Just Last Night(18)
“It was sent the day I got yours,” I said. “First class. I posted it an hour and a half after. It should’ve been there the next day.” This eagerness was mortifying and exposing to admit, but essential.
“Where’d it go?” Ed said, and he wasn’t going to get any help juggling options from me.
“Wait . . . which month was it . . . ,” Ed said, then, clearly speaking at the same rate he was thinking, his hand ruffling his hair as he spoke: “Fuck! There was a flood in the kitchen . . . a load of water-damaged stuff got thrown out and Raf said that there were letters in it. The names had totally blurred so he didn’t know who’d lost what. I didn’t think you’d write back that quick, or I’d have asked you if you’d sent anything . . . I didn’t think for a second I had a letter back from you that soon?”
“Well, you did.” I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from crying.
“I’m so sorry,” Ed said. “I can’t believe this. I’d have never . . .”
“Got a steady girlfriend?” I said, mocking, bitter.
“I’m not sure it’s serious,” Ed said, staring at me intently, reassessing where we stood. But the cause was lost, I knew it was. Any lifeline he threw me was to ease his discomfort, not because it represented a way back to where we were.
“Cheeky Sambuca sidecars!” Justin whooped, at our side once again, smashing down a tray.
That was it. The door with Ed Cooper had closed.
I told myself, in the weeping and the losing of a stone and a half in the following weeks: You’ll get over him, you’ll meet someone you feel as much for, who you click as much with. Puppy love. Fish in the sea. I tried to be my own agony aunt, and responsible adult, and voice of wisdom.
Well, so much for received wisdom—I haven’t, and I didn’t. There’ve been times it’s hurt less and times it’s hurt more, but it’s always there and it’s always hurt.
And Ed and I have stayed close friends, so my reminders of our unimprovable rapport are constant. I never told Susie, or Justin, because why make everything weirder, for nothing?
I’ve asked myself a thousand times whether the missing letter makes it worse, or better.
It’s better in as much as Ed was restored to me; he wasn’t a villain. But then maybe I needed the simplicity of implacable villainy to move on. Letter or not, he still didn’t love me enough, those months later, to end it with Hester. She was a sensational catch. I could see that. The year’s convalescence for her sister seemed something Ed should stick around for, and then that was that, they were a done deal.
Every so often, Ed will let his guard drop and I will get a clue that some of his feelings for me are still there, somewhere. Often enough that I can never lose faith.
Holding my eyes seconds too long, after laughing together. Fretting my internet dates might be Ted Bundy. The way his eyes avert if I wear anything lower or tighter than usual, in a way it never seems to around any other female. Or the way he sits it out, silent, if Justin or Susie make ripe jokes in regards to my love life. His general skepticism about, and small but noticeable distance he kept from, my ex, Mark. Calling me to talk about family or work problems, and I know, without a doubt, he’s using me as a more reliable sounding board than the volatile Hester. You give such great advice, he says.
The way he makes it clear that if I needed him, he’d drop everything. And anyone. Almost anyone.
Sometimes my friendship with Ed feels amazing and beneficial, because it’s good to know I can feel that way with someone, and to see him glow with adoration in return. Other times it’s like endlessly overperforming in an interview for a job where the position’s already been filled.
I know what someone sensible would say about Ed Cooper if I confided in them (though I never have).
If he really was right for you, if he felt what he needed to feel—he’d have left her.
Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s weakness of character. Perhaps he feels more for Hester than he ever could for me, and after all, there’s no nice way to express that?
But believing that if he didn’t want me enough, then he can’t be good enough to have made me happy—isn’t that a fancy version of sour grapes? A way we rationalize that our disappointments don’t really exist? “What’s for you won’t pass you.” Everyone knows that’s a fantasy to give us consolation and that things that could be for us pass us all the time.
Oh, and the imaginary confidante also tells me that, had shoddy plumbing not done for my letter, and Ed and I had slightly inept, fumbling but thrilling intimate encounters throughout the first term, it would’ve probably burned itself out by age twenty, what with youthful love affairs tending not to last.
Maybe, maybe not. Or, we’d be the ones engaged right now? Hester lasted. He can do monogamy, and commitment.
My conclusion is this: there’s no rule that says the unavailable person you waste your life being in love with has to be the greatest human you ever met.
It doesn’t make the loss of him any less painful.
8
The sound of the digital alarm pierces my cranium and hurts physically, as if someone’s stabbing a chopstick in my ear.
I have that horrendous split second of not knowing why I feel so abysmal, and then blearily recalling everything I drank and what time I went to bed and knowing every last second of today’s agony is my own stupid fault.