On the Rocks (31 page)

I waited for Ben to speak, staring at the cobblestones, tracing the outline of a brick with my left toe. I couldn’t believe he’d thought that coming here was a good idea. Then again, he also thought that I’d want my engagement ring covered in chocolate sludge, so clearly he didn’t know the first thing about me.

“I’m not proud of what I did,” he said.

“Okay, I’m glad we had this talk. Have a safe trip home, happy trails, and all that stuff,” I replied, hoping he’d let me leave, but deep down knowing better.

“I panicked. I didn’t have the guts to tell you I wasn’t ready to get married myself. I couldn’t stand the thought of how badly it would hurt you, and how I’d have to live with the memory of your face in that moment for the rest of my life. So I took the easy way out, and I ran.”

“That’s attractive. That’s exactly what a woman wants. A man who bolts like a skittish puppy when things get difficult. I think I’m falling in love with you all over again.”

“It’s a pathetic excuse, but it’s the truth. I think I wanted to make you so angry with me that you’d never want to come back. I wanted better for you than what I could give you.”

“Then you can rest easy. I agree with you. I want better for me too. So now that that’s all cleared up, you can head back to the Wild Wild West and get off Grace’s Facebook page. We’re done here.” I stood and took two steps away from the bench. Then, feeling like the newly empowered woman I’d become over the last two months, I decided I wasn’t going to run from him. He was the one who ran from difficult conversations, not me.

“You know what?” I said as I turned and stood over him while he remained on the bench. “When exactly did you decide that I deserved better than you? Do you think maybe you could have decided this when we were in college or something, so that I didn’t waste my twenties thinking that we both wanted the same thing? Or if that was too much of a stretch, do you think you could have decided before you proposed? Because I don’t know about you, but I operate under the assumption that engagements are serious, that you actually intend to end up with the person forever when you pop the question. I mean, I get that Elizabeth Taylor was married like, twelve times, but I was planning on only doing it once. I didn’t think you were one of those people who just give away engagement rings the way I give away hair elastics. So when did you have this epiphany exactly?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he stared into my eyes. For the first time, he looked at me and actually saw me the way I was now. Not the girl who sat crying on his couch in his apartment almost a year ago, trying to convince him to stay. The girl who was over him.

“I see. Well, this has been enlightening, and since I don’t particularly like desert heat all that much, I’m glad you found somewhere to call home that I have no interest in ever visiting. I wish you had stayed there.” He grabbed the hem of my dress and pulled me back down to the bench. So I sat, because I didn’t care enough to run. “Fine, Ben. Say whatever it is you came to say and get it over with.”

“I came home for a reason. I need to talk to you.”

“I already returned the engagement gifts, so if you’re in need of a toaster oven, I can’t help you.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.” I did. He wouldn’t know a toaster oven if one went flying toward him while he was sitting in a bathtub.

Not that I’d envisioned that or anything.

“Then what?” I demanded. This had already gone on too long. All of it.

“I’m thinking of moving home.”

I felt like I had been hit with a blunt object. I knew I shouldn’t care, but I did. I didn’t want him back in town. I heard my subconscious saying to me over and over and over again,
You don’t care
,
you don’t care
,
you don’t care.
Then I realized that, this time, I agreed with her. I felt her relax for the first time in a year. Poor thing must have been exhausted.

“What happened to the girl you were seeing?” I asked.

“How did you know?” he asked, genuinely surprised that I was able to crack his oh so complicated email cipher.

“Oh, don’t insult me. You made it very clear you were dating someone else without actually having to say the words. I’m not stupid, so answer the question. What happened to her? Or are you running out on her the same way you ran out on me?” I waited for him to answer. He really ought to be careful if he was pulling one of his disappearing acts on an unsuspecting girl in Arizona. Gun laws are way more liberal out there than they are in New England. If he pissed off the wrong girl, he could end up getting shot in the crotch with a six-shooter.

“She left me.” He sighed.

