You're Not the One (9781101558959) (23 page)

“And you're making a scene,” he shushes me, glancing around at the other party guests to see if anyone has overheard us.

I stiffen, but stop myself from retaliating. “Look, I don't want another row. Let's forget about it.” I start to put on my jacket and turn to leave, but Nate follows me out.

“Lucy, wait. Let me say good-bye to a few people and I'll come with you.”

“It's OK. You stay. I'll catch a cab home.”

He shoots me a look as if to say,
Don't do this to me in front of all these people
. “Just give me five minutes.”

I end up giving him more than twenty as I wait in the doorway, watching him working his way around the room, getting involved in conversations, laughing at jokes. At several points I come close to leaving without him, and part of me wishes I had, because by the time he finally joins me and we climb into a cab, neither of us is in the best of moods.

“We always stay at yours—why can't we stay at mine for a change?” I ask, as he gives the driver his address.

“What? You'd rather stay at your place than mine?” He throws me a look across the backseat. Whereas before we'd be cuddled together in the middle, now we're sitting at opposite ends. It wouldn't take a body-language expert to see something is up.

“What's wrong with my place?” I feel a beat of irritation.

“Well, you can't really compare the two, can you?” He laughs lightly and raises an eyebrow.

If I was irritated before, now I'm annoyed. “No, please, go ahead. I'm interested,” I say, folding my arms expectantly.

He lets out an impatient sigh. “OK, well, one's a penthouse with a view of the park, and the other is a four-story walk-up with a view of graffiti.”

“I happen to like it,” I retort.

“Well, I don't.” He shrugs.

“Well, I don't particularly like your place,” I fire back.

“What's not to like?”

“All that white, for a start. I like splashes of color.”

“Splashes of color?” Nate snorts. “Your apartment looks like a paint factory exploded in there.”

I let out an indignant gasp.

“And as for all that voodoo stuff—”

“What voodoo stuff?” I demand hotly.

“Like that mask.” He pulls a face.

“That's not voodoo!” I exclaim. “Anyway, at least there are interesting things in there. Your place is so minimalist there's hardly anything in it, apart from that epileptic machine.”

“It's an elliptical,” he corrects brusquely, “and by the way, it wouldn't hurt for you to start using one.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“Well, it wouldn't do your thighs any harm, would it? If you want to get rid of that cellulite.”

I inhale sharply. It's like a punch to my solar plexus.

“And you put a hole in my rug,” he continues with a swift uppercut.

“What?” I'm still reeling from the last comment.

“I have security CCTV cameras as part of the alarm system.”

Damn, I thought he might have CCTV. What else has he taped?

“That's a really expensive rug.”

“For Christ's sake, it was an accident,” I gasp.

“Like the juicer?” He glares at me.

My jaw sets defiantly. “Well, I'm sorry I'm not as perfect as you. With your showroom apartment.”

“Your place is a mess. There's crap everywhere.”

“I'd rather be messy than anal.”

“What? So I'm anal because I don't leave pizza boxes lying under the bed?” he cries indignantly.

Shit. He saw them. I forgot to ask Robyn to move them!

“No, because you fuss about how to stack the dishwasher, or which way to put a spoon in the cutlery drawer. You're so anal you even iron your pineapple boxer shorts! Speaking of which, what thirty-year-old
wears
pineapple boxer shorts?”

He scowls. “Look, this was obviously a huge mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“You and me. It isn't working out. I want to break up.”

“
You
want to break up?” I cry in astonishment. “
I
want to break up!”

He stares at me in disbelief. “What? You're breaking up with me?” he retorts. “No, I'm the one breaking up with you.”

“God, you always were a jerk!” I declare contemptuously.

“You really haven't changed, have you? You're still pigheaded!” he yells.

“And you
have
changed. You used to be fun!” I yell back.

“Life's not all about having fun, Lucy. You need to grow up.”

“I am grown up!”

“You have purple hair!” he says scornfully.

“At least I have hair!” I fire in return.

There's a sharp moment of silence and he visibly winces.

“'Scuse me, where are you both going?”

In the middle of our breakup we turn, breathless from arguing, to see the driver looking at us in the rearview mirror.

“I'm not going anywhere with him,” I say, throwing Nate a furious glare.

“And I'm not going anywhere with her,” he shoots at me with a scowl.

For a moment there's a standoff in the back of the cab, both of us stubbornly refusing to move. Until, with an impatient huff, Nate grabs the door and gets out, slamming it firmly behind him.

S
o that's it. Nate and I are finished. Our great love affair is over.

It lasted the grand sum of a week.

“Well, strictly speaking, it lasted less than a week,” points out Robyn blithely. Then, seeing my expression, she adds quickly, “
Ten years
and less than a week.”

It's Sunday morning and Robyn and I have taken the dogs for a walk in the park near our apartment, which basically means we're sitting on the grass in the sunshine eating ice cream, while Simon and Jenny snuffle around by our feet.

“I still can't believe it,” I say, taking a defiant lick of my ice cream.

“You mean about breaking up or what he said about . . . ?” She trails off and gives me a look that says,
You know
.

I told Robyn about the argument and she nodded supportively and enthusiastically yelled, “Go, girl,” at all the right moments. When it came to his comments about my thighs, she sharply sucked in her breath and went completely silent with shock. Which for Robyn is a first.

“Both,” I answer, biting off another large chunk of my double-chocolate fudge whatever-it-is in an act of rebellion. “And to think I was in love with him for all those years.”

“Better to have loved and lost,” remarks Robyn sagely.

“I haven't lost him,” I say indignantly. Simon stops snuffling in the grass and cocks his ears, looking startled. “I broke up with him!”

Robyn looks confused. “I thought he broke up with you,” she says uncertainly.

