Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend (15 page)

“You really have to come for a visit, Em. I think you might like it out here.”

The heaviness dissipated. “Yeah? Well, as it turns out, I still have a week's vacation left to me, and I could probably even take it before the end of June.”

He paused, and in the brief silence I cringed at the sound of my own desperation. “Well, it's something to think about,” he said, then graciously changed the subject before I uprooted my entire life and put it on a plane headed for the West Coast. “So how's
your
job going?”

“Great,” I said, still mentally chastising myself for seeming too needy. Hoping to recoup some of my self-esteem, I elaborated. “In fact, one of the senior features editors just left, and I'm up for the promotion.” Hah. That ought to salvage me. Let him see just how grand I was doing despite his abrupt exit from my life.

“That's wonderful, Em. I always knew you were destined for greatness.”

He did?
I filed that one away—I didn't have time to contemplate all the reasons a man would leave a woman he deemed destined for greatness. I was too busy basking in the warmth, the pure, unadulterated love, I heard in his voice. “God, Derrick, it is really good to hear from you.”

“Yeah, and it's good to hear your voice. I was so caught up in the craziness of the new job, settling in, that I didn't have a chance to miss you. Then came this long weekend, and all I could think about was how the hell we managed to share that house in East Hampton with sixteen people last Memorial Day weekend.” He laughed. “Remember that? I never thought I'd find myself sharing a bedroom with you and
Sid,
” he said, referring to a guy he used to work with during his waitering days at Reservoir, “and Sid's nutty pseudostripper girlfriend. What was her name?”

“Barbie, I think. Or was it Bambi?”

“Something like that.” He chuckled, then in a lower voice, he said, “But somehow we managed to escape them all for a little strip show of our own….”

A silence ensued as we both remembered the night we snuck off and made love on a deserted section of beach, the moon high above us, its light filling us with both the thrill of desire and the anxiety
of being exposed completely to anyone who happened to stroll by. It was one of the most exhilarating lovemaking sessions we'd ever had, and the sizzling memory of that heady night fairly crackled over the line between us now. As heat flooded through my veins and set my skin pulsing, I suddenly understood why people resorted to phone sex.

“You looked so beautiful that night,” Derrick was saying. “Your hair was long, and it almost covered your breasts.”

My hair was never
that
long, but I wasn't about to destroy his fantasy, especially since I had a starring role in it. “You weren't so bad yourself. All tan, with that little shadow of beard on your face.”

“Ah, Em, those were good times.”

“They were.” I let the truth of that zoom home, hoping against hope it would spur him into some sort of action, like packing a bag and catching the next flight out for a week of debauchery at Chez Moi.

Instead he said, “I ought to let you go.”

No!
“We can talk some more, if you'd like….” I offered, as if
he
were the one in desperate need of keeping the connection going.

“Yeah, well, I have to be in early tomorrow for a meeting with one of the producers, and I have all this stuff to prepare tonight. You know, duty calls.”

Since when had he become so responsible? I thought, then realized he'd never had a job he cared enough about to be well-prepared and well-rested for. “I understand,” I said.

“Talk to you soon, okay?” he asked hopefully. “You have to keep me posted on the big promotion.”

“Of course,” I said, wanting to leave the lines of communication wide open enough for him to call every time the mood struck him, and hoping that would be often. “And you need to keep me posted on how the big screenwriter is doing.”

He laughed. “Good night, Em,”

“Good night, Derrick.”
Love you,
my brain echoed, partly out of habit but mostly out of pure longing, as the sound of the dial tone filled my ear.

 

Confession: I am ready, willing and able to harbor a few illusions about my love life.

