BreakupBabe

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BreakupBabe Page 23

by Rebecca Agiewich


  I didn’t need to think about that yet. For now, all I had to do was do the assignments for my writing class, and so far I was kicking ass at that.

  How about I discuss writing? Because even if I have been posting much less than usual, I’ve been writing more than ever. That’s because I’ve been taking a writing class for the last two weeks now. This class has been incredibly helpful by requiring me to create an outline for Breakup Babe the book. This is not just any outline, however, but a very specific kind of outline that forces me to plan my story in terms of complications and resolutions—something simple and obvious—but something I’ve never done before.

  Because of this outline, I feel like I’m finally going in the right direction. And lo and behold, just the other night, the teacher read a scene I’d written out loud as an example of how to do things right.

  Now I just have to write about one hundred more great scenes, rewrite them each about ten times, and then—just maybe—I’ll have a publishable book.

  E-mail Breakup Babe | Comments 7

  As I wrapped up this entry, so devoid of the usual juicy details, I wondered how my readers would handle the change in subject matter. Would they stop reading the site in droves if I quit dishing about my love life? I was tempted to say more about Jake, of course, about how hot he looked in his pictures, and how funny he was, and how I liked it that he was so driven and ambitious. Better yet, I wanted to write about how he seemed emotionally available, unlike anyone else I’d dated recently. But I was afraid of displaying my hope so flagrantly on the page. Emotionally available as he might seem to be, I didn’t want to scare him off by being too needy.

  Needy. As I shut my computer down and steeled myself for another day in white-collar prison, I pondered that word. As I’d written in my blog a couple of weeks ago, I felt like I’d seen Needy Girl clearly for the first time on New Year’s Eve. She was frightening! Would I ever be able to get rid of her? A bit of neediness was certainly understandable after a big breakup. But eight months later? The word that scared me even more was “desperate.” Was I one of those “desperate” women who scared men off?

  Well, I thought, shouldering my backpack, which seemed, as usual, to weigh a hundred pounds, I hadn’t scared Jake off. Quite the opposite. While I’d gotten my share of negative comments from male readers about how “manipulative” or “pathetic” I was, Jake clearly didn’t think so. He’d read everything in the blog and liked me because of it. “You come across as very human,” he’d written to me.

  Still, I couldn’t help but feel wary. Maybe our rendezvous was a mistake. I was particularly vulnerable right now with this whole HR mess. What if we met and that electricity we’d built up over e-mail, over the phone, went dead? What if this one hopeful possibility in my life was just another dead end?

  A cold panic gripped my stomach as I hurried out of the café into the damp January day without a glance for anyone, even the cute barista. Damn it! Was anything in my life ever going to be certain again? I felt a burst of resentment toward Loser. Everything had been so stable once upon a time.

  “Watch it!” Suddenly there was a squeal of brakes and an angry voice yelling at me. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Crossing against a red light, that’s what I was doing. “Sorry,” I mumbled, not looking at the driver of the black Jetta who was glaring at me. I rushed across the street.

  “Those lights are there for a reason,” he yelled, then drove off quickly, wheels skidding on the damp pavement.

  I watched the car go, shaking. Then I slowly, deliberately put one foot in front of the other as I walked toward my car.

  POST A COMMENT

  B.B., you can write about anything and we’d like it!

  GenieG | Homepage | 1/17/03–1:20 P.M.

  I don’t know, I like to hear all the juicy details. You will tell us some juicy details about Long-Distance Boy? Right? RIGHT? After you meet him, of course.

  Delilah | Homepage | 1/17/03–4:41 P.M.

  You have a stranger coming to visit you? Are you sure he’s not a serial killer? Does your mother know about this?

  Worried | 1/17/03–6:18 P.M.

  Aw, c’mon, tell us who he is!

  Little Princess | Homepage | 1/18/03–9:08 A.M.

  What about not dating for a while and just working on your book?

  A Fan | 1/18/03–11:13 A.M.

  I think it’s a good idea for you to focus less on blogging and more on your book. We readers can live with fewer details about your sex life if we know the book will be out soon.

