The One - No one said it would be easy (17 page)

Back home I continued to pretend that everything was OK, but whenever I was with Number Ten, where I thought I belonged, I felt like shit. I wanted to be with Number Sixteen. Sex with Number Ten became unbearable, I could hardly stand having him around. And still I did not have the heart to confess my affair. Yet again, I was incapable of taking action, I was a coward. I knew it would be the end and the consequences appeared insurmountable. After all, we were living together, where would I go, would Number Sixteen even want to be with me, and what if he didn’t, oh God I would be single, and so on – it was all so complicated and terrible and hopeless. I didn’t know which way to turn, couldn’t clear my head, couldn’t make a decision. So I just let it carry on. And thus, I finally caused the rickety house of cards that was my relationship with Number Ten to tumble down. Number Ten found out. On reflection I believe I may have – unconsciously – enabled him to. And all of a sudden, the shit had hit the fan. I’d left the room for a few minutes and when I came back in, nothing was like it had been. He sat there, white as a sheet, and demanded answers. He suddenly knew the score, and no matter how and why, I was unable to deny it anyway.

I guess he’d checked my mobile, which contained more than enough incriminating text messages. Can’t imagine how else he could have known. I couldn’t say anything. What was to say? I’d behaved like the greatest shit on earth and I stood there, completely deflated. Number Ten freaked out, this was the only time I’d ever seen him go crazy, and he ran out. I cried buckets. I was desperately ashamed, I blamed myself, I panicked, I felt so horribly guilty, I was so very sorry, I didn’t know what to do. This was The Day, the day that I’d been so afraid of. Matters were settled quickly, there wasn’t really anything to sort out. I packed some stuff, sobbed down the phone at my mother, who knew nothing about any of this and was flabbergasted to start with. Luckily, she didn’t go down the “it’s your own fault” road but comforted me and said the only good thing to say: “You’ve done the right thing. Number Ten just wasn’t it for you. He is a great guy, but he isn’t your guy. And even though you acted like a shit and you hurt him very much, it’s better like this. What’s done is done. Go see your lover, let him spoil you, and then well see what comes next.” I love my mum. She’s always there for me, even when I’m up shit’s creek without a paddle.

I had already pre-warned Number Sixteen by phone and he’d said, no problem sweetie, we’ll manage, just come over. And so I turned up on his doorstep, suitcase in hand. It was afternoon and he was completely out of it, having partied all night with his wild best friend. One hadn’t just filled up on booze, but also partaken in quite a few chemical enhancements. He wasn’t exactly with it, not exactly a tower of strength. So now he had me all to himself, just what he’d always said he’d wanted, and as I stood there, he hugged me and kissed me. But right at that moment I knew that it would never work out with us under these circumstances. We were the perfect affair – but a happy couple? Never. I put these thoughts out of my mind, after all I had a few other, more heavy-duty, matters of the heart to come to terms with. And so I found myself lying in Number Sixteen’s bed, the place I’d so wanted to be in all that time, and all I felt was crappy, miserable and lost.  

All outstanding formalities were sorted within a few days. I officially moved out of the flat I had shared with Number Ten. We met one last time, to talk, but there wasn’t anything to talk about anymore. We sat opposite each other at our kitchen table, and I just cried. Number Ten asked some questions, but what was the point, trying to explain the why and wherefore or any attempt at an apology just makes matters worse. I couldn’t even get myself to ask him to forgive me, because I knew what I’d done was unforgivable. So I just cried. Luckily I managed to find a new flat very quickly and in the meantime I lived with Number Sixteen. It only took me a day to pack up what little stuff I had, place my key on the table, walk around our sweet little flat one last time, cry my eyes out and shut the door behind me. What a god-awful feeling. And that was that. Number Ten and I have since run into each other a couple of times, by accident. A friendly “hello, how are you”, and get the hell out of there. We avoid each other. He, because I was the greatest disappointment of his life, and I, because I feel the greatest guilt of my life towards him. No possible reconciliation. Dead, finished, over and done with.
 

