Getting Over Mr. Right (5 page)

But right then my luck changed. Whoever was meant to be
manning the gate that evening was taking a tea break, and the forbidding gatehouse was empty. And here was someone staggering toward the entrance to River Heights with armfuls of shopping bags. It was a man I recognized as one of Michael’s neighbors. We had met at Michael’s flat-warming party. I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name, but as he came near, I said, “The stupid intercom seems to be broken again. Can I follow you through?”

Michael’s neighbor didn’t question my explanation. He opened the gate with his key and ushered me inside. He probably hoped I would help him carry his shopping in return. I didn’t. Once inside the complex, I was like a Royal Marine on an undercover mission. I had to get across the courtyard without Michael seeing me from his kitchen window. I stayed close to the neatly trimmed hedges. I took advantage of the shade and shelter of the trees. I made it to Michael’s block unnoticed. But how could I get inside?

I had to wait for his neighbor again.

“Is the buzzer broken here, too?” he asked curiously.

“Seems to be,” I lied. I hopped from foot to foot as I waited for him to find his key and let me through the penultimate door between me and my beloved. Leaving the neighbor with his bags, I climbed the stairs two at a time and composed myself for just a second before I pressed Michael’s doorbell.

I imagined Michael getting up from his computer desk and crossing the hall, wondering who was ringing, perhaps assuming that it was one of his neighbors since he’d had no call from the gatehouse. I thought I heard his leather slippers on the polished wooden floor. I plastered on a warm and super-friendly smile. I’d decided in the mini-cab that my best strategy was to act as though the whole Facebook thing had been a joke.

But he didn’t answer the door. I pressed the buzzer again. Perhaps he hadn’t heard it. Still no answer. I lay my ear against the door and listened for sounds of life beyond its blank plywood
face. I could hear nothing. No loud music that might have masked my ringing. No sounds of life at all, in fact. But I didn’t take that to mean he wasn’t in. Oh, no. I decided he must have seen me cross the courtyard. He was hiding from me, staying still and silent until I gave up and went home.

“Michael!” I put my mouth to the crack in the door. “Michael, I know you are in there.”

Still nothing.

“Michael!” This time I shouted and knocked at the same time. “Michael! Michael! Michael! Please open the door.”

My entreaties were not met.

“Michael!” This time I shouted and hammered
and
kicked. “Let me in! Let me in, for God’s sake. Michael! We need to talk. For pity’s sake. I love you. You can’t do this to me. I won’t let you. You can’t pretend I don’t exist! Open up! Open up!” I kicked so hard that I made a dent in the plywood. Two dents. A small hole. I had a sudden image of him lying on the floor of his bathroom, a bottle of pills in his hand. Perhaps he’d dumped me on Facebook as a cry for help! I kept kicking.

“I know you’re in there! I know you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

It was true. He was standing behind me. I turned to face him, my fists still balled.

“Ashleigh, how did you get in here? And what on earth are you doing?”

Michael was not alone. He was carrying two of his neighbor’s shopping bags. The neighbor looked almost as anxious as Michael did.

“What on earth have you
done
?” I countered. “Have you really dumped me via Facebook?”

Michael smiled tightly. His neighbor was taking an awfully long time to let himself into his flat.

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you since ten o’clock this
morning,” I continued. “I’ve been so worried. What is happening? You have to tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s not what you think,” he said. More for the neighbor’s benefit than mine, I know now.

“Then what is it?” I asked. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I suppose you had better come in.”

“Come on,” he said. “Before somebody calls the police.” He took me by the upper arm, as though he were apprehending a shoplifter, and pulled me inside. We went straight to the kitchen. He kept hold of my arm until we got there. Perhaps he was scared I’d throw a punch if he let me go. When he finally did let me go, I stood opposite him with my hands on my hips and said, now that I was no longer worried that he’d suffered a sudden breakdown and killed himself, in the fiercest tone I could muster, “So?”

My wait outside his front door had rather rattled my composure, but still I saw Michael’s eyes flick appreciatively from my cleavage to my knees and back again.

“Are you going out to dinner or something?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It’s just … I just thought I’d wear a dress. That’s all.”

I had put on my best little black dress, figuring that if this breakup was for real, I needed all the help I could get.

“Oh. Okay,” said Michael.

Then he said he was hungry and started to make himself a sandwich. As an afterthought he asked if he could make me one, too.

“I didn’t come here for a sandwich,” I said. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

Michael looked pained. “Let’s have a glass of wine first.” He motioned me toward the kitchen table and poured two glasses
of Pinot Grigio. His smile was so sweet right then, I could almost believe he was going to tell me the Facebook thing had been a big mistake and he hoped I would forgive him.
Talk?
he’d laugh. The only thing he wanted to talk about was my day and how soon I could take a few days off to go to Venice …

“How did the meeting with the people from Effortless Bathing go?” he asked.

“I canceled when I saw what you’d written on Facebook.”

Michael frowned and shook his head. “I didn’t want that to happen.”

“But what did you think would happen when you declared yourself single like that? And then unfriended me? I couldn’t ignore it. I tried to get through to you so you could tell me what was going on but you wouldn’t take any of my calls. I was going mental. There’s no way I could have given a presentation in that state.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think you were allowed to access Facebook from the office. I didn’t think you’d see it until you got home.”