  Knut | Homepage | 1/18/03–12:51 P.M.

  I suspect this new guy wouldn’t mind you writing about him as long as you gushed about how manly he was, etc.

  Jake | 1/18/03–3:39 P.M.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Monday, January 20, 2003

  9:46 AM Breakup Babe

  Well, that was quite a weekend. I spent several hours lost in the wilderness on Saturday, with a down jacket circa 1973 as my main source of warmth. Okay, maybe you couldn’t exactly call it the “wilderness,” since we were in the foothills of Puget Sound, a mere five miles from the strip malls and Starbucks of Issaquah. Nonetheless, there were trees and trails and we were freakin’ lost, which I think qualifies it as wilderness-y enough.

  I leaned back in my chair at Victrola. God, I was tired. Jake had gotten up at 4:30 to drive back to Portland and I’d never fallen all the way back asleep. (After his first night in Seattle, he’d ditched the hotel and stayed with me.) There were too many feelings rolling through my brain. Our time together had been so intense, so crazy, it was going to take a few days for me to sort it out.

  I hoped that writing the blog, as usual, would help me process my feelings. But I had to be careful. Though Jake had given me carte blanche to write about our weekend—“just use your discretion,” he’d said—I knew from our time together that he could be thin-skinned. I would stick with the facts and just the facts. One thing I could say about the long, wet weekend, it had certainly taken my mind off The Great Unpleasantness, Part II!

  Yes, that’s right. Long-Distance Boy and I got lost while hiking together on our debut weekend. That’s because I made the mistake of following him when he boldly proclaimed that he knew which way to go. “It’s this way,” he said, with confidence, after studying the map, and holding a GPS up to it in a very professional-looking manner. We were at a trail junction with four different trails radiating outward but not a trail sign in sight.

  “But,” I said, “I’ve been here before, and I really think I remember going this way!” I didn’t say it with much confidence, though, because I am the worst navigator alive. When I attempt to navigate, wrong turns are made. Bad words are uttered. Maps are turned every which way and still I can’t read them. I therefore always rely heavily on the navigational skills of my companions, especially in the outdoors.

  “Look, though,” said Long-Distance Boy, pointing at the map. “The GPS clearly shows that we go this way to get back to the Turtle Ridge Trail, which takes us to the Issaquah River Trail, which gets us back down.”

  Up until this moment, all had gone swimmingly. From the instant I’d walked in to meet him for dinner at Flying Fish on Friday, we’d hit it off. Within the first five minutes, I wanted to kiss him. Within half an hour, he’d made me laugh so hard water came out my nose. Things had only gotten better from there.

  I looked at the map and the GPS. The lines and numbers didn’t mean much to me. They did look nice and reassuring, however. Plus, Long-Distance Boy’s British accent was so cute. It made him sound like he knew what he was doing.

  “Besides,” he said, “how lost can we get? We’re practically in the middle of civilization. These trails all wind up at the bottom, I’m sure of it.”

  I was of the same general opinion. They all had to go back to the bottom. This was only Tiger Mountain, the playpen of Northwest hiking. It wasn’t like we were climbing Mount Rainier, for crying out loud. Babies and grandmothers hiked
here. It couldn’t be too complicated.

  But two hours later, as darkness rapidly approached, we were nowhere near the trailhead. In fact, we seemed to be higher up on the mountain than before. Apparently babies and grandmothers could navigate better than we could.

  At the top of a short climb, we arrived at a viewpoint where we could see the lights of the Sammamish plateau start to come on below. This spot looked awfully familiar. I took off my pack, set it with a thud on the ground, then started to dig around for my headlamp and the tattered down jacket I’d inherited from my father. My extensive outdoor experience hadn’t ALL been for nothing, at least. I always had emergency gear, even on the most innocent-seeming day hikes.

  “I think we ate lunch here,” I said, trying not to sound petulant. After all, I couldn’t blame our predicament entirely on him. “Doesn’t this look like our lunch spot?”