However terrible it all was, and however much the ground was falling out from underneath my feet, life of course carried on, even though at the time I felt as though I couldn’t breathe and was caught in the worst nightmare of all time. I was so scared of what would happen after I finished with Number Ten, so scared of being alone, living alone. And now I was doing it and it was sort of OK. To start with, it wasn’t easy, but it was manageable. Another kind of experience, anyway. I organized my new flat and I attempted to be in a relationship with Number Sixteen. On the one hand, I was so glad he was there, because I hadn’t been without a relationship since Number Two. I had never ever been single. Being single was a terrible notion for me. Impossible. Being alone seemed unbearable. On the other hand I could feel how he was changing, now that we were no longer an affair but a couple. He’d bagged his quarry and it was no longer of interest. Sex remained great but everything else between us stayed fairly cool. The whole thing felt weird. I knew I would never be happy with him in the long run, and yet I kept trying to bind him to me. Naturally, the more I did that, the more he withdrew. Number Sixteen was one of those guys wearing a great big warning sign emblazoned with huge letters: “WATCH OUT! COMPLETELY SCREWED UP!”

He didn’t have a single proper relationship to his name, screwed around every which way, was directionless and had no goals in life, lived for the moment, did any old jobs but nothing he was really interested in, hung around bars at night, made a mess of things, did speed and ecstasy and anything else going, was the spoilt-brat only child of equally screwed-up parents who hated each other but wouldn’t get divorced, and his relationship with mummy and daddy was totally screwed up, too. In other words, Number Sixteen was damaged. Exactly the kind of guy who can’t ever make us happy. Exactly the kind of guy our mums always warn us about. And exactly the kind of guy who’ll be the cause of our worst heartache of all time. A total disaster zone. I couldn’t imagine a future with Number Sixteen at all, we shared no interests at all, we never really went out anywhere, not to the cinema, not on excursions. But still I really, really, wanted it.

As long as we were just a fling, all these things were irrelevant. I couldn’t have cared less about his family background, and a party-going would-be Bohemian was kind of cool. But now none of this was cool anymore. It was, in fact, total shit. And what does a girlie do when she is with such a guy? Instead of hitting the road, Speedy Gonzales style, she becomes hopelessly and emotionally dependent on this guy. I convinced myself that I was the Salvation Army of Lost Hearts and was destined to save Number Sixteen and his poor, tortured soul. I thought I was the chosen one, his one-and-only; I would conquer and melt his heart, would be the only one to make him happy, his knightess in shining amour, come to deliver him from the dark prison of his relationship phobia and we would ride off into the sunset together, build a house, have kids, and everything would be wonderful ever after. God, we girlies can be beyond stupid at times! A screwed-up guy is a screwed-up guy is a screwed-up guy. Forever. Nothing and no one will be able to change him and most certainly not a clinging, clambering terrorist of the heart like me.

Needless to say, this stroke of wisdom didn’t hit me until years later – at the time, I didn’t want to know any of this. We girlies seem to have to almost drown in emotional poo until we catch on, hopefully, eventually. How often do I see girl friends go through exactly the same situation. I can talk until I’m blue in the face, telling them to leave well alone, but it won’t make any difference. Like emotional lemmings, they chase after disaster-man. Sadly, there’s no cure for that yet. Dear pharmaceutical industry, you have so many remedies for so many ailments, how about concocting something to help with this? A kind of anti-falling-for-screwed-up-guys-pill? I predict massive sales!

Of course, nothing at all was wonderful with Number Sixteen. I mutated more and more into a clinging whining lame-ass girlfriend. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t have wanted to be with such a bummer of a girlfriend either. But I was so absolutely petrified of losing him, I didn’t know what else to do. I embarked on the absolute no-no for all girlfriends: I went looking for incriminating evidence in his flat. I dare say that more or less all girlfriends go on spying expeditions through their boyfriends’ stuff once in a while. Total crap, total taboo, but when you’re obsessed by the idea of finding something bad, or want to gain some insight into his heart and soul, then you won’t be able to stop yourself. I looked at photos and all kinds of documents, found videotapes he’s shot with rather boring content, and I found old love letters from an ex. And found out that she must have been quite a sweetie, and that she’d had exactly the same problems with him as I did now. She complained about his inability to have a relationship, and I felt very close to her. I would have loved to ring her up but managed to convince myself not to. I didn’t want to sink down to quite that level of love-zombiehood. I also made best use of every opportunity to get my paws on Number Sixteen’s mobile. I never found anything really bad, just a few messages from some girl who wrote in quite an intimate fashion.