“What? Is this a joke?”

“Look, Ashleigh.” He focused his gaze on his hands and I knew that the “Dear Jane” speech was about to begin. “You and I have had some good times. I consider you to be a really great friend …”

“Really great friend?” I squeaked.

“Yes. Really great.” He nodded. “But lately I’ve been wondering if it’s time for me to be on my own again. We’re going in different directions, you and I. I’m holding you back.”

A subtle variation on “It’s not you, it’s me,” as Becky would later point out.

“You’re not holding me back,” I said. “I’ve never said that.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I just know. Look, when you and I got together, I had only recently come out of a long-term relationship. It had been difficult. That breakup turned
my world upside down. I didn’t know myself. I wasn’t myself. Yet it felt right when I met you and we got together. You brought me back to life.”

“And that’s good, isn’t it?”

“It was fantastic. And I’m very grateful. But now I realize that you need something different from me. Something more than I can give you. I know that you want to get married and have children …”

“I don’t,” I protested. “I never said that. Never. Not once.”

It would strike me much later that I hadn’t dared.

“But you don’t have to. I know you’re not happy with things the way they are.”

“I am,” I lied. “I am.”

“Ashleigh.” Michael sighed. “
I’m
not happy with the way things are.”

“Then tell me what you want me to change!” I begged him.

“There’s nothing I want you to change. I just can’t do this any longer” was his reply.

I tried to take his hand, but he moved it deftly out of the way on the pretense of picking up his wineglass. He smiled at me again. It was a pitiful smile of the kind you give a door-to-door salesman even as you’re closing the door on him. “We have to break up,” he said with another sigh. “I just want to be on my own.”

“Look,” I said. “I think you’re being too hasty. What about all the wonderful things we have in common and the good times we’ve had?”

I reminded him of a few. Big nights out. Camping trips. The time we made love beneath a bush in Kew Gardens.

He couldn’t disagree that had been fun. “I’ll never forget those times,” he said. “They’ll always be dear to me.”

But I wouldn’t, was what he was saying.

“You’ve got to understand that I haven’t taken this decision
lightly,” he continued. “I’ve been thinking about breaking things off with you for the past six months.”

“Six months!”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Since October.”

“And all that time I thought that we were moving forward,” I said. “I thought we were getting closer to a proper commitment and you didn’t tell me otherwise.”

“It was all in your head,” he informed me. “I never made you any promises.”

No promises! The arrogant swine. I should have left right then, with my head held high. That might have made him consider the sense of breaking up with me. But I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t get up and walk away. I couldn’t say
Fuck you
and see if that brought him to a different viewpoint. I had to cling on. I had to beg. I had to make a fool of myself.

“You don’t have to promise me anything,” I said.

Michael let me plead my case for the best part of three hours, but though he claimed to agree with much of what I said about the good times we’d had together, he would offer me no hope whatsoever. He was adamant that his future had no room for me. Except as a friend. We could always be friends, he assured me.

“But, Michael!” I sobbed. “I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to split up with you! I—I—I—love you!” I added, as I quickly reached hysteria. The tears ran freely down my face.

I had always been so careful not to use tears as a weapon in relationships. I thought it was a manipulative thing to do, and I really didn’t believe that tears worked, in any case. But I was to be surprised that evening. To my mind, I had lost it absolutely. I could feel my carefully applied makeup melting into a Halloween mask. Each breath I took seemed to come out as a honk. At one point I’m embarrassed to say I even blew a bubble of snot from my nose. Pathetic. I could not have been a
pretty sight. But after two bottles of wine and with the time drawing close to midnight my crying seemed to have an effect on Michael. And not the one I had expected.

“Hey, hey,” he crooned. “It’s not that bad.” He leaped up to get me some paper towels, and when he sat back down, he reached across the table for my hand. As I began to calm down, he let his fingers wander up my bare arm to the crook of my elbow. He traced little circles on the thin skin there, which made me feel ticklish, but I didn’t dare ask him to stop. I just wanted him to keep on touching me. It was evidence that he cared and perhaps, perhaps that part of him still wanted me in his life.

I leaned forward over the table, hoping he might progress from stroking my arm to stroking my face, like he used to. The action of leaning forward slightly opened the neckline of my dress. Michael looked deep into my cleavage. It wasn’t quite as romantic as having him look deep into my eyes, but it was something, I supposed. I shifted surreptitiously so that the lace of my bra showed quite clearly and Michael was transfixed like a chicken locking eyes with a hawk.

“It’s late,” he said then. It was past midnight. He let go of my hand and stood up. I waited for him to suggest a taxi, but instead he said, “Let’s go to bed.”

I followed him mutely into the bedroom I had come to know so well. Without speaking, Michael helped me take off my dress. He undressed himself and together we slipped between the clean white sheets. There was no question as to what would come next.

That night we made love more passionately than we had in months. Lately our sexual routine, while athletic, had become just that—routine—starting and ending in the same way with the same repertoire of positions in between. That night I felt that we were properly connected again, like we had been when we first got together. When we were face-to-face, he looked
into my eyes. When he came, I thought he called my name. Ashleigh! Though in retrospect, he may have said, “Ah, shit.”