The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir (20 page)

She ducked and the tiny pickle landed in the grass.

An hour later, I stood outside Ryan's screened door, nearly turning to leave without knocking.

“Hey, there you are.” Ryan came around the corner of the condo carrying a case of Corona with a mesh bag of limes balanced on top. He smiled and nodded for me to follow. “Come meet my roommate. He's in the kitchen.”

“Well, it's nice to finally meet The One That Got Away. I've heard a lot about you over the last five years. I was starting to think you weren't real.” Mike smiled at me and turned to sprinkle sea salt on a foot-long slab of raw salmon.

Ryan rolled his eyes and smiled. “See, I told you he would call you that.” He reached over and cut off a small chunk of salmon for me, and one for himself.

I didn't feel as uncomfortable meeting his roommate as I thought I would. I could tell Mike was like an older brother to Ryan, though they couldn't be more different with Mike's short, bear-like frame contrasting Ryan's tall, lean blondeness.

“So, Annette, Ryan said you've been a vegetarian for over ten years. How can you eat fish without getting sick?” Mike's dark brows furrowed.

I popped another piece of fresh fish into my mouth and savored the clean, delicate taste. “I'm not vegan, I'm actually a lacto-ovo pescatarian.”

“A what?” Mike and Ryan said in unison.

“The only animal products I ate were eggs, cheese, and milk, then about three years ago, I got hooked on sushi. I usually say vegetarian because it's easier and I always feel stupid trying to explain.”

“Well, I'm glad you still eat vegetables, I bought a ton. Now, why don't you two go somewhere and make-out while I finish in here.” Mike pointed a bamboo skewer in the direction of the doorway.

Ryan took me by the hand and led me outside to a tall patio chair. He tilted the woven table umbrella to keep the sun out of my eyes and settled into the chair across from me. He looked down, absently tracing his fingertip around the tattoo on the inside of his forearm. “I was thinking of getting another tattoo and I wanted to know what you think.”

“I don't care. Do whatever you want.” I shrugged and took a sip from my glass of cranberry juice.

“I want it to be a mermaid with your face,” he said.

My cough sent juice shooting out of my nose. The cold, red liquid burned my sinuses.

“Are you okay?” Ryan handed me a napkin.

When my coughing subsided, I tried to reason with him. “I really don't think that's a good idea,” I said. “You can't just tattoo someone's face on your body.”

“It's not just someone. It's you,” he said.

What do you say to something like that? It was kind of flattering—in a weird, obsessive, stalker sort of way.

“I just think it's a bad idea,” I said. “A tattoo is forever.”

Ryan's expression turned serious. His blue eyes locked onto mine. “I know,” he said.

Mike stepped out onto the patio, carrying a plate of vegetable kebobs and foil packets of fish.

Saved. Now I didn't have to find a way out of the tattoo madness.

“Mike. Here, take our picture.” Ryan pulled a disposable camera from the pocket of his board shorts.

Mike set the plate on the sideboard of the grill and crouched like he was trying to fit the bulk of his body behind the little box camera. “Okay, smile and say sexxxx.”

The smile on my face felt like a pose for a dental x-ray.

As Mike tended the grill, more people arrived. Soon the house and patio were filled with San Clemente surfers and their cherry-ChapStick girlfriends. The beer keg was flowing. Ryan introduced me around as his girlfriend. Each time, I winced inside. I was Kevin's girlfriend.

Was.

At nine, everyone walked across the street to the cliff-top to watch the fireworks launched from San Clemente Pier below. The night was clear and warm. Looking up the coast, I could see tiny pinpoints of colored light shooting into the darkness from Dana Point Harbor, Laguna Beach, and very faintly from Newport.

I leaned back against Ryan's chest and watched the reds and blues pop in the night sky above us, the greens and yellows bursting and falling in a shower of crackling light. Ryan's arms circled around me and pulled me close against him. I felt his kiss brush the top of my hair.

