Manhattan Dreaming (4 page)

‘Babycakes, why are you swearing, you never swear.'

‘YOU ARSEHOLE!' I yelled, shaking. Adam stood still in his jocks, looking stunned.

‘I want a man who can appreciate and respect me and that's not you! It's over.'

‘You're not my friend any more, Lozzie? Babycakes? But I need you.'

‘You NEED me? You didn't NEED me when you were at Surfers, did you?' I had found a lung capacity I didn't even know I had. ‘You don't fucking NEED me. You need your head read, that's what you need!'

‘I did it,' I declared at morning tea the next day.

‘What did you do?' Libby asked.

‘I broke up with Adam.'

‘What? When?' She let go of her mouse and looked around the side of her computer with a half-smile.

‘Last night,' I said, feigning pride and hiding heartache.

‘Are you serious? Why didn't you tell me! I mean, before now? It's 11 am already.'

‘You've been glued to the phone since I got in. Aren't your ears ringing?'

‘What's that you say, Loz? Can't hear you. Seriously, this is good news for you, tidda. We're going to find you a good man, with a normal neck. I promise.'

‘I'm not looking for a man for a while. One heartbreak is enough for me.'

‘Oh, tidda, you'll have plenty of frogs to kiss before you find that prince, and as for your broken heart, you'll get over it. The heart is like the liver, it mends itself eventually.'

Libby still didn't get it. Adam was the only one I wanted. And I was the best woman for him, he just hadn't realised it. I still hoped that he would, one day. Until then I would just try and be strong and stay away and wait for him to come back to me.

‘I really think this calls for a celebration.' Libby stood up.

‘I'm not really in the mood for celebrating. Can you at least let me have a mourning period?'

‘No, sorry, no mourning the loss of losers. Really, you're amazing, and you've got a great career and friends who love you, so I think we can at least celebrate that. Why does your happiness rest on what Adam brings or doesn't bring to your life?'

Libby looked at her watch and back at her computer. ‘Come on, we've both been working nonstop, let's have a cuppa and something sweet to eat. It's my treat.'

We went down to the gallery's eatery, Café in the House, on the ground floor backing onto the lawns of New Parliament House, and saw Emma in a meeting with one of the bean counters from the gallery. They both looked at me with a funny smile, as if they were talking about me.

‘So?' Libby asked as she devoured her chocolate, hazelnut and espresso trifle.

‘So,' I repeated, focusing on my pavlova with passionfruit and kiwifruit. ‘My dentist would die if he saw me.'

‘Are you okay?' she asked.

‘I think so.'

‘You look okay. Actually you look really good. Are you sleeping all right?'

‘More or less the same, really. Denise has given me some herbal stuff to help. I think it's working. I got about five hours last night, which is almost a marathon. She's a great flatmate!'

‘Has he contacted you since you told him it was over?'

‘Just a text this morning.'

‘You're not going to text him back, are you?'

‘Of course not,' I lied, but I wasn't sure how convincing I was.

‘I know you, Lauren. If you start texting he'll suck you back in. He does it every time. One little
babycakes
and you'll be right back into it.'

‘I won't text him. I'm not
that
stupid.'

I wasn't stupid – I was just in love.

Libby raised an eyebrow. ‘At least you don't drink, so there's less risk of you doing the drunken dial or text. And that can only be a good thing. Most of us have been guilty of that at one time or another.'

Denise was a chronic drunk dialler, always texting her ex-boyfriends when she'd had a few drinks, but I used to help her script the messages, so I was an accomplice.

‘You know you need to delete him from MySpace, don't you? Actually, you need to block him altogether so he can't find you. And so you can't find him. I'll help you do it if you don't know how.'

‘Thank you for all your practical and moral support, Libs, and I know you're really happy that it's over, but I'm sure I can figure out how to delete or block him or whatever. Can you at least let me wean myself off him? It's like a twelve-step plan – no phone calls, no texting, no seeing him – there's three already.'

‘No stalking on the internet – there's step four,' she said with a tilt to her head.

‘Oh, I wondered what step four was – thanks,' I said. Truth be known there was no way I was going to delete Adam, and I'd certainly never block him. It was the only way I could keep track of him, of what he was up to and with whom. Eventually he would come to his senses. Until then I still wanted to know what was going on in his life. I had logged into his page three times already that morning. Libby would be mortified if she knew but our desks faced each other so she couldn't see my screen.

Libby stood up. ‘We're not done with this little chat, Loz, but I think we need another coffee. I'll go order it.'

As soon as Libby had moved from the table I grabbed my BlackBerry to see if there was a text message or missed call from him. There was nothing. I snuck the BlackBerry back in my bag as Libby arrived back at the table.

‘I was thinking,' she said, sitting down. ‘I reckon you need to make a pledge to yourself.'

‘A what?'

‘A pledge – a commitment or promise to yourself that you will allow your heart to detox properly, and
not
let Mr Fullofhimself weasel his way back into your life.
You
are in control now.'

‘I can't believe we're still talking about it. Please, just let it go now.'

