When Girlfriends Break Hearts (2 page)

I know what you’re thinking right now. Did we hit the sheets? I may have been flirting intensely that night and every now and then sneaking in a few opportune moments to push together my sad excuse for cleavage, but no. Remember, I’m a controlling kind of woman who has always believed that if you put out on the first night or date then you’ve lost any semblance of control you might’ve had. Goodbye, relationship.

No, sex came on the fourth date.

I know. I know. My strict Catholic upbringing and mother’s disapproving voice sounds out vociferously right now, and even more so after I had “done the dirty deed” that rainy night of heated passion at Brandon’s apartment.
 

Passion and heat and intensity were all of the adjectives that best described the kind of connection Brandon and I shared. Our commitment to each other quickly grew. I was not one of the “flings” or “dating-only material” girls in his black book. We were the “real deal” and madly in perfect, impregnable love. We both wondered where we had been for the past four years. It was clear, from the very first moment our eyes had met and our lips had locked, that our love was real, was ours, and was something that could be…forever.

***

Fast forward almost three years. Tears mixed with mascara were streaming down my face. Profanities were spilling from my mouth. Dozens of shoes, handbags, and my signature black and white wardrobe were flying out of the closet and drawers faster than a speeding bullet. Brandon was saying…words. Words I ignored and didn’t want to hear or digest. I shouted. He shouted. I think he even apologized. I told him he could do me a favor and get hit by a bus. I distinctly remember saying that because I took a break from tossing my belongings to imagine the commuter bus (the one I occasionally used to take to work when I didn’t feel like sitting in the dreadful Seattle traffic) running Brandon down. Out of nowhere—
BAM!
Hit by a bus. Just like he hit me with the news that he didn’t love me anymore. Or, how did he put it? “Sophie, I just fell out of love with you…I guess.”

He
guessed!
How could you say something like that without being one hundred percent sure? Alright, I’m certain he was sure, and he was probably trying to lessen the blow. Regardless, he dropped a very gigantic ball on me and suddenly said, “I don’t really love you. Goodbye.”
 

How does that happen?

He had been a bit squeamish that morning (no doubt due to the impending breakup he was planning), and maybe even distant for the couple of weeks before then. Always trying to keep things in line and in some sort of order, I had asked him what was bothering him countless times, but he just dismissed his mood as a rough time at work. A new co-worker had joined his team, and it was proving difficult to sync with the new teammate. Each time I had questioned his emotional distance or sense of distraction, he gave me a weak smile and patted my shoulder or rubbed my back and told me that it was “just work stress. Nothing to concern yourself with.”

But the distance only grew until he was more introverted than ever—
not
one of Brandon’s traits. He was always approachable and welcoming and oftentimes the so-called life of the party. This introverted, quiet, even uninviting man was not the Brandon I had fallen in love with. But love conquers all, right? Through thick and thin, if you love each other you stick it out and manage? You gain back that control you’ve been losing and press on, right?

Wrong. For reasons unknown, he decided that his love for me was all tapped out. Time to close this chapter of his life and tell me, his girlfriend of three years who he supposedly loved so very much, goodbye.

“Why are you doing this?” I screamed through my tears.
 

I was sitting on our bedroom floor in a pile of clothes that I had strewn about the room in an angry fury. A few months after we had started going out I had moved into Brandon’s one-bedroom apartment in the quaint Lower Queen Anne district of Seattle. We had been making a life for ourselves in our humble brownstone apartment. We had made love in that very bedroom many times, whispering how much we cared for each other and how strong our love was. And now I was sitting there, crying, my heart broken, trying to make sense of all of the madness while trying to pack up my world to move out of the sham of a life we had been creating.

“It’s not working anymore, Soph,” he said.

I suddenly hated that nickname. Brandon using his stupid pet name on me at that time was the last thing in the world I wanted to hear. Well, that and everything else he was saying.