Then the great cinema screen inside your head bursts into life, and that’s it – you’re screwed. Who the hell is she? Why is she sending him text messages? What’s this about? Are they meeting up behind my back? All of which unleashes the great horror of jealousy. You’re stung, it hurts, there’s betrayal around every corner. After all, I’d coupled up with the worst heel of all time. This required eternal vigilance! I had mutated into a complete shit. I wasn’t like me anymore. I had become exactly the kind of girlfriend I’d never wanted to be in a million years. Whining, bitching, bad-tempered and jealous as hell.

This eventually lead to me wrecking the whole thing, all by myself. I was so completely crazed that I thought I should get Number Sixteen to fight for my love. Bitchy girlfriends manic with love, and convinced they deserved more attention than they’re getting, tend to behave so incredibly stupidly that it’s no wonder the guys end up running for the hills, screaming. Looking back now, it’s wonderful that I got shot of him – a relationship with Number Sixteen would come under the heading of hell on earth, and it’s likely that my clever subconscious made me act like an idiot just to get me out of there. But still, I would have preferred a somewhat smarter and more dignified exit! Instead, I made an absolute imbecile out of myself. I embarked on a text-messaging terror campaign.

A sudden attack of frustrated love madness made me write about a zillion texts to Number Sixteen: that he didn’t love me, that our relationship was such crap, that anyway he was just useless and so on and so forth. You should never leave a mobile within easy reach of a lovesick woman. All the while I was dead certain that Number Sixteen would read these relevant, innocuous hints and immediately be overcome by the most horrendous fear of losing me, which would make him drop everything and gallop over to me on a white horse. He would ring my doorbell, get down on his knees, and when I opened the door he would say: “But baby I love you, you are the best, the most beautiful, the dearest of them all, and I want you forever and a day!” That was my actual plan. I guess I’d watched too many Rosamunde Pilcher re-runs on TV and way too many daily soaps. I glared at my mobile. I was expecting a tirade of text messages in response. But what happened was nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Stunned, I kept staring at my mobile some more. Still nothing. I switched it on and off, maybe there was something wrong with it. Still nothing. I rang a girl friend and asked her to send me a test-message, maybe there was no network coverage.

The test-message arrived in an instant. Followed by nothing. Panic. And a sudden flash of clarity: I had rudely insulted my so-called beloved, and I’d done it by text message, like a total coward. No wonder he didn’t want to get in touch! If anyone had insulted me like that, I’d hardly want to contact them! Shit, what have you done?! Now it was me who was overcome by fear and panic that I might lose him. My heartbeat went into overdrive, I felt sick. I phoned him. He let it ring forever until he finally answered. His opening words were ice-cold, irritated and sobering: “What the hell do you want?” Immediately, I burst into tears. I sobbed and I sniveled, I was so sorry, I hadn’t meant it, and could we please forget the whole thing. “Oh yes,” he said. “We can forget the whole thing. Not just your texts, but the whole thing. We can forget us.” And then he put the phone down. I was trembling. I raged and cried and sobbed and whimpered and tossed and turned on my bed. How the hell stupid can you get, I yelled at myself. I seemed to have played right into Number Sixteen’s hands. He didn’t even have to initiate the end – I’d practically done it for him! I was the fucker and I was fucked, all at the same time. And that takes quite a bit of skill, too!
I was quite sure things would be all right again; by tomorrow the world would look different, we would make up and everything would be fine again. But like the hell it was – nothing was fine again. Then again, it hadn’t exactly been fine before, ever. He didn’t get in touch. For many days, he didn’t get in touch. I was crying all the time, managed to crash my car, was completely heartbroken and out of it. I’d been struck by the worst lovesickness of all times. I drove to his place, pushed little love notes under his door. Nothing. Not one single reaction. Meantime we no longer worked together, we’d both been posted to new jobs and I heard on the grapevine that he was involved with some other girl. Giant skewers were piercing my heart. I drove over to him again, rang the bell. Then he opened the door. At long last! He said nothing and I just cried. He took me in his arms, we kissed and I thought, yippee, everything’s OK again. But he said, no, he can’t and doesn’t want to have a steady relationship. And that he felt terrible about it. At which point he managed to squeeze out a few tears himself, which made me fall back into but-I-can-save-you mode and I gave him this long sobbingly delivered speech about how we could at least try. No chance. He didn’t say anything anymore, we cried together for a little while and then I pulled myself together and left. I so hoped he’d run after me! I went especially slowly. I even stopped. But sadly, no Hollywood-type “Baby! Stop! Wait! I love you!” behind me. I hate those bloody films! Why do they always have to have this pseudo  reconciliation crap?