Perfect on Paper (15 page)

He got to the door by the third ring. Opening it, he saw a vision of beauty, fresh faced and with rosy cheeks.

“Nadine,” he said, reaching out to her, wanting her in his arms again. He remembered the sounds he’d inspired in her the night before. She didn’t motion to kiss him, but he kissed her cheek anyway.

Her tense posture told him that something was up. He hoped she didn’t have regrets about what had happened between them. He was self-conscious about what he was wearing, wishing desperately that he was more put together.

“I was just taking a nap when you called,” he told her, by way of explanation.

“And you sleep in Star Wars pajamas?” She giggled.

David looked down at his shirt and held it out. “This was a gift from my grandparents.” Then he changed the topic. “Come on in.”

“With Duchess, too?”

“Of course. Nobody’s home right now.”

“I thought you had to ask them about my visit earlier.”

“Oh, right.” David wanted to slap his head but there was nothing he could do.
Act cool
, he told himself, but it didn’t seem to be working. He resigned himself to having been caught off guard, but he didn’t let it affect his manners. He invited her into the messy fraternity style apartment and hoped that it didn’t smell too much like socks or beer. She didn’t seem to be too turned off, he reckoned, so the tour continued through the living room and into the kitchen. The doors to all the bedrooms were closed, which was very convenient. He hoped to keep her in the common space.

“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked. “Soda? Beer?”

“I guess you don’t have any white wine.”

“No,” he said, again wishing that he’d been given the chance to prepare. Had he known that she was coming, he would have bought white wine. In fact, he should have bought it when they first started dating. This was a lesson learned.

Nadine gave a reassuring smile. “Okay, I’ll have a beer.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. Have a seat.” David gestured at the couch that was covered with a crocheted blanket that one of his roommates’ grandmothers had made in the 1980s.

Nadine sat down carefully. She had not been in a place like this in a long time, though she’d been no stranger to this type of home when she was at university. She’d just outgrown it, she thought, which led her to wonder whether she could ever feel comfortable with this. Could she have a boyfriend who was fine with using milk crates for bookshelves? She looked around. There were posters on the wall—not utterly tasteless—there was Einstein on the south wall and some fractals behind the television. But this was not a home, not really. This was more of a dwelling. It didn’t seem to reflect David. How could it? He was just one of three here.

She examined the DVDs beneath the old television set—alien movies and sci-fi thrillers. There were also cinematic classics—
A Clockwork Orange
,
2001: A Space Odyssey
, and, weirdly,
Valley of the Dolls
. Boy movies, mostly. Smart boy movies, she reckoned, but nonetheless boy movies. She sighed. She was dating a boy. Well, not ‘dating’, exactly. They’d been on one date, she found herself observing.

Her mind followed the thought further… One sexy date. She’d had the best sexual experience of her life so far with a guy who draped his furniture. She sighed.
Why is the world so confusing and unfair?

When David returned from the kitchen with two cans of beer—
Does he not even own glasses?
—Nadine tried to see him for the man he had been the night before, but all she could see was the boy who stood in front of her.

“Cheers,” he said, passing her a can.

She was going to make the best of it. “Cheers.”

Perhaps Alfonso and Marnie had not been so wrong after all. And there really was nothing wrong with two consenting adults having a sexual tryst. It didn’t have to be more than that. And, really, what did it matter if he always came over to her place? She was the one with Egyptian cotton sheets. She was the one with matching furniture and glasses. Area rugs.
You get to a certain point, and you want area rugs.

She took a sip of her cheap beer and knew that she’d better start talking, because she’d be tipsy by the end of this can and it was almost certain to lead to a headache.

“So, uh, David. Can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

“Well, when I came home tonight, there was a message on my doorstep. It seems an old friend is in town and wants to get together.”

David nodded. Nadine knew that she’d copped out. Rehearsing the lines on the way over had not helped. She continued, “Actually, he’s my old boyfriend, from a long time ago. He’s here for a week and he wants to have dinner.”

