On the Rocks(6)

“We’re too similar,” he whispered.

“No. That’s not good enough. I don’t think we’re too similar, as evidenced by the fact that you’re a psychotic * and I’m a somewhat normal, nice person. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“You make everything so easy on me, all the time. We’re always agreeing on everything, you know? Where’s the balance? Your partner in life is supposed to make you whole, but we’re two sides of the same coin, Abs.”

It seriously sounded like he was telling me we were too compatible. I mean, has any girl on earth ever been dumped for being too compatible with her boyfriend? Are these the same girls who get dumped for being too thin, or too blond, or too rich? I always thought those were urban legends that someone propagated through the single women’s circuit to keep the regular girls from killing themselves every time they got tossed away like last week’s Us Weekly. Now I was beginning to wonder if they were really out there, and if they all had some kind of secret underground sorority where they got together and drank wine and ate cucumber sandwiches and lamented being alone because they were too perfect in one way or another. I wonder if they advertised in the yellow pages.

“So you’re breaking up with me because we don’t fight enough?” I asked.

“No. I’m saying that you and I see everything the exact same way, and I need someone who can challenge me a little more, open my eyes to new things. And I know if I stay here in Boston that will never happen.”

“You’ve already accepted the job in Arizona, haven’t you?” I whispered, trying to figure out how I was going to survive not just without Ben as my fiancé but without him living in the same state. I finally understood how a woman could murder someone in a fit of rage.

“Yes,” he said, no emotion detectable in his voice. It was as if this wasn’t even affecting him, like once I left he’d move on to more important matters—like packing, or defrosting his refrigerator.

“What the hell am I going to tell my mother? She’s insane on a normal day. Do you know what canceling this wedding will do to her? She’s at a spa getting some beauty treatment as we speak. She will go bat-shit crazy if I tell her that the wedding is off. People will be able to hear her screaming up in Maine! Did you ever think of that?”

“No, Abby. I can honestly say your mother was not a factor in my decision-making process.”

“When do you leave?” I asked flatly.

He stared at the floor, then at the wall behind my head, then at his gym bag on the table in the corner, anywhere except into my eyes. I knew before he said a word that I didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Next Thursday. They need me to get out there.”

“And you care more about them needing you there than about me needing you here.” It wasn’t a question, which was good, because he didn’t have an answer.

“I don’t know what to say. I love you. I do. That’s never going to change.”

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t do this to me.” I wiped my hand across my face, not wanting to give him the power to see me so utterly destroyed, but there was no stopping the tears.

“I’m sorry, Abby. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Go f*ck yourself, Ben,” I said as I removed my ring and threw it across the room. It bounced off the coffee table and rolled out of sight under the couch. I knew I’d never see it again.

I walked over to him, the last time I planned on ever being close enough to smell his cologne, or his soap, or the detergent on his clothes, and with my left hand (because my right side was still throbbing from the attempt to break down his door) cracked him across the face as hard as I could. Then I turned and limped out of his apartment, knowing that in all likelihood I’d never lay eyes on him again. And for the next six months I didn’t. Then again, that shouldn’t be surprising, since I’d barely left my apartment, never mind the city of Boston, and that makes it kind of hard to run into someone who lives in Arizona.

I found Grace waiting for me on the sidewalk outside Ben’s building, or more accurately, she found me when I stumbled sobbing and in excruciating pain onto the street. She took me to the emergency room—where they checked out my shoulder and gave me some much-needed painkillers—and then she brought me home. I slept for twelve hours, but it wasn’t nearly long enough, because when I woke from my narcotic-induced sleep I begged her to medicate me again so that I could go back to sleep forever. Grace had called my aunt Patrice, who had served as my de facto mother for my entire life, and told her everything so that she could begin to run damage control.

“What time is it?” I asked when I woke up, my shoulder in a sling and still throbbing from the impact. So was my heart, but there were no painkillers for that.

“It’s two-thirty. On Sunday. You’ve been asleep for the better part of twenty-four hours. You need to eat something,” Grace said as she smoothed the hair out of my face.

“Have you been here the entire time?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Basically. I did run out for a bit.” Grace placed a white box on the bed next to me and opened the top. Cupcakes. Since we were little, we solved problems and celebrated victories with cupcakes. I appreciated the gesture, but unless these things were spiked with Percocets I didn’t think they’d cure much this time. She removed one with colored sprinkles and peeled the paper back halfway as she handed it to me.