It's Not Okay: Turning Heartbreak into Happily Never After (30 page)

Oh, and to not only confirm we had sex, but call it “making love?” Every part of me wanted to go all Georgia girl cray on his ass and fire back with some snarky response like, “Oh really? Is that what you’re calling it now, because I’m pretty sure you called it ‘fucking’ when you were on top of me.” But I didn’t. Instead, I held back for one reason and one reason only: my fiancé.

Embarrassment aside, I couldn’t help feel an overwhelming sense of relief that I had told Number Twenty-Six the truth prior to this. I knew we had gotten through it and vowed never to bring it up again, but I didn’t know this live revelation would erase all of that progress instantly.

When the cameras went away, it was as if Twenty-Six’s humiliation began to manifest itself in outbursts and a hatred for the show we once adored as the documentation of our love story. In an instant, my fiancé went from a disappointed but accepting partner to a humiliated and emasculated one, all because of one man’s revelation. The fact that now people knew about my past had somehow changed his outlook on it, even though the facts hadn’t changed. It didn’t matter that he was the only man I had said I loved, the only man I let pick out an engagement ring, and the only man who made it to that final proposal day. All that seemed to matter now was that he was the fiancé of a girl who had once had sex with another man. In a moment that was supposed to be filled with bliss and freedom, that one nasty question triggered a downward spiral that would end a relationship.

According to him, my indiscretion had ruined the entire experience for him. Whether it was an offhand comment telling me we were no longer a “marketable” couple, not trusting me when talking to another man, or flinging the word “whore” in my direction, he always made sure that I never forgot what I had done and the damage it had caused him. Though the facts hadn’t changed, the fact that people now knew changed everything and I couldn’t help but wonder if Twenty-Six was more worried about his own perception than about me.

What was once just a skeleton to be locked away in a closet forever, had burst forth now that people other than the two of us knew about it, and it made itself a permanent home in our volatile relationship. My past was never going to be forgiven, much less forgotten, and it was all because of that asshole Twenty-Five.

Anyhoo, back to the asshole—where was I? So I’m at the bar, and he walks in. He’s about five yards away from me, but I squint and hope that I
am
drunk and hallucinating, but no such luck. Granted, I am in his town, and he is actually friends with Christy and some of the other girls I’m with. Thus in the turf war, I guess he kind of wins.

I turn to the bartender and order emergency rations. “Straight whiskey, honey.”

Shit, he’s walking this way.

“You don’t want another vodka soda?” she asks.

“I’ve changed my mind. Whiskey, neat please!”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

As I take a gulp of the whiskey, he’s mere feet away from me and panic is setting in. He’s greeting my friends and I don’t know whether to get up and say hi, or shake his hand or give him a hug, or just ignore him. I decide to be cordial and say hello, but remain planted firmly on my barstool. Everyone tries to ignore the burgeoning awkwardness, but it’s an impossible feat. An hour later, and he’s still here! WTF? I can’t take it any longer and decide to pretend to be way drunker than I unfortunately am, and convince Christy to take me home.

The next morning, I wake up next to Christy with a pounding headache. I roll over to grab the glass of water that sits on the nightstand along with my phone. It’s almost noon and I have a text message from a number I don’t recognize. I swipe right.

Shit! It’s from Number Twenty-Five.

25:
Hey! Hope you don’t mind that I got your number. Just wanted to say it was good to see you last night and I would really really like to clear the air with you. I want to apologize for everything I did in person. I understand if you don’t want to but it would really mean a lot if you could spare a few minutes and let me explain myself.

My headache gets worse as I read the message. Fuck, why did I come to Chicago? I decide not to respond yet, I need to eat first, then think through this mess later. Christy and I go for pizza, of course, and as we chow down, I find myself distracted by the unanswered message on my phone. I begin typing a response . . . then delete it. Type and delete. Fuck, I hope he can’t see the three dots that indicate I am typing. Finally, I think I’ve come up with the perfect nip-it-in-the-bud response.

