I recognized them from fifty feet away and immediately froze.
The LRS looked at me standing there in shock as if I’d just witnessed a murder. If he said something right then, I didn’t hear it. I was too busy looking at my ex-boyfriend eating dinner with another woman. There was a part of me viewing it from a very detached place, thinking, “Oh, how dramatic. I’ve just run into my ex on a date with my manager! What good blog material!” Then there was the fragile part of me that had been trying to heal for months, that felt like it had just been thrown against a wall and shattered.
“Oh my God,” I murmured.
The LRS walked back toward me. “What IS it?” he said.
“In the window,” I said. “It’s my ex.”
“The guy who—”
“Yes.” Now we both stood staring. The two of them hadn’t seen us yet. They were too busy looking at each other and wadding fries into their mouths.
“Dude. Is that his new girlfriend?”
“Yes,” I said, anger toward the two of them appearing as a wave offshore. If the LRS said anything about her being “hot,” I would seriously turn around and kick him in his magnificent crotch.
“I wouldn’t date her,” he said in a conversational tone. I laughed, but the laugh had no joy in it. The wave of anger was about to swamp me. A few seconds ago, I’d wanted to turn and run away as fast as I could. Now, though, I wanted to do something else.
“Wait here,” I said to him, my jaw clenched.
Then I strode up to the window. My cheeks blazed. The closer I got, the more details I could see. He wore his standard black winter turtleneck. His monobrow was back in force above his tiny glasses. Apparently she didn’t insist that he shave it! Her curly red hair, I noticed in shock, was in pigtails, a style I often wear my hair in, but had never once seen on her. Instead of looking cute and perky, however, the springy pigtails and the smeared pink lipstick made her look like an older Pippi Longstocking who’s been let out of the mental institution on a day pass.
Just as I noticed her abominable pigtails, she noticed me. Loser was still tucking into his French fries. She froze for a second, then quickly looked down.
I had no thought for my job as I walked toward that window. My only thought was I want them to see me seeing them. As I continued my march, she must have said something to him, because he did not look up. Instead, he swiveled his stool to face the inside of the restaurant, so all I saw was his back. The back I had curled up against during so many cold nights. Then she turned her back too.
But it didn’t stop me. I walked right up to the window. Gave them a second to turn around. They didn’t, of course. Then I rapped on the window. Lightly. My heart pounded like crazy. Why was I doing this?
Neither one of them turned around. So I knocked harder. Damn it. They needed to SEE me. And if they didn’t, I was going to march right in there, and—
She swiveled around on her stool. She looked pale. The unfortunate yellow peasant blouse she wore did nothing for her pale skin. Objectively speaking, she was a semiattractive woman, but not today.
I waved at her, plastering a big, fake smile on my face. Look at me, boss! I see you f*cking my ex-boyfriend! And then, to my surprise, she waved back. As if to say, It’s all good. We’re just coworkers saying “Hi!”
Then I turned around and marched back toward the LRS, who had no doubt been watching with great interest. I was shaking.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The only problem with blogging was that you had to relive every damn emotion. I felt myself shaking again at the thought of what I’d seen. I dreaded going into work today. I didn’t know what I thought would happen, exactly. It wasn’t like the two of them were going to go to HR and report me for waving at them in a restaurant. But, still, she was my vice president. She had power.
At this point, I was too fired up to even think of not blogging about it. Maybe I won’t post this, I told myself, as I wrote. Maybe I should be cautious. But I was too pissed off to be cautious.
After a beer and a half at the 74th Street Ale House a few blocks away, I started to feel better. The presence of the LRS cheered me up too, especially because he kept talking about how “nasty” Loserette was.
“You’re way hotter than she is,” he said, during the first beer.
“Thanks.” I wondered if he was just saying that.
“I have to say, though, I’m way hotter than your ex,” he said. I laughed my first real laugh of the evening.
By the time I was halfway through my second beer, I’d almost convinced myself that there would be no bad ramifications from my impulsive actions, and that I had come out quite admirably in the situation.
