie: ‘Have you lost your mind? This man, he is a player. This man, he is never settling down.’

  Maybe so, but I felt like I had to give it a shot.

  Why?

  Where is the woman who has never recalled a past encounter and wondered deep down in her heart, if he was the one, The One Who Got Away?

  I’m not talking now about the first guy you ever dated. That would be crazy. Who looks back on the first guy they ever dated and thinks: Wow, I wish I was still with him? Nobody. Alright, almost nobody. No, the guy I’m talking about is somebody who came along after you’d already had a serious boyfriend or two. He was somebody you hung out with for a while and maybe you weren’t even sure if you wanted him, or else you met him on holidays and had a bit of a hot fling with him, or else he was married, in which case we just won’t go there.

  It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you were with him, and now you’re not but he still plays on your mind. Sitting in traffic, you find yourself wondering: Why did we break up?

  What would my life be like if we’d stayed together?

  Would I be happier?

  Would I be more fulfilled? More satisfied, sexually? More content on every level?

  David was that guy to me. He was my One Who Got Away.
>
  I’d been absolutely head-over-heels in love with him, I got dumped and I never quite got over it. Don’t say I didn’t try, because by the time we ran into each other on that street corner in New York I had been without David in my life for far longer than I’d ever been with him. I had dated other guys. I had been in what might even be called other relationships.

  I still thought about David up to twenty times a day.

  What was he doing? Did he ever think about me? Did he ever regret his decision? Did he ever think of tracking me down?

  On the face of it, the answer to those questions was: No. Because he never had tried to track me down. But then again, what had he said when we ran into each other?

  Don’t forget to look me up if you’re ever in town.

  I was never in town. Bienveneda wasn’t the kind of place I ever felt like visiting. In part, that was because my mom had passed. Dad was still there, as was Molly, but, I don’t know, the place no longer felt like home.

  On the other hand, David was there. And I guess I just had to know, was there something between us, or not? I wanted – maybe I even needed – to find out and so, a week or so after that chance encounter, I reached out to Molly.

  hey, I texted, miss u

  Molly’s reply came straight back.

  hey! I miss u 2 sister!

  It was exactly what I was hoping she would say.

  maybe we should get together how about i come and see u?

  Molly texted back: YES – when?

  The most obvious time seemed to be Dad’s birthday, which was then about three weeks away. It wasn’t a big birthday – he had already turned fifty – but Molly said that if I was going to be in town, she would organise a party, which sounded like fun.

  ‘Where do you think he’ll want to go?’ I said.

  ‘Where do you think?’ she replied, ‘BENIHANA.’

  I laughed. Is Benihana my favourite restaurant? No, but I had good memories of going there with Dad and even now, I can remember how glamorous I once thought those sweating Japanese chefs were, with their headbands, and their skill at setting fire to onion stacks.

  ‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘It’ll be like old times.’