 

For the first time in a long time, I hesitated before calling Jade or Alyssa. I knew both were more than likely home from the long weekend, Jade full of ribald tales of Fire Island finds and Alyssa full of future-in-law angst. Yet I could not bring myself to dial a single number in the warm, cozy afterglow of Derrick's phone call. I didn't want Jade to tell me, in that bland voice she gets whenever she's referring to the ills of mankind, that Derrick only called because he was lonely. That his warm and fuzzy words meant little in actuality. And Alyssa…Alyssa would see right through my sudden happiness. She'd recognize it for what it was: false hope.

But false hope was better than no hope, right? Besides, I was still addicted to the idea that Derrick and I were Meant-To-Be. I was only waiting for
him
to figure it out. And judging from the lonely ache behind his voice, I thought he was on the path to the higher truth. My truth.

I opted to call no one, nestling in for the night and shamelessly listening to my Sade CD, reveling in her lush, sexy lyrics about true love as if they applied to me.

I even made it safely to the office the next day with my illusions intact, resisted answering the juicy e-mail from Jade I received once I opened my computer, despite the fact that she alluded to what sounded like a meaningful sexual encounter. In fact, I was just heading safely off to lunch with my illusions, when Rebecca showed up at my cubicle. The first thing I noticed was that she looked terrible. And Rebecca
never
looks terrible. Her face was solemn and her eyes red-rimmed as she asked in the kind of small, pathetic voice I would never have expected to come from her lips, “Have lunch with me? I really need to talk to someone.”

With a glance at her ringless left hand, I remembered. The proposal scene. Apparently it hadn't happened according to plan. Nodding helplessly, I grabbed my purse and followed her to the elevators.

As we headed over to Tivoli, a small Italian restaurant only a few blocks from the office with prices even the lower echelon publishing set of midtown could afford, we said very little. It wasn't
until we were seated across from one another, menus in hand, that Rebecca finally spoke about the subject that clearly weighed cruelly on her mind.

“It didn't happen. No ring, no proposal, no…nothing.”

I saw tears threaten, and a stab of sympathy shot through me. I grabbed her hand across the table and gave it a squeeze. “What happened?”

“Well, we drove out to East Hampton, like we planned,” she began, blinking back her tears as if she were taking strength from the memory. “All the way out, we're having a grand old time, talking about the last time we were there, how much fun it was.”

I nodded encouragingly.

“We get to the B-and-B—the one I told you about, with all the antique moldings and authentic landmark window casings? Well, the first thing I notice is that the whole place has been renovated. That should have been my first clue.”

I smiled weakly, not getting what a little fresh paint and spackle had to do with anything.

“Naturally Nash sees how surprised I am, and he explains that they renovated the whole place. He actually
liked
it.” She rolled her eyes. “I mean, it wasn't
bad,
though I would have left more of the original effects. Thank God they had the sense to leave the staircase, which is a real nineteenth-century beauty.”

Another nod, my plastered on smile diverting into a faux frown. As if I knew anything about what constituted a landmark staircase.

The waiter came by, took our orders, then politely disappeared, allowing Rebecca to go on with her seemingly senseless tale.

“The whole weekend, he just seemed…off, or something. I mean, every time we were in the room alone, he started waxing poetic about the new shower massage they'd put in, or how he preferred the new carpeting to the hardwood floor they had previously. Well, I figured out where all that was coming from.”

Oh?
I leaned close, hoping it would all come together for me, too.

“I was down at the front desk, asking about renting sailboats in the area, because Nash likes to sail and I thought that might not be a bad place for him to pop the question. Out on the open sea. Just the two of us. Well, I get to talking with the front desk clerk about
all these seemingly marvelous renovations and she lets slip how they had sent twenty percent discount vouchers to all their previous guests to welcome them for their first season under the new renovation.”

Ah. “Well, he
is
an accountant. And isn't that one of the things you told me you loved about Nash—his good head for money?”

“Yeah, I'll give him a good head,” she muttered. “I thought we were there for
romance,
not discounts.”

Though I was shocked at the level of bitterness Rebecca was showing, I said nothing.

