A Life More Complete (13 page)

That pretty much shut me up. How can
I argue with legitimate facts? Every word he says is true. I can only respond
with what I know. “Ben, I’ve been on my own for a long time. It’s hard for me
to walk away from everything I have worked for and everything I have ever
known. I’m sorry that I can’t be what you want. I do love you, more than you
will ever know. But I want you to be happy.” With that he sets his key on my
kitchen table and kisses my forehead, his lips lingering just a few seconds too
long. It’s over, no screaming or yelling, no unkind words or excuses. Just
over.

I decide to work from home the next
day, so when Ben’s receptionist, Annalise, shows up at my house that afternoon with
a box of my stuff, she’s caught off guard. I should be at work. She hands me
the box, all my belonging crammed into one small cardboard box, a toothbrush,
running shoes, some books, a t-shirt dress, chapstick, a bikini and some other
random items. I think the box hurts more than the actual breakup. He must have
immediately gone home and thrown all my stuff in a box. He is ridding me from
his life without so much as a second thought, not a moment of clarity or regret
to make him return. I don’t take the time to rummage through it while Annalise is
there. She kisses my cheek and apologizes for my loss. She acts like someone
died. I want to ask how Ben is, but I think that will cross some invisible
boundary so I stay quiet. I thank her for my stuff and she leaves. I stare at
the box on my kitchen counter. I still have all of Ben’s things here in my
house, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of them. I carry the box into my bedroom
and begin to sort through it. At the bottom I find a loose photograph of Ben
and me that Ben had taken with his camera at arm’s length. Both of us smiling,
my eyes bright and happy as he kissed my cheek. I drop the picture back into
the box and as it floats it lands face down and what is written on the back is
my undoing. It says, “I love you and just so you know, we were happy in this
picture, truly happy.” I crawl onto my bed, pushing the box to the floor with
my feet as I begin to sob.

I must have fallen asleep because the
next thing I know it’s eight o’clock. There’s a loud knock on my door and I
hear the key turn in the lock. My thoughts race and I pray it’s Ben, yet I know
his key sits on my kitchen table exactly where he left it the night before. I
haven’t showered or changed my clothes since the break up. I don’t know when I
became this person. I’m suddenly wallowing and crying without control, but I’ll
pull it together. I won’t be that girl, the one who carries on and shares her
story with anyone who will listen, the one who cries at old pictures and songs
on the radio. I hear Melinda call my name and I quickly wipe the tears away,
not that I will suddenly look like I haven’t been crying, but it’s worth a
shot.

“Kristin? You home?” I can hear her
stilettos skitter across my kitchen floor. Melinda never wears heels under four
inches and for some reason that thought makes me smile. I can picture her
teetering in her heels all those nights we got drunk together. Her, barely able
to walk, but refusing to remove her shoes until Bob eventually agreed to carry
her.

“I’m in here, Mel,” I call from my
bed. I don’t even bother to get up.

“Shit! I thought you were dead. I’ve
been calling you all day. You okay?” she asks as she nears the doorway to my
bedroom. She stops when she finally finds me.

“Not really, but I will be. Ben and I
broke up.” She climbs into bed next to me kicking off her five-inch heels.

“Should I even ask what happened?”

“Don’t bother. You already know.” I
can’t help but sound pathetic.

“We’ve all been there. It’s part of
our job. It’s hard to maintain when you’re never around, right?” We both lie
next to each other for some time without speaking. Our eyes fixed on the
ceiling staring at nothing. I don’t know how much time has passed when she
reaches over and clasps my hand, but the pain eases and then rushes back just
as quickly as it receded.

“Have you eaten? I’m starving,” she
says.

“I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Not
much of an appetite.”

“I’ll go get something. What do you
want?” I want to gorge myself on comfort foods and wallow just a little more. I
should enjoy it while it lasts because come tomorrow I’ll be back to normal.

“In-N-Out. A Double, Double with
cheese and grilled onions and an order of Animal fries.”

“You want anything else?”

“A chocolate shake, too.”