ME:
Hey, good to see you too. Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything left to say. I don’t feel like holding a grudge, I’m going through a lot right now and this is kind of the last thing I’m worried about. Let’s just consider it water under the bridge.

Send.

Three dots. Shit, he’s responding.

25:
Well, that’s very kind of you. I still would like to talk to you, please, it will only be a few minutes. I can meet you or you can come over.

Come over? What the hell? This has got to be a setup . . . He’s either trying to redeem himself or he’s called TMZ and they’re waiting outside his door ready to snap a picture of my freezing-cold ass standing in front of his apartment.

Several text exchanges later, I tell him if I am free later I will let him know. I honestly don’t care what he has to say, not out of bitterness or anger but because I genuinely, flat-out do not care. But I also wonder if perhaps after one final flare-up he’ll go away forever.

Hours later, Christy and I are enjoying happy hour when I get another text from him.

25:
What time do you want to meet up?

God, this is getting annoying.

ME:
Not sure, we are having a drink right now.

25:
Where at?

I ask Christy and respond.

25:
That’s literally on my block.

Fuck.
I should have lied, but it’s not like I know where he lives. He sends me his address and I tell him I’ll let him know when we’re done. An hour of agony and a few drinks later, I—for some insanely stupid and ridiculous idea—agree to meet him at his place.

I arrive at his building, thankful that there are no paparazzi creeps outside, check in with the doorman under a false name, and head to the elevator. I push the button for his floor, and think,
What the FUCK am I doing?
This is perhaps one of the stupidest things I’ve done all year. No, not perhaps—this is
absolutely
the stupidest thing I have done. And worst of all, as I’m on what has got to be the longest elevator ride in history, I’m not wondering how the conversation will go or what he will say; I’m wondering if I’ll have sex with him again.

I know, I know! That’s a terrible thought, and I don’t know why my mind even goes there, but it does. Having sex with him would not only take the cake as the worst idea I’ve had all year, but probably as the worst idea I’ve had in my entire life (and that’s after I agreed to not one, but two reality shows). There’s a
ding
, the doors slide open, and I’m on his floor. Here goes nothing but my dignity.

I knock on the door and he opens it right away. As I walk into his apartment, I feel . . . completely unimpressed. Not that it’s bad—trust me, it probably costs double any rent in Atlanta—it just isn’t what I was expecting when he’d gone on and on about his cosmopolitan and “sophisticated” lifestyle while we were on the show. I had envisioned high ceilings, exposed brick, a view of downtown, a bike on the wall, and contemporary artwork, but it’s just a garden-variety bachelor pad. And in the shallowest of ways, being in his apartment gives me relief that the fantasy I had envisioned isn’t reality. And along with the relief, it squashes any ounce of sexual attraction I might have felt.

He offers me a glass of water, which I accept, and we sit on opposite ends of the chunky leather couch.

“How are you today?” he asks.

“I’m fine, little headache.” I laugh.

“Me too.” He laughs back.

“So, let’s just get to it.”

He starts off his speech with an apology, not for his behavior but for my breakup. I annoyingly say thanks and tell him we aren’t here to talk about my breakup.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “Also, I’m sorry for what I did.”

He goes on to tell me that he had never planned to say on live television that we had sex and how it was a reaction to my coldness toward him. With an eye roll, I tell him I understand and half-heartedly apologize for “coming off cold.” Next we get into why he decided to tell the world we had sex—or, should I say, “made love”?

“I’m just wondering why you would ask how I could make love to you when I wasn’t in love with you, considering you certainly didn’t call it making love at the time.”

Instead of an actual explanation, he just gives me another bullshit apology. Tears well up in my eyes as I say, “I don’t care if people assume we had sex, I’m not ashamed of it. But my father watches the show, my grandmother watches it—hell, your eight-year-old sister watches it. I just didn’t think it was right to take a private moment and make it public without my consent. Not to mention the fact that you certainly didn’t call it making love in the fantasy suite.”