Kevin was gone and Ryan was here. And I guess that's what mattered: someone tangible.

reception slip

Friday, July 19

It must feel weird watching your father marry someone younger than you. Ryan wasn't dealing with it very well. He tried to be supportive, but I could see the strain in his face when he thought no one was looking.

“I feel like I'm betraying my Mom.” Ryan fussed with the bowtie of his tux. “But when my dad asked me to be his best man, what was I supposed to say?”

Ryan had been battling his thoughts from the time we boarded the plane at John Wayne Airport. I sat quietly on the edge of the bed in a standard room, Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas. I wondered if Elvis would be at the ceremony, but I didn't want to upset Ryan by asking. So, I left my sarcasm packed neatly in my suitcase.

To me, the whole thing looked like the cliché of a mid-life crisis. If it were a newspaper story, the headline would say it all: Man Leaves Wife of 35 Years for 20 Year-Old Stripper, Starts Producing Techno Music Featuring Homosexual DJ from Miami.

The evening didn't get any less bizarre. By the time the skinny, Cuban transvestite in the cheerleading outfit, high-heeled pumps, and oversized rhinestone sunglasses, finished singing “I Will Survive” at the reception, I was pretty sure there wouldn't be anything to top that. Ever.

I moved around the hotel banquet room with a disposable camera, taking pictures of Ryan's relatives. It gave me something to do. Something normal. I looked across the room and caught Ryan's stare. He watched me from the bar and smiled. When I reached the last table at the edge of the dance floor, I turned the camera to Ryan's grandparents.

They looked sweet, frail, and ever so slightly shell-shocked. They leaned their heads together and grasped gently at each other's quavering hands. That beat in time overpowered all the craziness in life. Enduring love. That's what life was all about. That's what we all wanted.

I finished the roll in the camera and walked up an aisle between the tables, ratcheting the plastic dial to rewind the film.

Ryan came up behind me, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed my neck. “I love you,” he said.

I turned around and wasn't sure whose face registered more shock: his or mine.

“I mean…thank you,” he mumbled, trying to recover his composure.

I'm sure I still looked like I'd been clocked upside the head with a frying pan.

“I wanted to say thank you…for being here with me…and for taking the pictures of my family… Let's dance.” Ryan pulled me by the hand toward the dance floor. Then he stopped abruptly and changed directions. “Nevermind. Let's talk.” He pulled me at a half-run out into the hallway.

A hotel chandelier twinkled overhead. I noticed it when I looked up to see where Ryan was staring.

“I didn't mean to say that. I mean, not now. I mean, I feel it, but it just came out.”

“It's okay. Just forget it,” I said. The last thing I wanted was a conversation about love.

“No. I'm glad I said it, so now I don't have to worry about it anymore.” Ryan leaned down and brushed his lips across mine. “I love you and now I can say it whenever I want.”

He kissed me deeply and I returned his kiss. There was no way I could return his sentiment of love. The kiss was the best I could do. And it kept me from saying anything that would hurt his feelings.

i've got my saddle on my horse

Saturday, July 20

The Walgreen's on Las Vegas Boulevard was packed. Out-of-towners browsed aisles lined with tacky souvenirs and postcards. Ryan and I were on a different mission. Our cab idled in the parking lot as we stood in front of a wall of condoms.

Ryan hadn't brought condoms for the weekend and I certainly hadn't packed any. I hadn't planned to sleep with him. I wasn't sure I was ready.

The thought of having someone—someone other than Kevin—inside of me made me shudder. I didn't know if I could go through with it.

I looked around and was pretty sure that it was obvious to everyone. I'm standing here staring at a buffet of rubbers. And yes, people, I'm preparing to get fucked.

Ryan turned to me. He looked like he wanted to say something, but wasn't sure how.

I prompted him with a raised eyebrow. God, I hope he doesn't expect me to choose a box.

“I don't want you to think I'm bragging or anything, but these are the only kind that fit.”

