You in Five Acts(66)

“Right,” I said.

“But thank you for dinner.” You leaned forward and braced yourself on my shoulders, delivering a dry peck on my cheek. It felt like some cigar-smoking mogul stamping a letter in a black and white movie while cackling maniacally. VOID. REJECTED.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and watched you walk to the elevator, jamming the button impatiently, digging in your bag for something you’d never, in all the years I’d known you, seemed to find. Only maybe you had found it, and maybe I finally knew what it was.

Once the doors had closed and you were gone, I stood there for another minute, wondering what I was supposed to do. A good boyfriend, a stand-up guy, would probably tell you he knew, and that he was worried about you, and that you needed to stop. But I was more of a stand-down kind of guy, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t your boyfriend, either.

“Hey, man, everything OK?” the doorman finally asked, noticing my impression of a sad statue.

“Yeah, sorry.” I moved to leave but then stopped short. I had to say something. Even if it wasn’t directly to you. “Has she . . . um, has she been OK?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, she’s tough,” he said with a dismissive wave. “She takes care of herself.” He smiled. “And besides, Miss Liv’s got lots of friends. Someone’s been here all week. They barely left.”

“Joy?” I asked hopefully. “Black girl, like my height?” He narrowed his eyes, and I tried to backtrack. “I mean, like African American . . . woman?”

“Nah, I know Miss Joy,” the doorman said. “I don’t know the new one. They never stop to talk to me. He’s—”

He.

My face must have changed, because he stopped short. “You know what, I can’t really keep track,” he laughed. “She’s always making new friends.”

“Right,” I said hollowly.

It could be her dealer! my brain practically screamed, as if that would be good news. If you were using so much that you saw your dealer every day, then you were really in trouble.

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“I—you know, I didn’t get a good look, man,” he said. “So many people coming and going.” But his expression had changed; there was pity in his eyes. And there it was. The boom I’d been waiting for. The remote detonation I hadn’t seen coming.

There was someone else. The radio silence over break, the texting under the table—it all made sense. Listen, I wasn’t stupid; I knew you never loved me. What hurt was that “he,” whoever he was, had weaseled his way into your life—maybe even into your bed—in a matter of days when I had put in so much time already. I was the only one who had always been there for you. I was the only one who really knew you.

Or was I?

It’s trite to say you broke my heart, so instead I’ll say you broke my brain.

Because the thing of it was, if I did know you better than anyone, how could I have missed two such glaring omissions from your biography? My love wasn’t of the oblivious greeting card variety that everyone else seemed so blindly happy to practice; I’d always thought I saw you for exactly who you were—smart and funny and gorgeous, sure, but also manipulative, self-interested, insecure, and a little devious, which frankly made you all the more glorious in my eyes.

I walked back down Charles Street toward the subway station in total shock, not so much at the evening’s revelations as at what they seemed to imply.

Either I’d never really known you or I’d never really loved you.

I didn’t know which was worse.





Chapter Twenty-Four


    First week of May

12 days left


JEALOUSY WAS A MISERABLE SICKNESS, but I’d lived with it for so long I barely noticed its symptoms anymore. There was no way for me to soothe the painful cognitive dissonance that came from the realization that I didn’t know you as well as I thought, or from loving you desperately despite having been so betrayed, so instead I spent all my free time the first week after spring break trying to find a better target for my hatred: him.

I scoured the Internet for clues, but you were one of those people who mostly ghosted on social media, not posting for weeks at a time. The same could not be said, sadly, for your hipster douchebag of an ex-boyfriend, Jasper Davenport, who seemed to think the world needed to see every kindergarten-level collage he made with “found” pieces of trash (the skateboard he’d recently découpaged with stale Twinkies and empty condom wrappers was especially poignant). But based on his artful, shadow-drenched selfies, Jasper looked to be shacked up with a dark-eyed sophomore vocal major, so that was a dead end. None of your exes’ feeds made any mention of you. I even tried to find Diego’s cousin, but I couldn’t remember his name, and besides, I figured, drug dealers probably didn’t have Tumblr accounts.

I knew Joy would tell on me if I pumped her for information, and that Diego was just Joy once removed, but in a moment of panic I did text Roth after a few beers in my basement late one night to find out if he knew what you’d been up to over break. I didn’t relish giving him another glimpse inside my ever-increasing emasculation (Would you ask her what she wants with me? Jesus, that was sad, no wonder no one ever came to my house), but I also didn’t have much of a choice. It was either trust him, or fly blind.