Getting Over Mr. Right (7 page)

By five in the afternoon I had read all the free advice I could find, so I paid £29.95 for a “foolproof method” to get your ex back in the form of an eBook. Unfortunately, the foolproof method required that I make no contact with Michael for at least a month. A month without Michael? No way! What’s more, during that month I had to work out for an hour every single day and date at least three new guys a week. If I hadn’t been totally disgusted by the idea anyway, it would have been impossible.

I continued to Google. At eleven in the evening I found another site, run by the Break-Up Babe, who promised much faster results. “I can give you the magic formula that will have him back in your arms and ready to commit to whatever you want—living together, marriage, or babies—within days.” Well, that had to be worth £69.95. I input my credit-card details and waited eagerly for the download to arrive in my in-box.

A week earlier I might have read that eBook with some sense of humor, but as the clock ticked past midnight, just over twenty-four hours since Michael broke up with me, I read every word the Break-Up Babe had to say in deadly earnest, nodding at every sentiment I recognized.

“Right now you’re feeling lost,” she said.

Oh, boy, was I ever.

“You’re probably feeling that all hope is gone.”

That was an understatement.

“But there is a method that will restore your love within minutes.”

Just give me the bloody method, I muttered, as I scrolled through three chapters of platitudes.

At last, in chapter 11, the Break-Up Babe got to the point.

The Break-Up Babe explained that all relationship issues were down to poor communication and learning the right way to communicate with a man would instantly make all the difference. As I read the eleventh chapter, it became instantly and quite brilliantly clear where I had been going wrong. The Break-Up Babe wrote that the natural response of most women right after a breakup is to freak out and start yelling, which only forces the man into a reactive position so that he feels he has no choice but to continue to withdraw. He withdraws further and the girl chases him harder and so a vicious cycle is born until at last he’s withdrawn so far the relationship is all but over. It didn’t have to be that way.

“Men don’t think like us,” the Break-Up Babe continued.

“Too right,” I muttered aloud, thinking of the breakup sex that Michael had initiated the previous night. How was I supposed to take that?

“You have to practice detachment. Take a step back to give him room to move forward. Don’t contact your other half for a month …”

Damn. Where did all these breakup gurus get this month of no contact from? I discarded the Break-Up Babe’s advice and continued my Google search. I spent another three hundred pounds on eBooks that promised much and delivered nothing interesting. I read more and more threads of declining literacy and increasing lunacy.

“do he still luv me”

“u gota make him pay”

“my boyfren cum back to me when I put voodoo curse on his big titty girl”

By two in the morning I was tired and frustrated, heartbroken and dehydrated, which probably explains why I fell like a starving woman upon a piece of banana cream pie when I read the following response to a reader’s letter on a somewhat reputable advice site:

What if that was it? What if, despite my protestations the previous night, Michael was as insecure in my love as that woman’s ex had been in hers? What if he just wanted me to prove my love in public? He’d broken up with me in a public forum, after all. What if I just had to declare my love for him in a public forum, too? What if it was that simple?

I Googled the phrase “grand gesture” and found a dozen similar stories.

“She said she never wanted to see me again, but I turned up at her office with some flowers and a ring and now we’re having our second child.”

“We were on the point of divorcing but my brave step pulled us back. He said what he wanted all along was real proof of my love.”

If proof was what Michael wanted, then proof was what I would give him.

Waking up the following morning, having managed just a couple of hours’ sleep, I suppose I wasn’t exactly thinking like a genius. I had that final scene from
An Officer and a Gentleman
running through my head. The one where Richard Gere goes into his lover’s workplace and sweeps her off her feet. I was going to do something like that for Michael.

I took a taxi to the building where he worked, stopping en route to pick up three dozen red roses from a stand on the street. I got past the security guards at Michael’s company with ease. I persuaded them against calling him up to announce my arrival by telling them that I was on my way to deliver a singing telegram for Michael’s birthday and that to call him first would spoil the surprise.

One of the guards looked lasciviously down the front of my shirt. “Like a stripping policewoman?” he asked.

“I just sing,” I told him sharply.

So, I got to the floor where Michael had his office, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get past Tina, his assistant. Unless she was on a cigarette break. I prayed she would be on a cigarette break. She wasn’t on a cigarette break.

“W-what?” she stuttered when she saw me. “Ashleigh. You’re … er … you’re in the office. And you … you’ve brought flowers. Nobody called to say you were coming up.”

“I know,” I said breezily. “I told them not to. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“It’s certainly that,” said Tina. “But, anyway, Michael is in a meeting …”

“I know you’re lying,” I said. “I know he’s told you not to let me anywhere near him.”

“That’s not true,” Tina swore. “He really is in a meeting. But I promise I’ll tell him you dropped by.”

Well, if he had been in a meeting, he was out of it now. My attention was attracted by movement at the end of the corridor and I turned to see the man himself, coming out of the staff kitchen with a steaming mug in his hand. Tea. Milk. One sugar. I knew the way he liked it so well. He was dipping a biscuit as he walked. He looked as though he didn’t have a care in the world. He certainly didn’t look as though he had just broken up with the love of his life.

“Michael,” I called out to him. “I have to speak to you.”

Michael froze with the chocolate HobNob halfway between the mug and his mouth. In the time it took him to register who had called his name from behind all those flowers, half the biscuit had dropped back into the tea with a plop. Michael swore as the tea splashed on his tie.

