Always Something There to Remind Me

by Beth Harbison

“Hey,” I said on a slightly impatient sigh.

  He laughed at me. “Don’t poke the bear in the morning, huh?” He was quoting something I’d said once when he thought it was funny to goad me when I was too tired for good manners.

  I looked at him through narrowed, puffy eyes. “It’s never a good idea to poke the bear.”

  “But sometimes it’s fun.” He got up and stretched. I watched him. He really was a good-looking man. He had an amazing physique, and the kind of face that made fans of Disney high school movies swoon. Blue eyes, strong jaw, perfect straight nose, shaggy brown hair. He was Zac Efron with a few more years and an edge.

  And he was mine.

  Why wasn’t I happier about that?

  Because I was tired and work was a drag right now, that was all. It was nothing to do with Nate, I told myself. That incident needed to just be a blip on my radar. It was a one-night stand, although it was daytime, and Nate was just a stranger with a familiar face.

  If anything, it made me more grateful for Rick. I mean, seriously, if you were going to compare the two, Rick was technically far better-looking. Any woman faced with both on a dating Web site would opt for Rick in a heartbeat.

  Nate’s charm was more subtle.

  I hauled myself out of bed and gave Rick a peck on the cheek as I passed him on the way to the shower.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  “Yes. Lots.”

  “You got it.”

  What was not to love about this guy?

  Was I always going to be the idiot that pined for the one guy who would never really love me?

  An hour later I arrived at work after twenty-five minutes of sitting still in bumper-to-bumper traffic. When I got there, Jeremy was off, but he’d sent me an e-mail regarding the Brettman wedding that was taking place now in two days—the bride wanted a champagne fountain, was it too late for that?

  No, you can always get a champagne fountain. That’s because champagne fountains suck. The wine loses its effervescence once it’s spat out the tiny holes into waiting flutes, suits, and children’s hair. Champagne fountains might as well be called Chardonnay fountains, but no one ever believes me when I try to warn them of that.

  Still, I made a call to the future Mrs. Brettman, trying to make her see sense. She ignored my warnings and I went ahead and ordered the fountain, along with two cases of Prosecco, which she had agreed to because it would save her about seven hundred dollars over her initial choice.

  By late afternoon, I’d finished everything that was on my day’s to-do list and was sitting at my desk, bracing myself for the inevitable whiny call from Roxanne. She’d tried me three times already during the day and each time I told her to call me back later. The first time “later” had meant seven minutes to her, but then she had to go to the mall where the cell phone reception was bad, so it seemed I had a stay of execution until she was finished.

  I checked my e-mail. Jordan wanted to know if I’d found Nate yet.

  No, I wrote, a little stab of guilt at the lie. I think I’m actually beyond that now.

  My phone rang not three minutes later.

  “Okay, what’s going on?” Jordan asked.

  “I saw him,” I said without preamble.

  “What?”

  “When I was at my mom’s for the cookout the other day, I went for a walk and went by Nate’s old house.” I don’t know why I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what happened then. “He was there, painting it for his mom.”

  “And?”

  I hesitated. “You won’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  There was a lot of stuff she probably wouldn’t believe.

  “He’s married…”

  Her sharp intake of breath told me she would be as blindsided as I was.

  “… to Theresa.”

  There was a long pause then. Finally, she asked, “Theresa who?”

  She didn’t know. Deep inside, I have to say, I was relieved. “Theresa,” I said. Then added, though it was bitter in my mouth, “Theresa Lawson.”

  “You do not mean Theresa Carson.”

  God, just hearing her name made me feel nauseated. Made it that much more real. “Yes.”

  “No way,” Jordan said. “You’re full of shit and I’m not buying it. It’s not April Fool’s Day and you know I hate this kind of joke.”

  I closed my eyes tightly and said, “It’s not a joke. Theresa is looking adorable, like a little modern Audrey Hepburn, working for charity, being basically the nicest person in the world and fucking my boyfriend. Only now he’s her husband and I can’t do any of those things. I never could have made him happy. I probably never did.”

  “There’s no way he’d prefer her over you. Even I know Nate better than that.”

  “Neither of us knows Nate anymore,” I said. And, seriously, I was sick of trying to figure him out. He seemed to be on my mind all the time lately. I was unraveling.

  While I was giving instructions for the placement of the champagne fountain for the Brettman wedding, in my mind I was thinking about his tongue trailing down my abdomen.

  Tallying my expense reports I could feel his breath on my neck, like he was right behind me.

  And sitting here in my office talking to Jordan all I could really think about was his mouth, warm and open, on mine, his tongue touching mine.…

  But that was never going to happen again.

  Ever.

  Trying to change the subject, I pushed her instead. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing of any interest at all, but nice try. We were talking about you. Did anything else happen? Did you guys talk or just wave or what?”

  We had hard-core sex on his old bed. “We just talked. It was awkward, especially once the Theresa thing came up.”

  “I bet. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  I sat down. “It’s surprising how much it sucks. You know I’ve never been a jealous person in my life. Now, suddenly, a hundred times a day I have to push visions of them doing the deed out of my head. I mean, Nate and Theresa! It’s just … I can’t believe I’m able to be hurt by this so long after it ended, but it’s killing me!”