“We had a good thing going but it’s run its course,” he continued, digging his hands deep into his jean pockets. “Things haven’t been right between us for awhile and it’s time we go our own ways. You know it’s the best thing. You’re not happy with how things have been going.”

“
Don’t
tell me how I feel!” I shouted, raising a strict, pointed finger in his direction. I pursed my lips sharply. “
Don’t
tell me I’m not happy.
I
didn’t decide this whole…” I waved my hands around me and the chaos that had become the bedroom. “…this
shit.
I did not ask for any of this. I was doing just fine.”
 

I stood up and started emptying a dresser drawer full of my socks and undergarments into an empty Louis Vuitton valise, a high school graduation present from my grandparents.

“All of a sudden you decide you don’t want to do
this
anymore!” I said. “It’s normal that couples have tiffs. Whatever is going on at work, we can deal with that. I can be there for you, but clearly you don’t want that.” I slammed the dresser drawer shut and opened its neighbor.

“Sophie…” He came up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. His touch was as unwelcome as I was in his life. He tried again, and I spun, fixing him with a deathly glare.

“Sophie,” he repeated. “I’m sorry. But this is something I have to do.” His eyes were empty. His touch was cold. And his words were meaningless.

“We’re not right for each other anymore. We’ve changed. Our lives and situations have changed,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

“What in God’s name has changed?”

“Stuff.” He removed his hand from my shoulder and shrugged. “Just stuff. I don’t want to be with you anymore. I don’t need a reason. It’s a feeling thing.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

“It’s been fun,” he said. “But let’s face it. These past few weeks have been…well…different. And I’m not happy. You don’t seem happy. Maybe you are…but I’m not.”

“You selfish bastard.” I slammed the second dresser drawer (apparently I’d already cleared it by throwing its contents around the room sometime earlier). “I don’t know how you can live with yourself doing this.
Saying
this.” The tears kept streaming down my face. “I mean,” I stammered. “How can you just
not
love someone, and quit, and not really give a reason?”

“My reason is I don’t love you anymore. And I don’t want to be with you. We aren’t supposed to be together.”
 

“Well then,” I said, wiping the tears from my flushed cheeks. “I’ll be out of here soon. I’ll gather the rest of my things. Anything I can’t fit in the car, I’ll come by and get during the week sometime.” I was leaving room for an objection. Maybe he would realize that this whole ordeal was ridiculous. That he did love me and the thought of seeing me drive off, leaving his apartment,
our
apartment, for good would make him see that he was being a complete fool.

But I sadly received no objection.

“That will be fine,” was his response. “If you need help taking some of your furniture I can haul it over for you this week.”

An insignificant sentence, but one that hit with brutal reality. Making the arrangements for my sofa, of all things, to be taken—no,
hauled
—from the apartment was the final sign: our relationship was dead. I had been reduced to the inconvenient woman in Brandon’s life who had a sofa that needed removal from his now-Bachelor-pad. Pathetic.

Later that afternoon, once the last bag had been packed and the last kitchen appliance crammed into the lone remaining crevice of my cerulean Prius, I turned to look up at the brownstone apartment that had been home for the past three years. The rain that often plagued Seattle, especially in the early spring, had become nothing but a depressing drizzle. Under it I stood, without an umbrella, soaked through by tears and the dreary downpour. It was as clichéd a moment you could imagine.
 

Almost everything that I owned had been packed into my tiny economical car. I never really had much large-scale stuff anyhow. Once Brandon and I moved in together I had sold or donated most all of the furniture that I owned from when my best friend, Claire Linley, and I had lived together in our college campus apartment. The large items that stuck through the relationship were my sofa, a full length mirror we had propped in the corner of our bedroom, and my small, albeit useful, wine cooler. Had I had a larger car I would have grabbed that baby, too, as I put that wine cooler up at the top of my “must have list” right with my one pair of Jimmy Choos, my favorite Coach bag, my nonstick cookware, and a pair of knockoff designer jeans that I pretend are authentic and treat as if they are “the real deal.” But my tree-hugging self wouldn’t trade in my Prius for any of those favorites. Alright,
maybe
if the wine cooler came fully stocked with hard-to-find vintages.