‘Trust me, I wouldn't mind talking about me for a change, Loz, but we need to just finish this and then we can
all
move on.' Libby sipped her coffee.

‘Okay, what do you have in mind, then?'

Completely seriously, she said, ‘Repeat after me – I, Lauren …'

I started to giggle. ‘Don't be ridiculous.' I had no intention of reciting a pledge to a heart-detox and was grateful when our waitress, Amy, arrived at the table with our coffees.

‘Double dose for you girls today, must be serious!' Amy joked.

‘It is, Amy, trust me, it is!' Libby said, staring at me hard. ‘As I was saying, Lauren –'

‘Ooh, it does sound serious, I'll leave you to it,' Amy said, and left.

‘I, Lauren …' Libby repeated. There was just no point in not cooperating. This was how Libby got people to do things for her that no-one else would have a hope in hell of getting done. She just refused to give up when she set her mind to something.

‘I, Lauren …' I said, grinning at my friend and
her
commitment to
my
happiness.

‘Will not call, email or sms Mr Chubby Neck Fullofhimself …'

‘Will not call, email or sms …' I paused and Libby eyeballed me until I continued, ‘Mr Chubby Neck Fullofhimself …'

‘I will delete … no!' she corrected herself. ‘I will
block
him on MySpace … so he can't find me and I can't find him.'

‘I will
block
him on MySpace … so he can't find me and I can't find him.'

‘And I will stop stalking him at training sessions …' Libby said sternly.

‘How did you know about that?'

‘You know I go to CIT three times a week for my Spanish class. I'm usually driving behind you as you go up Barry Drive. I wondered where you were going one day and so I followed you to Canberra Stadium. You just never see me because you're driving like an obsessed stalker.'

‘It's not stalking!' I was angry and defensive. ‘I love him!'

‘You
did
love him, but now you need to move on.'

Staying away from Adam was the hardest thing I'd ever done. It required more discipline than my masters had. I felt sick and sad and alone all day and all night, even when I was head down at work. I tried not to contact him but it was difficult. Every time my phone went off I jumped in hope that it was him. I left it on 24/7 in case he wanted to talk. But he never called, though he responded to my texts, because, if anything, Adam had good manners.

I tried to keep busy at work, focusing on pulling together the exhibition, and I spent lots of time at the gym, working off the increasing amount of sweets I was eating to compensate for no love. Denise, Libby and I had a couple of movie and pizza nights, which is all that Canberra is really good for in winter. I couldn't tell if they were keeping an eye on me or not, but it helped to have people around so that I couldn't easily get online.

Occasionally when I was with the girls, I would sneak to the bathroom and log in to MySpace on my BlackBerry, just to see what he was up to, but when I realised how much it was costing me I had to stop. A curator doesn't really make enough to pay massive phone bills due to checking up on ex-lovers.

I thought about getting loads of photos with some young hotties and putting them on my own page, but that wasn't my style, and I didn't really want to risk jeopardising anything that still may have been possible with Adam. I didn't
really
want to make him jealous anyway. Childish, tacky women did that. I was neither of those. I had class, brains, and dignity. Or so I thought.

The quickest way to get over a man is in the arms of another one.
Libby's mantra rang in my head. The problem was I didn't want another man, and I didn't even want to get over Adam. I just wanted him to get over his party-boy ways.

Late one night, when I checked Adam's MySpace page, I was shocked to see that he had changed the layout. I knew someone else must have done it for him. He had to have had help. One of those tramps on his page must have done it. I was sure of it, and I was consumed by the need to not let this woman any further into his life.
I
was the girl he cooked for.
I
was the one he called babycakes. I desperately wanted to see him, to remind him of how good we were together. I got up to make a cup of tea to calm myself.

‘Can't sleep either?' Denise was behind me almost immediately. ‘You know there's an ear here, two actually, if you want to talk. And I'm always good for a late-night drive by.' She winked. Denise had never commented on the photos in the paper unless I said something first, and I'd always tried not to. We got along well as housemates, and I didn't want to taint that by having her know absolutely everything about what was going on with Adam. Now I told her the bare minimum about us breaking up and she sat and ate cheesecake with me in sympathy. Denise was good like that. I think being a kindergarten school teacher made her very gentle in her approach to people generally. Then I told her how upset I was about his MySpace page.

‘MySpace? You don't really worry about that stuff, do you? It's so, um, for teenagers.'

I ignored that comment and moved on to more important things. ‘Were you serious about the drive-by? Really? Could we go now?'

‘It's late, Lauren, and what good would it do?'

‘I just want to know if he's got someone else, if there's a woman there now. If he has, then that would make me let go, for good.'

‘Come on, then,' she said, grabbing her car keys.

We cruised up to Bruce at 11 pm, both of us in our pjs giggling like schoolgirls, me carefully holding our cups of tea. I loved that Denise didn't judge me and let me sort myself out my own way. We turned into Adam's street and I crouched slightly. His car was in the drive. No other cars were around, and the lights were out. I told myself that he was alone and we drove home.