  “I understand that,” she said. “But you need to have some perspective. It did end. A long time ago. Who they are today isn’t who they were then; and even though I know this feels like a betrayal—and probably a huge one—it’s not.”

  “I know. I guess.”

  “No, you know. It’s been more than two decades. You’ve spent more time without him than you spent alive before you were with him! That’s a lot of time.”

  Put that way, it made me feel like an even bigger loser than I’d already felt like. I was pining for a guy I’d known only two years. Granted, it was two formative years, two intense years, two unforgettable years, but it was two years out of almost forty now.

  Being upset about this was crazy.

  But knowing that wasn’t going to make me stop feeling this way. It was only going to make me feel stupid and heartbroken. I had to get off the phone before Jordan pointed out any other big obvious problems with what I was feeling. “Listen, can we talk about this later? I’ve got to run now. I have a work thing.”

  “Sure! Anytime, honey. I’m here for you.”

  “I appreciate that.” I hung up the phone, knowing she meant it.

  But I’d never felt so alone.

  * * *

  I suppose the timing was actually good, if I could say anything related to Roxanne’s party was “good.” It certainly kept me busy, and what kept me busy at work kept me from thinking about Nate so much. Not that the thoughts didn’t creep in, because they did, but every time I had one it seemed like someone showed up with a crisis of some sort or other.

  Roxanne, for her part, simply assumed no one around her had a private life. “Justin is telling people he’s not coming,” she complained to me one day when she was supposed to be picking from the samples the caterer had prepared.

  “Maybe that’s lucky for yo
u,” I suggested. Certainly if Justin wasn’t there I was sure it would be better for me.

  “How can you say that?” she wailed in a voice I had previously only heard her use on her mother.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I shouldn’t. But, Roxanne, I have been where you are, and I swear having some woman he doesn’t even know call and hound him about coming to your party is not going to work.” No point in sugarcoating things for her. “It’s just going to make you look like a complete loser.”

  She gasped. “Did he say that?”

  “No, but he might as well have.” I sighed and gave her my most heartfelt advice. “The only thing that really interests certain types of guys—in fact, most guys—is if you’re not interested. So if you could possibly resist calling him, texting him, and otherwise contacting him for a few days, you might find he has a turnaround.”

  “But … I gave myself to him! He owes me for that!”

  “Wait.” I didn’t know how to process this. So much information. Too much. “You mean he was your first?” Not that he’d owe her anything for that.

  Or would he?

  “No,” she said, like I was an idiot. “But, you know, we did it.”

  I sighed. But for a minute there I’d felt sorry for her and the reason struck me: if he’d been her first, would he have owed her something?

  It wouldn’t have been legally enforceable, in any way, of course. Even the moral police would have a hard time making a public case for it.

  But something about giving your virginity to a guy makes you fragile where he’s concerned, even if you’re strong everywhere else. It’s the most tender interaction a girl can have. And obviously virginity can never be retrieved, but it—and more specifically the loss of it—sure can work on you psychologically in a lot of ways for a long time.

  Nate could never have understood that. He never could have understood all the things he broke, in my heart and mind, by leaving so coldly and not speaking to me again for so long.

  But he should have known that, no matter what he thought I’d done, I’d given him the best of my love and that deserved more respect than that. It was hard to contemplate. I was mad and sad and a hundred years too old to be all of those things all at the same time.

  Meanwhile, Roxanne was looking at me impatiently.

  I handed her a chicken finger. “Try this. Parmesan chicken tender.”

  She took a bite, then nodded. “Is there ketchup to dip them in?”

  “Well, there’s a honey-lime aioli,” I said, and then, upon seeing her blank stare, added, “And we can put ketchup out too.”

  “Sweet!” She took another chicken finger and scarfed it down as we moved through the appetizers and on to the mini-cheesecakes the chef proposed for dessert. “Do you really think if I ignore him, he’ll come back?” she asked me after shoveling about twelve cheesecake bites in her mouth.

  I chose my words carefully. “I think if he’s going to come back at all, it will only be because he notices you’re not hanging around.”

  “Do you promise?”

  Why not? “Sure.”

  “But next weekend is Katie Anderson’s pool party and I wanted him to go with me!”

  I nodded. “That’s the thing about breaking up. There’s always something coming right up that makes it a particularly bad time to split up. The holidays, Thanksgiving, your birthday, Valentine’s Day, a big party. There’s always something.” I just couldn’t let go of the Virginity Debt idea. “It sucks.”

  She smiled then. “It does!”

  For just a moment, we had a connection.

  Then she said, in that determined-child voice, “But at least you promised he’s coming to my party.”

  I blanched at that. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I didn’t promise he’d come to the party!” There was no way she was going to report to Jeremy that I’d made a promise that wasn’t kept. “Only that your best bet for him reconsidering is if you leave him alone.”

  Her face crumpled. “It’s hard!”

  “Oh, boy, I know that.” I shook my head in sympathy. My inclination was to put an arm around her, but I seriously thought she might rail at that. But I knew what would work. “It’s the worst.” I handed her another cheesecake bite.