“The fiancé who left?” David asked.

Nadine nodded. She’d forgotten that she’d told him about that. Relief came over her. At least now there was a chance that he’d understand how important this was.

“Cool,” David said.

Nadine was startled. “Okay, so you’re cool with it. I just wanted to check.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. Some guys…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. What had she expected him to say? What had she wanted? Why was she somehow disappointed?

“Do I have any reason to stress out about it?” David asked.

“Well, no.”

“So, then, no problem.”

Nadine paused. Of course he would jump to that conclusion. Her words had guided him there. She had still not been entirely honest. It was now or never and Nadine knew that in order to live with herself, she had to be forthright.

“Here’s the thing,” she said.

“Oh, there’s a thing.”

She smiled as if to lighten the load. “When he left, I was devastated and broken-hearted, and I haven’t seen him since and now he’s back.”

“For a week.”

“Yeah, for a week.”

“When did you two break up?”

“It’s been about… Let’s see…” She counted on her fingers. “It has been nearly two years.”

“That’s a long time. How long were you together?”

“Eight years.” She looked down at her can. She couldn’t look at David. She felt like she’d burst into tears if she did. This was all so emotional and so strange. Allan had been a ghost who haunted her dreams at night and to think that he’d decided to come back now. He’d always had terrible timing. “We were high-school sweethearts.”

“I see. And he left suddenly?”

“At our engagement party, actually.”

“Oh.” David made a face. It was clear that he was unimpressed.

“Yeah, which I guess is better than being left at the altar, but it was still the most painful experience of my life. All those guests. All those eyes watching.”

“Did he make some sort of public announcement or something?”

“No, he left quietly. He told me it was over and that he’d already packed his bags. He said he was leaving and not coming back and that he was sorry. But, of course, he didn’t consider the fact that my parents had a whole garden full of friends and relatives waiting to shower us with affection.”

As she relived the memory of still having to offer everyone cake and small talk, Nadine’s tears flowed freely. She couldn’t hold them back. “It was awful.”

“Nadine, I’m sorry.” He wiped her tears away with his thumb. “It sounds like he’s an ass. Is this the first time you’ve heard from him since?”

“No, he called a couple of weeks later from New York. He said he needed time to figure some stuff out, that he wasn’t ready to be married. He told me not to wait for him.”

She took another sip of her beer and looked around her. Suddenly she felt silly. “I’m sorry I’m telling you all this and we barely even know each other. I just didn’t want to make you jealous.”

“I’m not the jealous type,” David said.

It wasn’t the response she’d hoped for, though she didn’t exactly know what she’d wanted. Why had she wanted so badly to tell him?

“Okay.”

“Well, I mean, unless you want me to be jealous.”

She rolled her eyes. How immature. “David, of course I don’t
want
you to be jealous.”

“But this is what you came to tell me about, isn’t it? This is why you came over.”

“Well, yeah. I thought you should know.”

“So you’re planning on having dinner with this guy who was a total asshole to you a few years ago and you want me to know so that I won’t be jealous.” David’s tone was cold and judicial, like he was a scholar summarizing an argument.

Nadine nodded. “Well, it sounds really stupid when you put it like that.”

“Like what?” David still had the air of a debater composing a brilliant rebuttal in his mind.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure why I told you.”

“To absolve yourself of any guilt you might have?” David’s words sounded harsh and accusing.

“Maybe.”

“Just tell me this. Are you planning on getting back together with him?”

“No.”

“Are you still in love with him?”

Nadine was silent for a second too long. “No,” she said quietly. But it was too weak a response. She needed to elaborate. “I want to see him. I never got closure. And it is complicated. I mean, our families still send Christmas cards. Everyone thought we’d be together. Everyone thought he was the one.”

“Did you?”

“Of course. I was going to marry him.”