Seeing the hurt in my face, he tells me he was angry that he had tried to reach out to me so many times before, and he felt hurt that I refused to see him. This was true—he had, and I had refused both times and told producers that he would have his chance to talk to me at the finale. Turns out that had been a terrible idea on my part, though I think the conversation would have been the same no matter where we had it.

“I even wrote you a letter that you got at the reunion show.”

“You are right, and I should have given you the chance to talk, but you never contacted me privately, it was always when the cameras were rolling, and that didn’t feel genuine.”

“Well, I wrote the letter in an email to the producers first.”

“So you emailed the letter, and then rewrote it by hand so it could all be filmed?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“See, that’s what bothers me about all of this. Everything was always on camera with you. You didn’t email
me
the letter—you emailed it to a producer and not only that, you rewrote your letter by hand for a prop. So can you see how that comes off as very disingenuous?”

“Yeah, I didn’t even think about it that way.”

“How could you not think of it that way?”

“I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t.”

As the conversation continued, more tears start to well up. I feel an overwhelming sense of frustration. I’m frustrated because the statement was embarrassing and unretractable, because of the effect it had on my relationship and most of all because he just doesn’t seem to comprehend the consequences of his actions, and no amount of explanation or tears will change that.

“Look, I don’t want to argue anymore. It’s in the past. I don’t have any desire for you to feel guilty about this. It happened. You say you’re sorry, I say I’m sorry. We both hurt each other in different ways. And that’s all there is to say.”

He agrees and thanks me for forgiving him. But, it wasn’t about forgiveness. Sure, I was mad at him, but I never felt like he owed me anything. Did I feel betrayed by him? Absolutely. Did I think that his revelation caused my breakup? At times. But the truth is, while what he did had a damaging effect on my relationship,
he
wasn’t to blame. If it wasn’t his revelation, it would have been something else down the road. God knows Number Twenty-Six always seemed to find plenty of ammo for our fights.

The conversation wraps, and I know that I am never going to trust him, never going to be friends with him, and never ever going to believe that he hadn’t orchestrated the entire thing. But, I also know that I’m not going to hate him or blame him anymore. I had hurt him and he had hurt me back. Giving him closure was the right thing to do. And in all honesty, though I didn’t think I needed any closure in regards to him, the conversation ends up freeing me not just from Number Twenty-Five but ironically from Number Twenty-Six. It puts both of them, along with the entire ordeal, in the past, leaving me not with a feeling of bitterness or anger or even regret, but with a feeling of peace.

I have to say, it’s astonishing what closure can bring to your psyche, in life and in a breakup. You search high and low for closure so you can feel at peace, move on, and be happy again. You’ve suffered a massive wound, and you are ready for it to heal, so you can too. You think maybe if you can just find a bandage large enough, you can cover the bleeding wound and it will magically be fixed. But it’s not that simple. Because the gaping gash of your heartbreak can’t simply be bandaged up. No, in order to stop the bleeding, the wound requires stitches. Like loose ends, with each stitch you tie up, you find that the bleeding subsides a little more, until finally it stops and you can begin to recover.

Sometimes in life, you find yourself with one of these big wounds and if you want to survive, you’ve got to do something about it before you bleed out. But how? How do you fix heartbreak? The same way you fix a wound. You start with stitches. You tie up the loose ends; the people you’ve been avoiding, the unresolved issues. In my case, it was Number Twenty-Five, whom I was still blaming for part of my breakup. And you fix those little things.

And little by little, one by one, you find that the big wound starts to feel less painful, that the bleeding starts to subside, and the wound starts to become manageable. You physically feel the guilt, the anger, the regret begin to leave your body. Until you get to a point where you’ve tied off every hanging thread, and you’re ready to finally begin to heal. . . .