This Lullaby(11)

“Remy,” Chloe said finally in her clever voice. “You’re keeping secrets.”

“I’m not,” I told her. “It was just this stupid thing. I’d forgotten all about it.”

“He talks too much,” Jess decided.

“I liked his shirt,” Chloe told her. “Interesting fashion sense.”

Just then Jonathan slid in beside me in the booth. “Hello, ladies,” he said, sliding his arm around my waist. Then he picked up crazy musician boy’s beer, thinking it was mine, and took a big sip. I would have stopped him, but just the fact that he did it was part of our problem. I hated it when guys acted proprietary toward me, and Jonathan had done that from the beginning. He was a senior too, a nice guy, but as soon as we’d started dating he wanted everyone to know it, and slowly began to encroach on my domain. He smoked my cigarettes, when I still smoked. Used my cell phone all the time to make calls, without asking, and got very comfortable in my car, which should have been the ultimate red flag. I cannot abide anyone even changing my station presets or dipping into my ashtray change, but Jonathan charged right past that and insisted on driving, even though he had a history of fender benders and speeding tickets as long as my arm. The stupidest part was that I let him, flushed as I was with love (not likely) or lust (more likely), and then he just expected I’d ride shotgun, in my own car, forever. Which just led to more Ken behavior—as in ultraboyfriend—like always grabbing onto me in public and drinking, without asking, what he thought was my beer.

“I’ve got to go back to the house for a sec,” he said now, leaning close to my ear. He moved his hand from around my waist, so it was now cupping my knee. “Come with me, okay?”

I nodded, and he finished off the beer, slapping the cup down on the table. Jonathan was a big partier, another thing I had trouble dealing with. I mean, I drank too. But he was sloppy about it. A puker. In the six months we’d been together I’d spent a fair amount of time at parties outside the bathroom, waiting for him to finish spewing so we could go home. Not a plus.

He slid out of the booth, moving his hand off my knee and closing his fingers around mine. “I’ll be back,” I said to Jess and Chloe as someone brushed past, and Jonathan finally had to cease contact with me as the crowd separated us.

“Good luck,” Chloe said. “I can’t believe you let him drink that guy’s beer.”

I turned and saw Jonathan looking back at me, impatient. “Dead man walking,” Jess said in a low voice, and Chloe snorted.

“Bye,” I said, and pushed through the crowd, where Jonathan’s hand was extended, waiting to take hold of me again.





“Okay, look,” I said, pushing him back. “We have to talk.”

“Now?” “Now.”

He sighed, then sat back on the bed, letting his head bonk against the wall. “Okay,” he said, as if he were agreeing to a root canal, “go ahead.”

I pulled my knees up on the bed, then straightened my tank top. “Running in for something” had quickly morphed into “making a few phone calls” and then he was all over me, pushing me back against the pillows before I could even begin my slow easing into the dumpage. But now, I had his attention.

“The thing is,” I began, “things are really starting to change for me now.”

This was my lead-up. I’d learned, over the years, that there was a range of techniques involved in breaking up with someone. You had your types: some guys got all indignant and pissed, some whined and cried, some acted indifferent and cold, as if you couldn’t leave fast enough. I had Jonathan pegged as the last, but I couldn’t be completely sure.

“So anyway,” I continued, “I’ve just been thinking that—”

And then the phone rang, an electronic shriek, and I lost my momentum again. Jonathan grabbed it. “Hello?” Then there was a bit off umm-hmming, a couple of yeahs, and he stood up, walking across the room and into his bathroom, still mumbling.

I pulled my fingers through my hair, hating that my timing seemed to be off all night long. Still listening to him talking, I closed my eyes and stretched my arms over my head, then curled my fingers down the side of the mattress closest to the wall. And then I felt something.

When Jonathan finally hung up, checked himself in the mirror, and walked back into the bedroom, I was sitting there, cross-legged, with a pair of red satin bikini panties spread out on the bed in front of me. (I’d retrieved them using a Kleenex: like I’d touch them.) He came strolling in, all confident, and, seeing them, came to a dead, lurching stop.

“Ummpthz,” he said, or something like that, as he sucked in a breath, surprised, then quickly steadied himself. “Hey, um, what—”

“What the hell,” I said, my voice level, “are these?”

“They aren’t yours?”

I looked up at the ceiling, shaking my head. Like I’d wear cheap red, polyester panties. I mean, I had standards. Or did I? Look who I’d wasted the last six months on.

“How long,” I said.

“What?”

“How long have you been sleeping with someone else?”

“It wasn’t—”

“How long,” I repeated, biting off the words.

“I just don’t—”