What Love Looks Like (15 page)

        
“It’s
random, I know.”

        
“So,
should we, like, reschedule?” I asked, hesitantly.

        
“Uh,
yeah, definitely.”

        
I
awaited specifics, but there were none. “Like for when?”

        
“E-mail
me a few dates, and I’ll get my ticket changed.”

        
He
sounded so nonchalant, whereas I was beside myself, to put it mildly. If I’d
been required to work without advance warning on the weekend we were supposed
to be together, I’d at least have put up a fight. It didn’t sound as if he'd
even tried to get out of it. And I wasn't convinced this work alibi was even
the truth. My mind went directly to the damning words of Jay’s cousin, then to
the purple shoebox in his closet, and then to the admissions from Jay himself. My
instincts told me that he was full of shit. But that wasn’t fair. Jay had been
nothing but forthcoming to me, even about the unpleasant truths of his past.

After we said
goodbye, I sat blankly on my sofa sobbing for a solid five minutes. I then
lolled around feeling sorry for myself and curled up into the fetal position
while Luna licked away what remained of my tears. I didn’t know what I would
say to my friends. Erica said she “couldn’t believe I was in a relationship,”
and now that Jay wasn’t coming, her disbelief would be unyielding.

        
I
turned on music and poured a glass of wine from a bottle of Shiraz that Ryan
had recommended. It was delicious, especially with the slight chill he
suggested, and it was the only thing keeping me somewhat calm. My tears dried
out after my first glass, and I came to the realization that maybe I’d been a
little selfish. Jay was the one who had to spend the weekend working, and I was
the one crying about it. How juvenile of me. I would simply inform my friends
that my very important boyfriend had a very important obligation back in New
York City, one that he simply couldn’t get out of.

Hi ladies, just spoke with Jay and he isn’t able
to make it this weekend. Emergency at work with some international clients. Can
we take a rain check?
I wrote
them.

        
What?
That’s bullshit!
Erica wrote
back.

        
You’re kidding. I had to, like, clear a
dinner with the Ohio Board of Plastic Surgeons for this,
Stacey chimed in.

        
Stacey, be nice. Elle’s probably more upset
than any of us,
Serena added.

        
I’m sorry everyone—he was so excited
to meet you all.
I threw it in for good measure. The truth was, Jay didn’t
even know that meeting my friends was part of the itinerary, but I lied to make
him sound better.

        
We can still go out without him,
Erica
wrote.

        
I don’t think I’m up for it,
I wrote.

        
I’m out,
Stacey added.

        
Aw, Elle, I’m sorry,
Serena wrote.
You must be pretty bummed.

I didn’t respond
after that. I didn’t want their pity. I couldn’t fathom another dinner with all
of them and their husbands and fiancés
yet
again and
still
with no one on my
arm. So it was decided: I would have another weekend alone, another visit to my
parents' house, another Monday with no water cooler stories to share with
Maureen. For once I was thankful that East Coast Prime wasn’t even generous
enough to provide us with an actual water cooler.

        
The
day after Jay’s cancellation, I went to work zombie-like and dejected. I didn’t
go into Maureen’s office for our ritual coffee talk, nor did I immediately turn
on my computer and start cranking away at e-mails. The first thing I did was
shoot Jay a quick message.
Sorry that you
have to work this weekend. I’m really going to miss you, and I hope we can pick
another date soon.

        
He usually wrote back right away, but instead he
was silent through the morning. When I didn’t hear from him by noon, I had the
distinct feeling I was being played. And after lunch my disdain had sprawled
into fury. He was blowing me off; I could feel it.
And suddenly my anger morphed into resentment
for every aspect of my existence.
Why
couldn’t I ever catch a break? Why did I have to have the
sixty-five-hour-a-week-pain-in-the-ass job while my friends skated by on
forty-five-hour workweeks with equivalent salaries and time for actual personal
lives? That was if they even had to work at all. They found wonderful husbands
with ease while I struggled in relationships year after year, only to spend
what little free time I had with a dog.

The days that
followed got worse. Rather than enjoying the weekend despite Jay's blowing me
off, I moped around, like an ill-tempered child. Was his work obligation the
truth, or had he just lost interest in me? Maybe he’d decided that a
long-distance relationship just wasn’t worth his time or money and wanted to
let me down gently. I couldn’t be sure. I’d just have to wait and play off his
next move. I just hated waiting around to find out what that move was.

That weekend my
bad habits stormed back with a vengeance. I spent the days and nights stuffing
myself to the point of sickness; only wine and food kept me from going off the
deep end. I must have paced the length of my apartment a thousand times,
involuntarily ripping out strands of my hair like a schizophrenic who’d gone
off her medication. I was looking for anything else to fixate on.

The facts were
clearer than they’d ever been. I was a masochist, a woman who went around
looking for trouble and made things harder than they had to be. I stayed in a
job I hated because I didn’t have the courage to leave. I threw myself at Jay,
who lived too far away and admitted to being bad at relationships. I’d only
landed him by pretending to be someone that I wasn’t—someone cool,
popular, and confident.

I had something
to prove. I wanted to show myself and everyone else that I could land the
hottest guy I’d ever laid eyes on. I was wholly to blame for my troubles and I
was the reason I wasn’t yet a fully developed adult. My desperation to validate
myself had made me succumb to the charms of an admitted player. And in doing so,
I got fucked, in every sense of the word. And perhaps the sickest part was that
still
I thirsted for his attention.
Nothing else could really fill the emptiness. I was furious with him, yet I sat
and waited by the phone for him to call.