I looked up at Brandon, who was standing on the brick steps that led up to the apartment that would no longer be my home. Apartment 3B, Sycamore Way would be no more. Brandon would be no more. There would be no more “us.”

He walked down the three large front steps and approached me. Even at my rather tall height of five foot nine, Brandon still towered over me, standing at a strong and virile six foot five. I sucked in a breath of air. My tears had stopped a few armloads ago; I didn’t want them to resume. At least not until I was already in my car with my past a few blocks behind me.

He leaned in and gently kissed me on the cheek. “Goodbye, Soph.”
 

I took another sharp breath in, really choking back the tears, but inhaling his beautiful scent. He always smelled so good. I wished at that very moment he would wrap me in his arms, hold me tight, and tell me that he was sorry and didn’t mean anything he had said. He would tell me that he
did
love me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. That there was no doubt in his mind that I was the woman for him.
 

But that never happened.

“I won’t be coming to pick up the rest of my stuff,” I told him coldly. “I’ll have a friend come by. No need for you to bring it to me.” I looked away, feeling tears about to surface yet again and not wanting to do anything to encourage them, like looking into Brandon’s deep brown eyes, however lifeless they may have become. They were still the eyes to the soul that I had fallen in love with.

“I understand,” he said. “You take care of yourself.”
 

I rolled my eyes.
Take
care
of myself? That’s the best you can come up with?
I walked around to the driver’s side of the car and opened my door.
 

“Bye, Brandon. I can’t believe this is happening, but apparently this is what you want. So…have a nice life.”

With nothing more to say, and with an onrush of tears just waiting to pour forth, I got into my car and drove off, out of Brandon’s life…forever.

Chapter Two
 

Alright, so forever isn’t exactly true. I knew that my controlling self would manage some way to see Brandon again. Whether to say my final piece after I had had enough time grieving over the loss, or to come running back into his arms once he came to his senses and realized that life without me was as pointless as low fat, low carb anything. I know myself well enough to know that Brandon and I would cross paths yet again—most likely because I refused to put the issue to bed.

Dear Brandon,
I typed.

I sat at my old, white MacBook I had used throughout college, the last of its kind in the new aluminum age of Apple, and began to compose the email to Brandon that I had been hemming and hawing over for the past three weeks. I had had some time to cool off after that horrible day he decided to call quits on our relationship, and with as much rationale as I could conjure and as much courage as I could muster, I decided that now was the time to ask those unanswered questions. Brandon’s reasoning couldn’t be all there was to it; there had to be more to the story. Or if the story remained that he simply didn’t love me anymore, then at least I needed closure. I needed that moment where I could go to Brandon and tell him, face-to-face, my personal thoughts, share my feelings, and somehow accept the fate of our relationship

I started typing again.
 

I don’t know where to begin, but I’ve got to start somewhere. I have so many questions and I fear you have little or no answers, but I want to try.

I pulled my fingers away from the keys. I knew that I probably should have heeded Claire’s advice, whose house I now called home. I had run by her the idea of sending Brandon an email, and Claire, in all of her kindness and wisdom, told me that that was right up there with one of my worst ideas ever. “That’s as bad an idea as when you wanted to go to Arkansas for spring break to visit historical bath houses,” she told me.

Deep down I knew she was right. I mean, this girl has been with the same amazing boyfriend, Conner Whitley, since our freshman year of college. She knows a thing or two about
good
and
lasting
relationships, so I was pretty sure she knew what was
no bueno
. But love knows no boundaries…or a controlling personality knows no boundaries. Not really sure which is more true. So I resumed my typing.
 

But I have to know why this happened. Did I do something to make you fall out of love with me? What did I do to hurt you? Is this my fault? I need to know, Brandon. I hurt so much and even if there’s no hope or chance of us getting back together, I want to know why it all happened. Don’t you think you owe me at least an explanation?