  She took it and popped it into her mouth.

  Maybe I’d just follow her around her party with a tray of cheesecake—it seemed to keep her happy.

  “So what happened with your boyfriend?” she asked me.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You seem to know a lot about being dumped. What happened to you?”

  Despite her sugared words, for some reason I didn’t feel like confiding in her. “Oh. Well. He … went off to college. We lost touch.”

  Once again, it was like I felt his breath on my neck.

  His mouth on mine.

  His hands on me.

  “Excuse me, ladies?”

  Saved! I turned to see Bill Watts, the associate producer, standing there, a cameraman behind him.

  “Yes?” I asked cautiously.

  He gave a laugh. “Pippa was hoping for some footage of the tasting here.”

  I stepped back, too far for him to have both of us in the frame. “Get the food. And, of course, the birthday girl!”

  He nudged me back into the frame. “And the party planner.”

  I looked at him pleadingly. “Is this really necessary?”

  “It’s Pippa’s thing. Showing the help interacting with the privileged party girl.” He shrugged an apology.

  Of course, I knew he was just being honest. “What happened to Jeremy?” I asked, knowing that he would be more than willing to be the help in exchange for some air time. “I thought he was back in action.”

  “Here I am! Here I am!” Jeremy was speed-walking over, and even from a distance of twenty yards I could see that he was heavily made up.

  “What’s with the makeup?” Bill asked me under his breath. “Does he always do this?”

  “Only for TV,” I said, wincing as Jeremy came closer into view.

  “Oooh.” Bill chuckled, as did a few others around us.

  “This gets me off the hook, right?” I asked.

  “You bet. I’m sure Pippa will find it quirky and amusing.” He met my eyes and smiled. “Personally, I’d rather look at you than Norma Desmond over there, but I know you don’t want to do it.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “Okay.” He gestured to the cameraman to get some footage of Jeremy prancing over.

  The minute he did, though, Jeremy assumed the blank look of someone who was pretending he didn’t know the camera was on and he lifted his chin to reveal his left side—he’d told me earlier he’d decided that was his “good angle”—which meant he didn’t see where he was going.

  He tripped over the camera cord rather spectacularly, flying into the edge of the table. As a final insult, the leg broke and all of the food came tumbling down on top of him.

  It was like watching a Jerry Lewis movie.

  “Omigod, I didn’t get to try all of that yet!” Roxanne shrieked, as if that were the point.

  I hurried over to him. “Jeremy! Are you okay?”

  He raised his head and I could practically see the stars circling around him like in a cartoon. “I think so.”

  Mascara or eyeliner—or more likely both—was smudged under his right eye, and the creamy cheesecake was smeared into his hair.

  Already I could see his eye was beginning to swell.

  “Looks like you’re gonna have quite a shiner there, buddy,” Bill said behind me, reaching a hand out to help Jeremy up.

  “A black eye?” Jeremy raised his hand to his cheek and winced. “How much will it swell?”

  “Less if you get ice on it right away,” Bill said.

  “I’ll take you to get an ice pack,” I volunteered.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Jeremy said, waving me away. He was clearly coming to realize he would be less of a spectacle if he slunk off on his own to handle
this.

  Bill looked at me apologetically. “Looks like you’re back on the hook.”

  I sighed heavily. “He’s going to be out of commission for days, isn’t he?” I remembered how embarrassed he’d been about his imaginary zit. A genuine black eye and swollen cheek were probably going to go over considerably worse.

  “Any chance you’d let me go if I conked myself in the head?” I suggested.

  Bill laughed and shook his head.

  “Um, what are you going to do about the food?” Roxanne demanded.

  The cameraman edged closer to her and asked, “Would it make you mad if they didn’t have more for you to try?”

  “But we—” I began.

  Roxanne glared at the camera. “I will be so mad if they don’t have food for me to sample! This is my only sixteenth birthday party and I want everything to go just right.”

  “She’s a pro,” Bill said quietly behind me. “She’s obviously watched the show before.”

  I tried to keep a straight face as we watched the cameraman feed her questions that could later be edited out so that Roxanne seemed to be giving a standard reality-show “diary room” type interview.

  She was amazing, I have to say. Ghastly. As snotty as you can imagine, but if she’d been improvising the role of one of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters, she would have been heralded as a genius by critics.

  “This might work,” Bill said in a low voice. “She’s got some good stuff going. Pippa will love it. You might just find yourself on the cutting room floor.”

  I nodded. A bitch fit like Roxanne was building up to would be too good for this terrible show to let go.

  “And I wanted horses, right?” Roxanne was saying. “And they were all, No, no, no we can’t get horses. Like horses are that hard to find!” She rolled her eyes. “And eagles! I mean, how many people have eagles fly away at their wedding? But noooo, we can’t get eagles either.”

  Eagles. It was just preposterous.

  But I kept mum and let her talk. And talk. And talk.

  Finally she got around to Justin. I knew she would. “All I want,” she lamented, “is for my boyfriend Justin to come back from … the war. On time for my party.”

  I shot a look at her.

  “He’s in Afghan,” she finished, with a sad nod.