“I thought you said you had no
appetite? Sure doesn’t seem that way,” she giggles.

“Making up for lost time,” I laugh.

She returns a little while later and
we watch an episode of Friday Night Lights on my TiVo while we eat. Melinda
looks at me, dead serious and says, “ I wish I lived in Dillon, Texas.”

“So do I. They make it look so easy. I
want to be Tami Taylor,” I say.

“I just wanna get laid by Tim
Riggins.” We both laugh because Melinda actually met him at a party one night,
but couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She just stood there, her mouth
hanging open, as he talked to another girl. We both meet celebrities left and
right, but there are always those ones who make you clam up and humiliate
yourself. He is one of them.

The night drags on and as it gets
later I begin to wonder if Melinda will leave. I can’t decide if I want her to
stay or if I want her to go. Staying means I won’t be alone, but leaving means
I can cry with reckless abandon.

“Are you going home tonight?” I ask.

“Is it okay if I stay?”

“Of course. You know you don’t have
to ask.”

I hand Melinda a pair of shorts and
t-shirt to sleep in and she gets ready for bed while I shower.

“Better?” she asks as I join her in
bed. I nod my head, because right now speaking will only bring tears. “The bed
smells like him,” she says.

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
She is beginning to get annoying. I should’ve sent her home.

“No. I told you. It’s the same old
shit. My job is too demanding. He’s alone too much. I spend too much time with
clients. All the things I want to change but can’t or won’t. I don’t know.” I
shake my head. I don’t tell her he wants a family and that I do too, but that I’m
scared. I don’t show her the picture, the picture that says it all.

“Do you love him?”

“Yes, more than I want to admit. What
if he’s the one and I let him slip away because of some stupid job? What if
that day on the beach was a sign, a sign that he was the one? Now I’m going to
be living in my condo for the rest of my life, miserable and alone and wearing
ill-fitting suits and barking orders at people like Ellie.”

Melinda laughs. “Stop it. You will
not turn out like Ellie and I’d never let you wear an ill-fitting suit. Rest
assured, I’ve got that part covered.” I smile at her. “I’m a firm believer in
true love, you know that, but I also believe there’s more than one person out
there for everyone. Just because you and Ben are done doesn’t mean it wasn’t
true love. It just means it wasn’t meant to last.”

“You’re probably right.” Even if she
is right, I still want Ben.

“Oh yeah, I completely forgot why I
came here in the first place. We have a meeting with Trini’s new lawyer
tomorrow. The media is going crazy because her latest lawyer quit today.”

“Why’d he quit?”

“While you were here crying, she was
missing her court date. She just didn’t show up. No explanation. Just didn’t
show up.”

“Really? What’s that mean for her?” I
ask concerned.

“I don’t know. That’s why we’re
meeting with him to try to sort out a plan of action for Trini and what we can
do as her publicists to curb the media backlash.”

“Great.”

“She’s a handful,” Melinda says.

“That she is. Do you want to go
drinking tomorrow night? Now that I’m not someone’s girlfriend we can get back
to getting ridiculously drunk.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

The next morning we both arrive at
work on time and ready for our meeting with Trini’s new lawyer. She has a court
date set for next week and we need to attempt to subside the media’s requests
for interviews and statements. We also need to formulate a plan to make her
look better, something to make her seem sincere and compassionate. In order to
do this, we need to meet with her lawyer to make sure our facts match up, okay
everything through him. It turns out the meeting is a waste of time. His flight
is delayed and he won’t be arriving until the evening. The meeting has been
rescheduled for tomorrow morning at 8:30, all of this is told to us by his
assistant via conference call.

The rest of my day goes by
uneventfully. Somewhere around lunchtime I call Trini, but she doesn’t answer,
which is what I was hoping for. I leave her a message asking not why she missed
her court date, but to let her know the meeting with her lawyer was rescheduled
for tomorrow. She won’t care. Her lack of interest in anything is beginning to
show. Rarely is she seen in public before one in the morning, by which time she
is semi-drunk and in so much of a prescription drug induced haze that nothing
fazes her in the least. She’s lost weight, but her face looks bloated, not at
all what she looked like less than a month ago. I still harbor feelings of pity
for her, but each day that passes makes it more difficult. I told her I wouldn’t
give up, but I’m not sure I can keep that promise.