  Long-Distance Boy had, in fact, prepared me a lovely lunch. He’d packed his ultralight backpacking stove and a bottle of French wine, and whipped up a delicious pasta dish. He didn’t let me do a thing but sit there and sip wine as I watched him cook.

  And we’d eaten here, at this viewpoint, I was sure of it. I’d luxuriated in his surprise lunch and admired the views: the one below, of the green valley ringed by the Cascades, and the one right next to me, of Long-Distance Boy’s liquid brown eyes and knife-edged cheekbones. I thought to myself how lucky I was to be getting to know such a sweet, adventurous, and thoughtful boy.

  I paused here. Did I sound like I was being sarcastic? I wasn’t! I’d been thrilled by his whole lunch gesture and his suggestion that we go for a hike during his visit. In the two years Loser and I had been together, I couldn’t remember a single time he’d voluntarily cooked for me or proposed an outdoor activity on his own. So Jake was busy racking up some major points when things went to hell.

  The only thing that had bothered me up to this point was an offhand comment he’d made while preparing his special lunch. “This is the dish that made my ex-wife fall in love with me,” he said, while chopping garlic on a lightweight chopping board.

  I’d almost gasped out loud at the inappropriateness of this remark. But I didn’t want to ruin a romantic event by being petty and jealous. In my experience, men often said inappropriate things like that. It’s just that—well, I wondered if some part of him didn’t want her back now that she was rich and skinny. In a fit of obsessive curiosity, I’d gone to the library before his arrival and dug up the back issue of People magazine whose cover she graced (along with the winners of other extreme makeover TV shows). My stomach had seized up on me when I saw it. She was stunning—in a second-rate celebrity sort of way—her now cellulite-free body pictured in a thong bikini, expertly dyed honey blond hair cascading down over her large new breasts.

  Jake, at least, didn’t sound longing when he talked about her. He sounded angry, mostly, about the custody battle that was shaping up. The two of them were arguing about her wanting to move to Florida with her new real-estate developer boyfriend, and take Jake’s daughter, Esme, with her. They’d tried to work things out amicably, but his ex wouldn’t budge on the fact that she needed to move.

  “She claims that there’s this aura of unhappiness that clings to me and that Esme always talks about it,” he’d said earlier on the hike. “‘Why is Daddy so sad,’ she asks, supposedly. Well, yes, so I’m a little sad that I only get to see my daughter two days out of seven.” He’d stopped here and turned to me. “Frankly, I’m a little concerned, too; I mean, what kind of example does my ex-wife set for a little girl when she goes and gets plastic surgery and appears on the cover of a magazine because of it? Not to mention that her boyfriend is a hairy crook who looks like a chimpanzee.”

  I’d laughed here and the conversation had floated on to other things. I did learn that he’d retained a lawyer to try to stop her from leaving town. Beyond that, I didn’t know much. So when he made his inappropriate remark, I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it. I sat in stunned silence for about a minute, with all sorts of questions racing through my head: “Why would you say something like that?” “Are you still in love with her?” “Do you think my thighs are fat compared with hers?” Then I counted to ten, gave him the benefit of the doubt, and let it go. After all, I’d talked plenty about Loser all day and I certainly wasn’t in love with him anymore.

  Now I debated whether to record this comment for my fans. If I wrote about it, he’d know that I thought it was lame and he’d be hurt. I took a sip of my coffee. Decided to skip it. This whole getting lost episode was damaging enough to his ego, though at least he’d been able to laugh about it afterward. “Go ahead and write about it,” he’d said. “I can take it.”

  “I don’t know if this is where we ate lunch,” said Long-Distance Boy, setting down his own pack. His voice sounded tense. “I don’t think so.” The bottle of wine consumed earlier had clearly not enhanced our navigational skills.

  He sat down heavily on a rock. I noticed he didn’t bother to pull out his GPS again. It made me nervous to see him sitting down. Daylight had almost disappeared. It was getting colder. And while we wouldn’t exactly freeze to death out here, at seven hundred feet of elevation, I also didn’t fancy spending the night without a tent. I looked up at the sky. Was that a raindrop that had just fallen on me?