I also felt even more attached to the LRS, who’d handled the whole situation with grace and aplomb. Not judging me. Being supportive. Saying just the right things. Obviously I wasn’t the most shining example of a well-adjusted dumpee, but if he had anything critical to say, he kept it to himself.
I looked at him on the other side of the booth. Today he looked especially good. As his arms rested on the table, I could see his shoulder muscles bulging just enough, but not too much, through his T-shirt. His bleached blond mop of hair was less unruly than usual. His brown eyes looked at me thoughtfully, not jumping around like they sometimes did. I noticed how long his lashes were. He should have had a caption above him: “Young Man in the Prime of Life.” And suddenly I ached more than I ever had to be part of that life.
And this was what I was going to do. I was going to apply for a job at Kootenay National Park. F*ck Empire Corp. F*ck Loser/ette. I was not meant to sit in a windowless office all day. I’d already researched the jobs available there. From my years of hiking and backpacking I thought just maybe I had enough backcountry experience to qualify for a ranger job. As long as they didn’t expect me to read a map.
I took a deep breath. “So,” I said, attempting to sound casual, “have you heard back from the people in Canada yet?”
He looked at me with a confused expression on his face.
“You know, from Kootenay National Park?” My heart sped up.
“Oh, right.” He shook his head, then took a sip of his beer. “I guess I forgot to tell you. I got another job.”
For a moment, everything in the bar came to a standstill. The waitresses froze in place. The bartender stopped with his cocktail shaker in midair. My heart froze too, and then seemed to burst open.
“Oh yeah?” I tried desperately to hide the emotion in my voice. I took a gulp of my beer to try to stop the tears that, if they didn’t come now, would come later that night. You invited me along and now you changed your mind? I’m thinking about quitting my job and you changed your mind?? “What’s that?” I looked down at the half-eaten salad on my plate to avoid his eyes.
“I got an offer to be a guide for the summer for this outfitter in Wyoming. In the Grand Tetons. Well, half the time I’m going to guide, half the time I’m going to videotape the trips.”
“Wow.” I sounded as unenthusiastic as a person possibly could. But he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes had focused on someone in the back of the restaurant.
“When do you leave?”
He took his eyes off whomever he was looking at and looked at me. The tone in his voice became kinder. “Well, actually, next month. I’m going to be working in the office there and doing a bunch of other stuff. It’s kind of like a ground floor thing.”
“Oh.” The tears welled up in my eyes instantly. “So it’s over. Just like that?”
He looked startled.
“You’re leaving town in a month and you forgot to tell me?” I could not, repeat, not cry. I was not his girlfriend; I had no right or reason to be upset. For all I knew he had five other girlfriends, including several in Wyoming.
“No, I was going to tell you. It’s just—” he looked around for the right words to say. I didn’t think things were serious between us or I gotta be free, babe. Instead he settled for a sheepish, “Well, I just found
out, really. Yesterday.”
I hated him at that moment. Hated his youth and his freedom. His unencumbered heart. I hated whatever girl got to have him and his magnificent body next, and whatever girl might be lucky enough to get his love, too, there amid the spires of the Tetons.
I could not cry here in this restaurant. But I did. I ran off to the bathroom and I cried and cried. Not just for him, but for every love affair I’ve ever had that didn’t work out as planned.
E-mail Breakup Babe | Comments 3
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Oh God, you’re making me cry too. I know it’s hard to see the forest for the trees right now, but one day you’ll end up with a great guy and will understand that everything else didn’t work out for a reason.
Ms. G. | Homepage | 12/9/02–11:03 A.M.
You seem kind of manipulative and shallow, playing guys off each other like that. You deserve to end up alone.
Anonymous | 12/9/02–1:36 P.M.
Oh, don’t listen to that guy, B.B. (at least I assume it’s a guy). You are still on the rebound and it’s natural to go through these kinds of ups and downs even though it would be much nicer to fall madly in love right away and live happily ever after without ever having to worry about dating again. It’ll happen, but meanwhile you’re getting great material for your book!