I chuckled. I wish I knew her name so I could send her a thank-you note. “Wow, Ben, I wish I could say I was sorry, but the truth is, I really don’t care.”

“For a landscaper.”

“Not sure why I needed that piece of information,” I said.

“I’m completely alone out there. I don’t know what happened to me, but I managed to blow up my entire life in a year. I left you, I left my job, I left my friends. It’s like I had an early midlife crisis or something, and I want my old life back.”

“I don’t care what people say, Ben, but in your case, you can’t go home again.”

“I’m so lonely, Abby.”

“Get a dog.”

“I did.”

“He didn’t help?”

“He’s great, but I’d rather have a woman in my bed than a dog.”

So the only reason he dated me for as long as he did was because his building didn’t allow pets.
Awesome.

“Take out an ad in the personals. What do you want me to tell you?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me you’d be willing to give us another chance. Even though I know I don’t deserve it. I’ve changed, I’m not the selfish guy I was a year ago. I don’t even know who that guy was,” he said flatly.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m very serious,” he replied, proving that even after a year apart, he still didn’t understand me in the slightest.

“You thought I’d take you back because you showed up here and told me that your girlfriend broke up with you and you’d rather sleep with me than your dog. Is that the gist of this conversation?” I said as I folded my hands in front of my chest and tried so very, very hard to understand why I let this loser destroy me for the better part of a year. He looked at the sidewalk, and finally, finally, I saw what everyone else saw. I not only removed the rose-colored glasses, I pulverized them into rose-colored dust.

“That’s not what I meant either. Stop twisting my words.”

I laughed as I cracked the knuckles on my left hand and stared at my naked ring finger, for the first time thanking God that it was unadorned.

“Ben, I’ve been trying to figure out what you mean for so long now. It’s basically been a full-time job, trying to understand why you did what you did, wondering if I missed signs that things weren’t right, what went through your mind when you baked a diamond ring in a cake. And you know what? I don’t care anymore. I don’t care what you mean. I don’t care if you’re alone, or lonely, or homesick. You said that we always agreed on everything. Well, here’s something we won’t agree on. I don’t ever want to see you again. From this moment on, Benjamin, you don’t exist. Don’t call, don’t write, don’t email, don’t text, don’t iChat, don’t tweet, don’t Facebook, which I know will be hard for you considering how much you love to do that. Don’t attempt to communicate with me in any way. Go back to Arizona and date your dog, or move to Boston and restart your life. Just make sure that your life never intersects with mine ever again, or else your dog won’t be the only thing on all fours licking his balls.”

I turned and left him sitting there stunned, speechless. The old Abby, the one he knew, would never have talked to him that way. And I realized that I didn’t like that girl very much.

As I walked home I exhaled deeply and smiled in smug satisfaction, happy to be the one doing the leaving this time. The last time. I continued to walk through town sensing that someone was following me. I could feel the figure behind me, keeping enough distance to not encroach on my space, but just close enough so that I could tell it was there. Normally, this kind of sensation of being followed, call it intuition, makes women run screaming through the streets. I wasn’t worried at all, because I knew without ever looking behind me that it was Bobby, my self-proclaimed wingman, silently escorting me home.

Chapter 20

The Other Woman’s Other Woman

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
the boys mercifully decided to go on a fishing trip, leaving Lara, Grace, and me alone for some much-needed girl time. Few guys will understand the way a girl feels after finally being able to tell off the guy who broke her heart, and none of them can listen to you tell the story about how you told him to go kill himself over and over again without telling you you’re acting like a crazy person and to shut up. Times like these are when you really need your girlfriends to assure you that you did the right thing and that you’re not psychotic.