“Ashleigh, what are you doing here?” he hissed. He remained at the other end of the corridor. He would not walk toward me, and Tina had come out from behind her desk and was preventing me from heading toward him like a goal defense marking goal attack on the netball court.

“You won’t return my calls,” I shouted to him. “You won’t answer my emails or texts. What am I supposed to do?”

“Get the message?” said the bright spark who had the desk opposite Tina. I gave her the benefit of a glare.

“You should go,” said Michael. “And take those flowers with you. This is not the right time for this.”

“But when will there be a right time?” I implored him. “When will you listen to what I have to say?”

“There really isn’t anything left to say, is there?”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “You’re so wrong.”

Tina was still bobbing about in front of me.

“I’ve got so much left to say. I’ve got a whole novel’s worth to tell you.” I tapped my hand against my heart. “In here.”

Michael grimaced. “Not now,” he hissed again.

“I’m not leaving until you hear me out,” I warned him. I growled at Tina, who took a step back.

By now a small crowd was beginning to gather, but Michael was standing his ground. He was determined not to bridge the gap between us, physically or metaphorically. He looked down at his tea somewhat mournfully.

“For heaven’s sake, Ashleigh. You’re making a fool of yourself.”

“Just let me say what I’ve got to say,” I persisted. “And afterward, if you still think you want me out of your life, then I will walk away forever. I promise you. It’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“I don’t think so,” said a bespectacled chap who had perched himself on the edge of the reception desk. He was settling in for the show. “Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”

“I’m not going to talk to you here,” said Michael. He started to walk away. In that moment I dodged past Tina, chased him down the gray-carpeted hall, and made a grab for his elbow. I jogged the tea mug, sending more of the milky-brown liquid over what I knew to be Michael’s favorite suit. One of the single-breasted bespoke suits he had been wearing since his big image change.

“For heaven’s sake.” He tried to jump backward to avoid the splash. He turned to snarl at me. I had never seen him look quite so mad. I have to admit I was a little bit scared.

But this is it
, said the little voice inside my head.
It’s now or never. Give him the speech
. I took a deep breath and spewed out the speech. Quickly. After all, at any moment someone might call a security guard.

“Michael, from the moment I saw you, I knew that you would play an important part in my life. When my eyes met yours, it was as if the final piece of the jigsaw had been fit into place. If you still feel that we should be apart, then I understand that I will have to accept your decision, but if you have the slightest doubt, then I want you to know that we can work it out. And if you feel the same way as me, then let’s spend the rest of our lives together. Michael …” It was time for my grand gesture. I got down on one knee. “Will you marry me?”

“Oh, no,” said Tina.

“Jesus Christ,” said the man who was perching on the reception desk.

Someone actually applauded, but their exuberance was quickly cut short as Michael glared at his colleagues. He grabbed me by the arm, pulled me to my feet, and hustled me into his office.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he asked.

That wasn’t exactly the response I had been hoping for.

Michael’s office was windowed on three sides. He shut the blinds abruptly.

Even in the shadow I could see that his face was as bright red as the roses that he dumped in the wastebasket with a dangerous mixture of embarrassment and anger. Though I had been awake for much of the night, I was only just beginning to wake up.

“I’m sorry,” I said preemptively. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“Well, you did. What were you thinking? What on earth was that all about, Ashleigh? Have you had a stroke? Who do you think you are? Asking me to marry you? Have you been smoking crack?”

“I was trying to speak to you in your own language,” I said,
remembering what the Break-Up Babe had said about talking in man-speak.

“You could try speaking to me in bloody English for a start.”

“Then let me start again,” I pleaded. “I wanted to be sure you understood how much you mean to me.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“I just don’t think you know what you’re throwing away,” I continued, long after all reasonable hope was gone. “I thought that my grand gesture might bring you to your senses. If you let me walk out of the office right now, you’ll regret it. I know you will. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

“Ashleigh, what I always liked about you was that you seemed to be reasonably sane. For a woman. All this nonsense is just making me more certain than ever that I was right to call it a day. In fact I should have done it quite some time ago.”

“Oh, Michael,” I wailed. “For God’s sake, give me another chance. Let me come around and talk about this in your flat. I just want to see you.”

“You can’t,” he told me then. “Because I’m seeing someone else.”

Is it possible that hearts really do break? Because I thought I felt mine tear in two right in that moment. And as the song goes, when hearts break, they don’t break even. I knew that I could no longer comfort myself with the idea that Michael was somehow hurting, too. He had already moved on.

“Who is she?” I wailed. “Who?”

“You don’t really want to know that,” said Michael. “What possible good could it do you to know?”

“It’s Tina.”

“Of course it’s not Tina.”

“Then it’s one of my friends” was the obvious conclusion.

“It is not one of your freaky, boring friends,” said Michael.
“I would never do that to you. What kind of man do you think I am?”

“The kind of man who would have sex with a woman moments after telling her he wants to break up,” I reminded him. “Does your new woman know about that? You should tell her. See how excited she is about dating you then.” My voice got higher and higher as I berated him for his faithlessness.

“I don’t have to listen to this,” said Michael. “And I’m not going to. Get some help, Ashleigh. Get a life. You’ve got to start getting over this. Because we’re finished. It’s over. We’re D-O-N-E. Done.”