GalPal #2 | 12/9/02–8:47 P.M.
Chapter Twenty-One
Thursday, January 2, 2003
9:56 AM Breakup Babe
Good Lord, what year is it? Oh my God, 2003! What happened on New Year’s Eve?! Did I—could I—oh my God. I did. I got drunkon tequila, got high, danced ’til all hours, and, in all the excitement, ended up making out passionately with (mumbles here) at the stroke of midnight.
Who’s that, you say? Who did you make out with?! What? Girl, you are out of control!
I didn’t feel particularly chipper when I wrote this. In fact, I felt downright hellish on this particular January 2 as I downed a triple Americano to rouse myself from my catatonic state. Three short months ago, I would have been giddy at the recent turn of events. But I knew Sexy Boy well enough by this point to realize he was the same charming commitmentphobe he’d always been. It’s just that in my drunken New Year’s state, I’d fallen prey to his flirtatious ways.
In the last few months I’d heard enough from Sexy Boy about his life’s commitment to “freedom and fun” (as well as his recent dalliance with a hot flight attendant) to know that our frenzied all-night make-out session was taking us to the big Nowheresville. Yet it sure felt good while it was happening. We’d built up a solid friendship over the last few months, and that rapport only made things more exciting. Who knew when I first got a crush on him that we would actually get along so well? But I did know, even as we drunkenly, joyously, kissed away the first few hours of 2003, that I would pay for the fun later. Big-time.
Voilà. I’d soared high, now I was sinking low. All through a hungover New Year’s Day, my euphoria lingered on. But not today. As work loomed, the events of the last months pressed down on me. The doctor’s mysterious disappearance. Loser and Loserette in the window at Red Mill Burgers. Greensleeves Press rejecting my book. The LRS leaving for the Grand Tetons. Stacy or Suzie or whatever the name of that stupid flight attendant was, whom Sexy Boy would be seeing this very morning on his flight to Alaska.
So I was engaging in two quick fixes: drinking caffeine and writing my blog. For the moment, the coffee and the writing held my despair at bay. But I knew that later that day, trapped in my office, I would really regret New Year’s Eve.
Yes, it’s true. I WAS out of control, but no longer. I had a fun-filled flirty night with Sexy Boy, but I have no illusions—NONE—that this is going anywhere. It was a fling and that was all. (Though don’t get me wrong. These days, B.B. does not give away the milk for free. At least not to boys she knows will disappear the next day.)
Fine, you say. We don’t care if there was actual s*x involved! We want the details anyway! Was it hot? Was it not? Dish!
Sigh. Okay. If you insist.
My crush on Sexy Boy never really disappeared. Instead, it morphed into a friendship wherein he became my dating confidant—at least when he was not jetting off to Alaska and toying with other women. But the sight of him always *did* something to me right where it mattered.
So, when a group of us went to a big party on New Year’s Eve, the two of us palled around. Quite innocently at first. But as the evening progressed, alcohol was imbibed and dirty dancing occurred. Our bodies touched in places they had never touched before. He was still playing his role of dating confidant to the hilt when, all of a sudden, the tone shifted, moved into territory we had mostly abandoned three months before, or so I thought.
“Miss R.,” he said, “it seems to me that maybe you’re taking these men just a little too seriously.” He was lounging next to me on a couch in a living room packed with people: drunken, laughing, dancing people. Outside it was a frosty thirty-six degrees; inside it felt like a tropical country. The windows were all steamed up by the revelers.
“Well, what do you recommend?” I said, leaning my head back on the couch, dangerously close to his shoulder.
We had just slow danced to “Open Arms” by Journey—one of many thirtysomething drunk and nostalgic couples who had rushed the dance floor for that one. It brought me back to seventh-grade dances, where I stood on the sidelines in the gym, hoping in vain that some pimply adolescent male would ask me to dance. Who would have imagined I’d one day be dancing with such a gorgeous man! If only I could see me now, I thought, encircled by Sexy Boy’s strong arms. I’m living out my junior high school fantasies!