  “Well, come on,” I said, looking at him again. “Get your headlamp out and let’s go.” I put on my jacket.

  He didn’t move. A few more cold drops fell on my head.

  “I don’t have a headlamp,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t bring it.”

  I clamped my mouth shut. A person could be forgiven, I supposed, for not bringing a flashlight on a day hike, though I always did. “Well, just follow me. Mine is pretty bright.” I tried to hide the edge of panic in my voice. At least we were on a trail. We weren’t THAT lost. We certainly weren’t going to DIE. Even if it was the middle of winter and a few drops of rain could ruin my insulation system. Why, oh why, had I brought my down jacket of all things? Because I hadn’t been able to find my warm fleece jacket this morning, that’s why.

  “Yes, but which way is it?” He sounded as if he’d entirely given up. Gone was the self-confident, cheerful personality of two hours ago.

  “I think if we just keep going, we’ll be fine. I’m sure this is where we ate lunch. We’ve just made a giant loop. We weren’t going the WRONG way,” I said, trying to cheer him up, though my own voice sounded shaky and high-pitched; “we just went the LONG way.” It struck me suddenly that I was now in charge here. That I might have to be the one to lead us to safety. Now that was a frightening thought. I noticed that he was starting to shiver.

  “So,” I said, attempting to sound take-charge and confident, “Put on a warmer jacket and let’s go. We’ll be back in strip mall city in two hours. Dinner will be on me!”

  For all I knew we would still be wandering this maze of trails in two hours. There would be a torrential downpour; my down jacket would be soaked; we’d both be hypothermic; then we would be dead. It would be all over the papers tomorrow. “Local Hikers Freeze to Death on Tiger Mountain, Where Even Babies and Grandmothers Don’t Get Lost.”

  He still didn’t move. He started to shiver a little harder. “I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded as if he were about to cry. “I really thought we were going the right way.”

  “You DO have a warmer jacket, right?” I said, starting to move toward his pack. A light rain now fell. I remembered all the brilliant summer days that I’d prayed for rain. This was my karmic payback for not loving every single minute of every single day. It would pour down rain now and soon I would be dead because of it. Okay, okay, I had to get a grip. We would not die! We would get wet and cold but that was it. No one DIED on Tiger—

  Just then, a noise made me jump. There was something moving quickly on the trail above us. A bear? No! There were no bears around here. A mountain lion?!

  The noise got louder. My body tensed. What the hell were you s
upposed to do when you saw a mountain lion? Make a run for it? Play dead? Make eye contact? Avoid eye contact? F*CK!

  “Oh my God,” I yelped as it came careening around the corner. It stopped in its tracks and our eyes locked. The mountain lion looked like a thirtysomething male Homo sapiens in running attire. Relief rushed in. I laughed quasi-hysterically. “Oh God,” I said again. “You scared me!”

  “Likewise,” said the guy, who didn’t look nearly as startled as me. He was tall and rangy, with broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. He looked extremely fit. “How’s it going?” he asked, shooting a glance at Long-Distance Boy, who was still sitting on his rock with a hangdog expression on his face. He sounded friendly but reserved. Clearly he was not too thrilled to have his jog down Tiger Mountain interrupted by a couple of lost and hysterical hikers.

  I didn’t care. I was more grateful to see him than I had been to see anyone in a long time. I wanted to throw myself at his feet, grab his ankles, and say “Thank you, thank you!”

  “Oh, not too bad,” I said, trying to rid my voice of its high-pitched shakiness. “But we seem to have gotten a little bit turned around. We’re trying to get back to the parking lot. I think we’re going the right way, but I’m not exactly sure.”

  “Yeah, these trails can be confusing.” He had an air of calm self-sufficiency. Everything about him looked lean and efficient, from his cropped dark hair to his compact pack to the single layer of lightweight synthetic clothing he wore. He also looked vaguely familiar, but it was hard to make out his face in the gathering dusk. “But if you keep going this way, you’re only about two miles away.”

 

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