“Well, he did, sort of,” I admit grudgingly. “We broke up with each other. After we'd had that big argument in the cab.”

“Well, at least you agreed on something,” she says brightly.

Robyn never ceases to amaze me with her determination to see the positive in everything. Whatever disaster befalls her, she's never negative. She could get wrongly arrested for drug smuggling in Thailand, be sentenced to life in prison, and then get thrown into a jail where no one speaks English and she'd probably say how it was a wonderful opportunity to have some “me time” and learn a new language.

“I suppose so.” I nod doubtfully.

“Are you upset?”

I stop to think about it. Am I?

“No,” I say, after a pause. As I say it, I feel a twinge of surprise. I thought I would be more than upset. I thought I would be devastated. After all, wasn't he supposed to be my soul mate? The man whom I couldn't live without? The person who completes me?

Er, no, Lucy, that's
Jerry Maguire
.

“Well, that's good,” Robyn is saying cheerfully. “A breakup is one thing, but heartbreak is another.” She rolls her eyes as if to say she's been there, and I nod in recognition.

Only this time I don't feel heartbroken at all.

“I'm stunned, I suppose,” I confess. “And disappointed. He's not who I thought he was. But then I suppose I wasn't either.” I look down at my ice cream. My defiance has melted along with it. “I was in love with the idea of him. An ideal of him. Of who I thought he was. Of who he used to be.”

I'm thinking out loud now as my mind mulls over everything. Last week seems like a dream, a huge blur, a rollercoaster of emotions. It all happened so fast that I never really paused to think about it. I didn't
want
to stop and think about it. I was falling madly in love again and it was so exhilarating. Seeing him again, discovering he still loved me. We both got carried away. We didn't even pause to think that maybe we were falling in love with different people. Caught up in the lust, the moment, the sheer thrill, it was like diving into the ocean.

And now, finally, I've come up for air.

“I was in love with the romance of it all, of getting back together with my first love. I think we both were,” I say eventually.

“We all were,” replies Robyn, nodding supportively. “It was super romantic.”

“I mean, I really thought he was my soul mate, but now . . .” I trail off sadly.

“But now you've realized he isn't, and that's OK.” Seeing my glum expression, Robyn immediately springs into her cheerleader role. “So what if it's taken you ten years? Better late than never.”

“I thought you said Nate and I were meant to be together, that we were just puppets and it was the power of the universe, our destiny,” I say sulkily.

Robyn colors. “Well, that's true. It did all seem like too much of a coincidence, like it was meant to be, and you did seem very cute together.” She pauses. “Are you sure it's over?”

“A hundred percent.”

“Hmm.” She licks her ice cream thoughtfully. She looks unconvinced.

“I suppose I'm also a bit angry,” I confess.

“You know, I'm sure he didn't really mean that comment,” Robyn says quickly.

I shake my head. “No, not at Nate, at myself. I feel a bit stupid. All these years I believed that I could never be properly happy without him. I'd built him up into this perfect guy, this great love.” I pause and tug at some tufts of grass. “Now I feel like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
when she pulls back the curtain and sees the wizard is just a little old man pulling lots of levers.”

“I felt like that when I went to my high school reunion and saw Joe Poleski,” says Robyn supportively. “When I was sixteen, I had the biggest crush. I couldn't even look at him. He was like a god. Then I met him again last year and he was just this little guy who ran a dry-cleaning company and lived in Ohio. He was just so
normal
.” She shakes her head, her green eyes flashing as she thinks back.

“It was like one minute I was crazy about him and then the next . . .” I trail off. God, I didn't realize I was so fickle.

“It can happen,” says Robyn, nodding. “Once, it happened to me right in the middle.” She raises her eyebrows.

“Middle of what?”

“Sex.”

“Oh God, really?” Suddenly it registers. “What happened?”

“He was a Hare Krishna and—”

“Can Hare Krishnas
have
sex?”

“Well, he wasn't great and the chanting was a bit distracting.” She pauses. “Oh, you mean, are they allowed to have sex because of their
religious beliefs
?” She gasps, her eyes wide. “Actually, I don't know.” She stops to think for a moment, her face screwed up in concentration. “Anyway, where was I?”

“Having sex,” I remind her.

“Oh, yeah.” Brushing her curls out of her face, she looks at me intently. “He was on top of me and I looked up and saw his bald head and suddenly, out of the blue, I got this image of Fred, my niece's tortoise. You know the way they stretch their little heads out of their shell?” She does an impression. “Trust me, it was never the same again. Which was a shame, because I used to like his cooking. All those mung beans.
Mmm
. . .”

As Robyn chatters away, I feel myself cheering up. Well, it's impossible not to with her around.

“But boy, did they give me gas.”

A giggle erupts from me. “Haven't you ever heard of the phrase ‘too much information'?” I laugh.

“Of course. I just ignore it.” She grins and then suddenly she sits up like a meerkat. Her body is on high alert, like when Simon and Jenny spot a squirrel.

“What have you seen?”

“A dark, handsome stranger. Two o'clock.” She gestures ahead.

Uh-oh. I know what this means. “Harold?”

“Could be.” She nods, putting on her sunglasses and slinking down into the grass.

I suddenly feel as if we're on a stakeout.

“So what happened with Daniel the other night?” I ask, trying to steer the topic from an imaginary male to a real one. “When I left, you were looking pretty cozy.”

“Oh, we had fun. He's cute,” she says distractedly, her eyes still fixed on the dark, handsome stranger. I wouldn't be surprised if any minute now she dug out some binoculars. “He asked me out on a date tomorrow night.”

“A date?” I repeat excitedly. “You didn't tell me that!”

“But of course I said no.”

“Because he's not Harold,” I say flatly.