Now, leaning back on the couch, I had the perfect amount of alcohol in my bloodstream: enough to make me giddy but not out of control. Who in the world had invented alcohol anyway? They deserved some kind of award!
Besides generous amounts of tequila, I’d also indulged in some of Sexy Boy’s stash. So now I was high on multiple substances, including the gaze from those sultry, suggestive green eyes of his. A warning bell went off somewhere in my head but the sounds of the party drowned it out. I’d forgotten that those eyes were classified as weapons of mass destruction.
“I think,” he said, “and I believe I’ve told you this before, but this is a time for you to just have fun. You just came out of a serious relationship and frankly you’re not ready for another.” He shifted positions and his thigh touched mine. “Though I pretty much guarantee you, once you’re out there just having fun, all the men you date will be begging for more.” An annoying memory passed through my head of Marco’s Supper Club. Sexy Boy reaching across the table to touch my arm while advising me to have more “fun.” Then the memory floated away.
“Oh, really,” I said, pressing my thigh blatantly against his. “Is that what happens with the women you date? They know you’re just having fun, so they’re begging for more? You’re perpetually hard to get?”
“Exactly,” he said, smiling. His face was very close to mine. I felt enveloped by his masculinity. By his Drakkar Noir. It caressed me, curled around my body. I closed my eyes to feel it all the better. But I wasn’t expecting anything to happen. This was just more of his meaningless flirting. I tried simply to enjoy it and not want more. The pot helped with that. It let me detach, drift above my earthly desires. But then he spoke again.
“Listen,” he said, and, despite my altered state, I noticed the lowered voice, the ever-so-slightly more serious tone. “It’s almost midnight. And because you are the prettiest girl at this party, I’d like to kiss you then. That’s what I think would be fun. What do you think of that?”
Bam. I slammed back to reality. I wanted him. I always had! So much for my Zen detachment.
“No,” whimpered Sensible Girl, who appeared next to me with a glass of seltzer water in hand. She wore blue flannel pajamas and sheepskin slippers but at least had added a sparkly silver hat for the occasion. “Please don’t. You know it would be a mistake.” I lo
oked at her in surprise. I had never heard her sound so defeated! But she was staring into her drink and didn’t meet my gaze.
“Oh, my GOODNESS!” Needy Girl wobbled up in her most revealing outfit yet, a silver lamé concoction that started just above her breasts and ended just below her butt. She had a drink in each hand. “Go for it!” she said drunkenly. “Don’t listen to that old bat. She doesn’t know how to have fun, OBVIOUSLY. It’s New Year’s Eve. HELLO!” She raised a glass to me then drank the entire contents in a single gulp.
I looked back and forth between them. For the first time, I really saw how pathetic Needy Girl was. I also understood that Sensible Girl was on the verge of giving up. If I didn’t listen to her this time, would she ever come back?
But Needy Girl was right. It was New Year’s Eve! And all the feelings I’d locked up inside me for Sexy Boy had come flooding out. How could I resist them? “I’m sorry,” I murmured to Sensible Girl. “I promise I’ll be better next year.”
“Whoohoo!” yelled Needy Girl.
Then I kissed him at midnight, and on into the morning, so long and so passionately that I forgot about everything else.
But the charmed night is over. The moment of glory has passed, and I feel like complete crap.
We can rejoice, however, because a new year has begun and it’s time for me to put this kind of behavior behind me. While it may seem like I’m just a tough-talking, tequila-drinking hottie in a low-cut dress who actually enjoys drinking and dancing and drugging with wild abandon, the truth is I’m just a girl who misses her father and her ex and who wants a man in her life again. ONE man.
So, with the new year comes a new approach to dating. I’m not sure exactly what that approach should be. What I do know is I’m not going to find that one man by being so damn needy.
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