“If your goal was to come over here to reassure me, you’re not doing a very good job. Why don’t you just have dinner with him first before you tell me about feelings you might hypothetically have. Two years is a long time. I’m sure you’ve both changed. Besides, there’s a reason people break up with one another. That’s my belief. The whole on-again-off-again is for chick flicks. In real life, when it’s over, it’s over. People move on.”

Nadine thought of the bouquet and wondered if what David was saying was true. Had Allan moved on? Probably. He was probably just trying to make up for the harm he’d caused. She’d find out soon enough.

“You’re right,” she said. “I just wanted you to know.”

“I appreciate you telling me, but you don’t have to get nervous that I’m going to get jealous. I hate playing games.”

“I wasn’t playing a game with you.”

“I’m glad you told me.” He leaned in to kiss her but Nadine wasn’t too sure anymore. They shared the most chaste kiss they’d ever had. Then Nadine sipped her beer and changed the subject. She asked about one of the DVDs and David proceeded to tell her about the alien plan to attack Earth and the cyborg-human alliance that saved the planet.

Chapter Fifteen

When she left, they kissed again, this time a little more romantically, though it was hard to achieve romance with beer breath. She mulled the encounter over in her head as she walked home with Duchess at her side. He’d seemed standoffish to her. She’d dated jealous guys in the past—Allan was the worst—and maybe she was more used to that sort of behavior. To her, it seemed like David didn’t really care. She reasoned that they’d only been on one date, but as she went over the situation from all angles, she considered that if the roles had been reversed, she’d have felt very threatened. Was he simply more confident than she was or had he not invested in their connection yet? No doubt her friends would tell her that he was young and playing the field, but it hadn’t felt that way to her on their date.

The more she thought about the encounter at David’s place, the more displeased she became with herself. Why had she needed to tell him? A different kind of woman would have kept it to herself, gone out with Allan for dinner
then
told… If there was anything to tell.

As she and Duchess walked through the neighborhood streets, she looked at all the pretty houses and wondered if she would ever find The One. She wasn’t too sure about David. His apartment scared her. There, he seemed like someone who could host a good kegger—not at all like the guy she was out with the other night. And what was with the Star Wars pajamas? Was that what he lounged around in by himself? If she went out with him, she was probably destined to wait for at least a decade before he wanted some of the stuff she wanted, she thought as she watched a random couple pull up to their house, and get out of their car. The woman carried groceries. The man had a big box from an electronics shop. They were probably going to make dinner and set up new speakers or something like that. Something cozy.

At home, she felt restless. The bouquet mocked her, dared her to call Allan. She wanted to ignore it. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of having this kind of emotional grip on her.
Who does he think he is?

She wondered if her parents knew he was in town. It occurred to her that she might want to call them first. If nothing else, it’d be a way to procrastinate. She really wanted to delay the inevitable, at least until the beer wore off. She dialed her parents.

“Nadine, what a surprise,” her dad said. “We’re just sitting here with the Jordans having a glass of red. Why don’t you come on over? There’s someone here who wants to say hello.”

She could tell that the Jordans were all listening in on the conversation. Her dad was making quite the display of it.

“Um, is it Allan?”

“It is. You must have gotten the flowers.”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you come on by? We’ll give you two space if you need to talk.”

This was so abrupt. She didn’t want to go over there now, didn’t want to have yet another public showdown with Allan, even if this was a different form. A reunion was different from a parting, but still. Why did everything have to be so public with him? Sure, it was family, but there would still be four more people than just the two of them.

“Uh, okay.”

There was no point in delaying, though. She’d be forced to see him one way or another. At least if the family was there, she reasoned, she wouldn’t punch him in the face or tell him how horrible it had been after he left. And she wouldn’t reference David, since her family didn’t even know about him yet. And if everything went absolutely horrendously wrong, her mom would be there to hold her, feed her and give her wine.

“Great. See you soon,” her dad said.