On the Rocks(81)
“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
THE 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.