My eyes followed his hand as it plucked a green box of Trojans from the hanger. Size Large. A small smile tugged at the corner of my lips. Inside, I was doing the Snoopy dance in the end zone. Woo-hoo! Jackpot!

Finding a guy with a big dick was like twisting the cap off a soda bottle and checking to see if you're a winner. In my life, I'd always found the guys who should have
Thank You For Playing, Please Try Again
stamped on their underwear.

It had finally come down to it. Ten months had passed since Kevin turned my life upside down and erased our future. Ten months without sex—that's got to be some sort of world record for a thirty-five-year-old woman. Ten months and still I wanted only Kevin, but it was painfully clear he wasn't coming back.

I needed to let go. Really let go.

And if I was going to fuck to get over Kevin, it may as well be with a guy who has a big dick.

At the register, Ryan pulled out a fifty-dollar bill for the Trojans and tossed a pack of gum on the counter. I buried my face between the pages of a
People
magazine and tried not to make eye contact with the smirking male clerk. It wasn't until the cab ride back to the hotel that the reality of what I was about to do kicked in. The passing casinos were a blur.

In the elevator ride up to the room, I almost chickened out. The ascending floor numbers flashed on the display: a reverse countdown to sex launch. I felt a fluttering of anxiety in my chest. If I went through with it and Kevin ever found out, he'd never come back.

With the curtains drawn in the dim hotel room, I looked at Ryan between my parted legs. It was almost surreal. I watched as he practically strangled himself with a condom; it was like watching someone try to sausage a boa constrictor into a wetsuit. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Ryan moved above me. His rubber erection skipped along the bare skin of my thigh and when he pressed himself inside, he groaned from the tight fit. It was a bad cliché of the born-again virgin, but I felt more like an impaled fish.

Even if I were wearing ruby slippers, with my ankles pinned behind my head, there wouldn't have been a way to click them together. Which was too bad, because all I really wanted to do was go home.

It was just sex and was as good as it can be, when you wish it was with someone else. Tears trickled from the corner of my eyes. Ryan didn't notice; he was too busy rocking in orgasm.

In the quiet of the darkness, Ryan stretched out beside me, trailing his fingertips along my bare stomach. “I do love you, you know.” He propped himself on an elbow. “I've waited five years to be with you and it's everything I thought it would be.” A pained, bitter laugh died in my throat. Clearly, we just had two completely different experiences.

Ryan was my symbolic step: my way of acknowledging Kevin would never come back, my attempt to move on. And it failed. I only succeeded in feeling like I betrayed the man who still owned my heart.

I pretended to doze off. Ryan spooned against my back and my last thought was of Kevin. If he hadn't left me, my life would never have come to this.

a life of beavis and butthead?

Saturday, August 10

Ryan set the styrofoam boxes of sushi on my kitchen table and pulled plates and bowls from the cupboard. Josh peeled the lid from his miso soup cup and took a sip.

I slid the DVD into the player. “
American Beauty
is such a great film,” I said. “I love the symbolism. And Kevin Spacey does a phenomenal job. I think he's completely underrated as an actor.” I pressed the remote key to start the movie.

“I heard about it, but never saw it.” Ryan tore open a small foil packet of soy sauce and mixed it with a lump of wasabi.

Halfway into the movie, I glanced over at Ryan and saw his face hanging slack. “Don't you like it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don't get it.”

Alan Ball was one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood and his script was so well crafted. How could Ryan not understand it?

“It's about how we try to keep up appearances and try to pretend that everything is perfect when we are really just masking the silent desperation of a soul that's dying inside.”

Ryan stared at me blankly.

“I know a movie you'll like better.” Josh ran to his room and returned with one of his DVDs. He popped it in and clicked past the set up. Ryan sat beside Josh on the couch.

The sophomoric antics of
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
filled the screen. Fart jokes. Boner jokes. Josh and Ryan doubled over with laughter.