“Anyway, the whole weekend, all I kept wondering was when he was going to do it, when, when, when. At one point we were eating at this restaurant overlooking the water, and I thought for sure the moment had arrived. The sun was setting. We'd just been served a beautiful little bottle of Bordeaux. Nash was looking at me. I was looking at him. And then he launches into some stupid story about how his boss hadn't called him yet about some meeting he was planning for next week. I don't even remember what it was about, exactly. All I know is that this was definitely
not
the moment to be thinking about work!”

“Maybe he's having a little anxiety about work and needs to come to terms with it before he can make his next move,” I counseled, as if some age-old wisdom about why men do the things they do was suddenly welling up inside of me. “You know, some men don't even think about the marriage question until they've got a solid six figures and a fat 401K.”

“Oh, he's got all that,” Rebecca said dismissively, then sipped her water daintily, as if dating a penniless man was never an issue with her. She sighed. “It was as if he wasn't even thinking about our future. About
us.
By the time Sunday rolled around and I knew there was gonna be no ring coming this weekend, I was furious!” Her lower lip trembled and curled.

I have to admit, I felt a bit of alarm at the sight of her rage. Was this what happened to women when they didn't get what they wanted? Did veins bulge in my neck every time I brought up Derrick nowadays? I felt a sudden urge to soothe Rebecca. To tell her anything to stop the fury from engulfing us both. And now that I
had mastered the art of snowing myself, I was sure I could initiate Rebecca in the ways of self-delusion.

“Bec, you
know
it's going to happen. You're just upset because it didn't happen when you wanted it to.” I smiled now. “Look, you're better off anyway. I mean, you didn't
really
want to get engaged in a house that didn't even have the original window casings, did you?” I stifled a chuckle as I watched her actually consider my words with a great deal of seriousness.

“That's true,” she said, her expression cautiously hopeful.

“Besides, I bet Nash has got an even more exciting proposal dreamed up than you could possibly think of.”

She smiled now. “You're probably right.”

That was way
too
easy, I thought. “All I'm saying is, keep an open mind. You don't know what Nash is thinking,” I hedged, feeling guilty for throwing her a bone now that she had latched on to it so quickly. I didn't worry too much, though. I knew in my heart that Nash was going to ask Rebecca to marry him one day. He had marriage material stamped all over him, and Rebecca…well, who wouldn't want to marry a woman with a filing system that rivaled the Library of Congress's and the kind of creamy complexion that probably looked fresh and lovely from the moment she lifted her head from her Laura Ashley pillow sham?

Our lunches arrived, mine the grilled chicken over field greens, lemon vinaigrette on the side, and Rebecca's thick burger oozing with melted cheese and surrounded by a hoard of crisp shoestring fries. And though I had been trying to maintain my holier-than-thou position as newly reformed heath nut, I wished I had joined Rebecca in her pity binge as I watched her take her first mouth-watering bite.

With a sigh, I drowned my greens in dressing, then dug in. And as Rebecca went on to talk about how good Nash was to her most of the time, how much fun they had together, I felt myself dreaming of how it all used to be with Derrick and me, as if it all were
still
that way with Derrick and me. After all, in Rebecca's eyes, I continued to be Derrick's warm and loving girlfriend.

And I wasn't ready to prick that happy little bubble just yet.

 

Confession: I am hopelessly unprepared to meet Mr. Right.

 

“Where have you been?” Jade demanded when she caught me at home the following night.

“Been?” I replied innocently.

“I left you an e-mail, tried you last night—oh, never mind. How are you? How was your weekend?”

“You tell me,” I said, carefully deflecting the subject away from me. “Sounds like someone finally had sex?”

“Who?”

“You! Didn't you mention something in your e-mail about some hot guy you hooked up with?”

“Oh, no, no. That was Ricky Phillips I was talking about. I told you about him before. Has his own line of motorcycle jackets? Big garmento. But totally hot.”

“And the problem with sleeping with him is…?”