We decided to skip the beach and instead planned on bringing in greasy food from one of the bars in town and watching movies on the couch all day. As Lara and Grace made pitchers of Bloody Marys and tried to figure out how to work the DVD player, I headed into town to pick up ribs, fries, and anything else that girls shouldn’t eat while wearing bathing suits in the presence of guys. I waited at the bar for the bartender to bring me my order, which in retrospect was big enough to feed the entire defensive line of the Patriots, and looked around at the guys downing beers and watching the afternoon baseball game. I glanced at a table in the corner and suddenly someone caught my eye. Well, not so much someone, as the bleached-white hair atop that someone’s head. It was Ryan, the guy who said he’d call me and then disappeared a month ago for reasons unknown. The guy responsible for Bobby thinking that he was the walking vaccine for all of my dating diseases. The guy who was about to have a very interesting conversation with a girl who demanded some freakin’ answers.

I sauntered over to where he was standing and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hi, remember me?” I asked.

He smiled an awkward smile, “Yeah, of course. How are you?” he stuttered, pretending that he actually remembered me. I couldn’t remember what he did for a living, but I knew for sure he wasn’t an actor.

“No, you don’t. You have no clue who I am. Just admit it. I won’t cry,” I said with a shrug. And while the old me might have once again let her mood be spontaneously altered by a moron, the new me was done with that.

“Excuse me?” he said, understandably confused as to why a snarky stranger was interrupting the Red Sox game for him.

“I’m sorry, I maybe should have told you that this is going to be one of the most painfully honest conversations you’ve ever had with a female in your entire life. And in keeping with that honesty, why don’t you just tell the truth and admit that you don’t remember me.”

“Okay, fine. I’m sorry, I don’t. Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else? I’m, um, surprised I don’t remember you,” he said with a smile, hoping that would somehow sugar-coat the fact that he found me entirely forgettable.

“Yeah, I’m sure. We met at the Red Parrot back in June. You asked if I wanted to meet up for drinks, and I said sure, and I gave you my number, but I never heard from you again, and I was wondering why that was.”

“Are you serious?” he asked. Like most guys, he didn’t know how to deal with girls who didn’t care about embarrassing themselves. Sadly for him, he was about to find out.

“You bet your highlighted hair I am,” I said as I put my hands in my back pockets and rocked onto my heels, the way Bobby did when he antagonized me. It felt nice to be the one doing the taunting for once.

“What are you talking about? My hair isn’t highlighted,” he insisted as he ran his hand through it to make sure it was still there.

“Oh please, Billy Idol would think your hair is too blond, but I’m not here to discuss your effeminate cosmetic habits.” His eyes darted nervously around the bar, looking for his friends, and I can’t say that I blamed him, but it was time for guys everywhere to own up to acting like assholes when they acted like assholes. I was making it my personal crusade, and I was starting with him.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he yelled, apparently done with the pretending to be nice to me part of this conversation.

“Me? Oh, no, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me. I get that usually girls act like it’s no big deal that you said you were going to call them and then disappeared, or they ignore it altogether for fear of looking crazy. The thing is, I don’t really care if you think I’m crazy. I’ve spent way too much time worrying about what guys will think of me and letting that dictate my every move, and the reality is, you should be worried about what we think of you and your entire gender, because I’m fairly certain, if my sample set is correct, that girls think you guys are all demented. So I’m liberated by not caring that you’re going to go home and tell your buddies what some psychotic chick said to you in the bar. All I care about is you telling me what I want to know, and that is why you never fucking called me?” He said nothing, at least not out loud. I’m pretty sure if there had been a thought balloon over his head there’d have been enough expletives running through it to make George Carlin blush. I felt he needed a bit of prodding. “It’s okay. Don’t be shy. Speak up.”

“I don’t remember why. I think I went to look you up and couldn’t find you,” he said with a shrug.

“Look me up where? The yellow pages?”

“No, on Facebook. Your name’s Abby, right? I tried to find you on Facebook, and you weren’t on there. I guess after that I just moved on.”

Bobby was right. Good God, there’d be no living with him now.

“You moved on,” I said, still trying to process the fact that Bobby’s Facebook theory was true, “to someone who was on Facebook. That’s how you decide who you’re going to go out with and who you’re going to blow off? Am I getting this right?”