As I’m leaving work I stop at Melinda’s
desk. “Will you take a rain check on getting drunk tonight?” I ask.

“Sure. Just as long as you’re not
going home to cry about losing Ben,” she says eyeing me doubtfully.

“Nope, no crying tonight. I just
haven’t gone running in a while and I want to go before it gets dark.”

“No problem, but we’re definitely
going tomorrow. Anyway, Friday is a way better night to get drunk.”

“Perfect.” I kiss her cheek as I
leave. I make my way to Bob’s office, but he’s already gone for the day. Neither
Melinda nor I have seen him since he started dating Jon and I hope for his sake
he fares better in his relationship than I did in mine.

As soon as I arrive home, I slip into
my running clothes and forget everything. I run and all my problems and
thoughts disappear. Running is mindless. Just put one foot in front of the
other and focus on the task at hand. I know my outdoor runs will have to be in the
evening from now on. I can’t possibly run to the beach as I had once done. It’s
Ben’s beach. It was his long before it was mine. It was the place his father
taught him to surf, it’s where he goes to escape his job, it is his place of
solace and I won’t take that from him by intruding on it every morning. I also
can’t bear the thought of seeing him.

I have no idea how many miles I have
run; I just know it is far more than usual. It’s late and when I glance at my
iPod I realize I have been running for over two hours. The sky has darkened and
the streetlights glow brightly.

I’m not even sure how to end my night
because right now my life sucks. I open my pantry and grab a bottle of wine
that a client had given me last Christmas. I don’t drink wine. Ever. But I want
to feel nothing. After three glasses, I’m feeling a bit lightheaded and dizzy. In
my wine induced stupor I decide to pack up Ben’s things. My anxiety ebbs and
flows, all the while the what-ifs spill around in my head making me think I’ve
made a terrible mistake. I should’ve just compromised, given Ben what he wanted,
but I still can’t bring myself to do it. Yet, isn’t that what relationships are
about, compromise. You hear that all the time. Why can’t I just give in?

I toss his toothbrush, a pair of
board shorts, and his running shoes into the box. The box begins to fill
quickly, travel coffee mugs, t-shirts, a pair of cargo shorts, a couple of
Dennis Lehane books, flip flops and a Dodgers baseball hat. I toss the Torres
Landscaping shirt on my bed. “I’m keeping this one,” I whisper to myself. In my
totally logical wine drunken haze I decide to put the box in my car. I
rationalize that returning the box to him tomorrow will definitely be the end
and I’ll be able to move on. I can’t even possibly believe that to be true and
if I’m being honest with myself it’s not. I’ve spent nearly seven years with
Ben in my life, at least three of those years in a relationship that I wouldn’t
dare admit was legitimate until just recently. As I toss the box onto the
passenger seat of my car a surge of jealousy runs through me. Jealous of Gia
and David and Bob and his new boyfriend. I’m insanely jealous of what they have
and I used to have, but let it walk away.

I strip off my clothes and pull Ben’s
shirt over my head and begin to cry. My whole body feels like it’s bruised, I
ache everywhere. Maybe if I don’t move the pain will stop, but it doesn’t. I
find comfort in his side of the bed and know that eventually the smell will
fade and he will be gone for good.

I wake in the morning, shower and
pull on a fuchsia sheath dress paired with a skinny patent black belt and peep
toe black patent pumps. I straighten my hair and do my usual quick makeup job. I
figure if I run into Ben by chance I should at least look good. And in a recent
turn of events, I do look good, not just good, hot. Skinny and lightly tanned
with a small amount of freckles covering my nose and my green eyes look
brighter than they have lately. The dress fits amazingly well, making my waist
look incredibly tiny and my boobs look big and perky.
Getting drunk the night before agrees with me. Note to self: drink more
wine.