I
couldn’t take it any longer.
Every wrinkle of my brain was filled with Jay.
I had to do something, so I texted him.
How’s
it going?
I wrote. Until recently, he'd usually gotten back to me right
away, but ten minutes passed and nothing. Another twenty dragged by, and still
not a word. I started to worry. True, he wasn’t the greatest communicator, but
he always had his phone nearby and typically got back to me within a few
minutes at most. An hour went by. I paced, I drank, and I worried. Was Jay
okay? I had to know. I phoned him and got his voice mail. I was in agony.
Another hour passed, and I called again. By then it was ten thirty, and I was
exhausted. But how could I sleep without knowing he was all right? Thirty more
minutes passed. I passed out on the sofa. I fought hard against sleep, but my
body won. I woke every forty-five minutes to change positions and glance at my
phone. Nothing. There was nothing until 3:00 a.m., when finally the phone rang.

“Hey, hot stuff,” he said. His words were
slurred. He was wasted. It was a Wednesday. I didn't understand.

“I've been calling you all night.”

              
“I
was out.”

              
“I
was worried because normally I hear from you right away. How was your night?”
He’d woken me, but I didn’t care. The sound of his voice instantly calmed me,
as though all was right between us again.

              
“I'm
fucking rocked.”

              
“Where
were you?”

              
“Scores,”
he said.

              
“Okay,
let's just talk tomorrow.”

              
I
was relieved he was home but humiliated by how many times I’d called him. I
hoped that the alcohol would impair his memory of it. He said he was at Scores.
I'd heard that name before. I Googled it, and it all came back to
me—Scores, the strip club. I’d heard it mentioned on Howard Stern about a
hundred times before. Jay was at a strip club, all night. I was enraged, and there
was nothing I could do about it.

              
Following
the Scores incident, I morphed into a bona fide psycho. I developed the habit
of checking my phone every sixty seconds. I pleaded with the heavens to push
Jay to call or text, but apparently my message wasn’t getting through. I
decided it would be best to abandon my phone in the apartment while I was out
for drinks with Jenna. I didn’t want to be fixated on my phone the entire time
we were out, checking it as if waiting for a terminal diagnosis.

Jenna and I were
meeting at Marcella’s, right below my apartment. That, of course, was by
design, for if I went through total phone-checking withdrawal, I knew I’d be
able to run upstairs and give in. The choice of bar enabled my own bad habits.

“So what’s up with
Jay?” Jenna asked immediately upon sitting down at a bar stool next to me.

        
“I
don’t know, Jen,” I said with a sigh.

        
“What
happened?”

“He’s been acting
so distant,” I said glumly. “And it started after he cancelled on me."

        
“He’s
been acting weird for a few days, not a month. And about him cancelling, shit
happens. You know how much we work? It’s even worse in New York. You’ve got to
work twice as hard to get ahead there.”

        
“Maybe
so, but something still feels off.”

        
“What
is it?”

        
“I’m
not sure, but just two weeks ago he couldn’t wait to come see me. And the next
thing I knew he'd cancelled, and now he’s being so detached.”

        
“Gosh,
I feel so sorry for you. A gorgeous guy is totally into you but then acts weird
for a few days, and now you’re a basket case,” she said sarcastically.

        
“We
were supposed to reschedule the trip, but he hasn’t brought it up yet.”

        
“Have
you brought it up?”

        
“No!
He should be the one to bring it up, since he’s the one who cancelled in the
first place. Besides, he’s got this thing about girls being clingy—he
can’t stand it.”

        
“So
what?” she asked. “What about
you
?
What about what you want?”

        
“What
do you mean?”

        
“So
he says he doesn’t like clingy girls. Maybe he's dated some crazy chicks in the
past. But you’re not one of them.” I appreciated her effort, but calling him
numerous times in a night only to learn that he was at a strip club had
certainly made me feel like a lunatic. She added, “And you shouldn’t have to
alter your behavior or your instincts to prove that to him. He’s lucky you even
know his name.”

While I was
grateful for her encouragement, she had things reversed. I was the fortunate
one because I received his attention, which was why I was so intent on
repairing whatever had gone wrong. “I appreciate that, Jen, but if you met him
in person you might be singing a different tune. He’s a total ten.”

        
“Maybe
he’s waiting for you to make a move.”

        
“Yeah,
that’s probably what I’d tell my desperate friend too, but deep down I’d be
thinking it doesn’t look good.”

        
“I
swear I’m not thinking that,” Jenna said.

        
“I’ll
be twenty-nine in a few months, Jenna. That means thirty is right around the
corner. I don’t have all the time in the world.”

        
“You
have plenty of time.”

        
“Easy
for you to say—you’re twenty-seven and married.” I said.

        
Later,
it occurred to me that the one positive of Jay’s detachment was that since he
couldn’t see or hear me, he also couldn’t smell the very powerful desperation I
was emitting. Nor could he notice that I’d been unable to wash my hair in days
because I’d been so distraught over him. I'd literally lost my will to primp.
The only thing that might have lifted my spirits would have been Jay’s voice on
the phone explaining how he’d had family in town, or that work had gotten even
more chaotic. Any old excuse would have done if he said he was sorry and that
he had just purchased a ticket to visit me in Columbus.