Always Something There to Remind Me (24 page)

She was a fool. And absolutely everyone knew it.

She called again. It rang about thirty times. Finally he picked up. “What do you want?”

“You have to listen to me,” she said, wishing she’d come up with the perfect thing to say in ten words or less. But that wasn’t possible. There was no perfect thing to say, much less one that happened in ten words or less. She’d screwed up, but not to the degree he thought, and she had to make him believe her. “It wasn’t what you thought.”

“I don’t care.”

Yes, he did. That’s what all of this was about! He hadn’t just turned on her after two years because he
didn’t care
anymore … had he? If he had, that wouldn’t bring on this kind of hostility, would it?

Six weeks of this. She’d gone through six weeks of this already. Two months ago, this was a guy she was sure was going to love her forever. Two months ago, she’d been sure they were going to get married someday. Two months ago, they’d had a routine; she’d been flirty and charming and he’d been older and responsible and together they’d been in love, strong, solid. Everyone thought so.

How long was he going to punish her?

She’d learned her lesson. God
knows
she’d learned her lesson. She never should have taken him for granted.

Erin tightened her grip on the phone and swallowed back the impulse to puke. “Nate, I love you.”

There was a hesitation. She knew he wanted to hang up, but, for that split second, he couldn’t. He wanted to hear it. He
wanted
her to love him. He
wanted
everything to be all right. She knew it.

Then he said, “I don’t care.”

He might as well have shot her in the stomach. It would have hurt less than this.

She started to cry. She had no control over it. “Nothing happened,” she said, but it came out weak. Like it didn’t matter. Maybe it even sounded like it wasn’t true. “It was just … stupid. But
nothing happened
. I’m
so sorry
.” If there was a word bigger than
sorry
, she wished she knew it. If there was an appropriate penance to pay, to prove her regret, her devotion, she would happily have performed it. Cut off a finger? She’d still have nine left. Shave her head? There were wigs. Stab herself in the heart? People had quintuple bypass surgery; the chances had to be at least fair that she’d survive. Maybe it would be touch and go for a while, but if anything, that might make him realize what he stood to lose, so maybe it would be worth it.…

“It. Doesn’t. Matter.” He was obviously speaking through gritted teeth. She had no reading, no sense, of what might be behind it, other than complete anger. But it seemed disproportionate.

She didn’t understand.

“Why are you this mad?” she asked, pushing the words out hard with a voice that had no strength left. “Why won’t you even
listen?
I don’t get this at all. You’ve misunderstood
everything.
Don’t you even
want
to feel better?”

Apparently not. “I told you,” he said, his voice so hard it felt like blows. “We just weren’t working. It’s over.”

Two months ago he’d cupped her face in his hand and pressed his body into hers and told her he’d always love her.

Just weren’t working?
It didn’t make sense.

It wasn’t true.

“I’m hanging up now,” he said. “Don’t call back.”

“But—”

He was gone.

No point in calling back. It wasn’t like if she did he’d finally say,
You know, it’s good you called again, because I realize now that I’ve made a huge mistake.…

She cried until she was empty, and fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon, curled up tight on the bed where he’d first told her he wanted to stay with her forever.

*   *   *

Though Erin had done her time as a drama queen, and Nate had certainly witnessed it time and again when they were together, she didn’t like being depressed. Girlish tears over some semi-imagined slight were one thing, but the heavy dark cloak of relentless sadness she was beginning to carry everywhere was another.

It was starting to feel dangerous.

So when Theresa called that night, Erin forced herself to rise to the occasion.

“Ronnie has a friend,” Theresa said, “who is apparently so gorgeous that some girl walked up to him in a bar the other day and handed him her phone number.”

Erin doubted it. “Who does that?”

“I know. So the guy must be hot, right? Anyway, you’re going out with him tonight.”

Erin’s first reaction was to say no. She didn’t want to get dressed up. She was too tired to go anywhere. And she certainly wasn’t interested in meeting any
new guy
, no matter how cute he was.

But this was getting ridiculous. She
had
to get out and shake off this depression. Maybe if the guy was really that great, she
would
start to forget Nate. It wasn’t like Nate was being so gallant right now. He didn’t really deserve all of the regard she was giving him.

Maybe he never had.

The idea took root uneasily in her mind. Could she have been wrong about him all this time? Had she invented him, in some way, to accommodate her ideas of what she wanted him to be?

Maybe he’d never really loved her.

In fact, maybe he’d just used her until something more interesting came along. Had he? She hadn’t even thought about this before, but was it possible that he’d found someone else and that all of this supposed hurt-and-betrayal business was just a way to scrape her off so he could be with another girl instead?

Could she have been
that
wrong about him?

A couple of weeks before they broke up, he’d dropped her off at home and indicated he was going to his house, but he’d gone to his friend’s sister’s party instead. Erin had been kind of pissed, but she hadn’t really made much of it. Maybe she should have. Except that she’d been really sure he’d just gone because his friends wanted to go. She’d trusted him enough to feel like there was nothing more to it.

Then there was the night David and Kenny had called her house, asking where Nate was, saying they needed a ride home from the gym, but then David’s mother had picked up the phone and asked who was on the line. So they were obviously calling from his house, not the gym, but
why
? It was just … weird. But now she wondered if it meant something she should have read into, or if it was just Nate’s stupid friends being their usual stupid selves.

She’d just chalked it up to everyone being a little immature and bored.

At this point she didn’t know anything for sure anymore.

She returned her attention to the conversation with Theresa. Fuck Nate. She wasn’t going to mourn him forever. She wasn’t going to lose herself in this grief, no matter how awful he acted toward her. Enough was enough.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Probably just go downtown or something. They’re picking us up here at seven. Get over here and we’ll get ready together. It’ll be fun!”

Erin looked at the clock. It was five thirty now.

Something inside of her pushed her onward. It was well past time to move on. People broke up all the time. Maybe Nate had ended things badly, but that didn’t need to be her burden forever. She wasn’t willing to take that on. He was her first love. Big deal. Everyone had one, but most people didn’t marry theirs. If she and Nate hadn’t broken up now, and in this way, they would probably have done it at some other point in a different way. The end result was the same.

She needed to stop feeling like someone had died.

“That sounds great,” she said, with forced enthusiasm. If she repeated it enough, she’d start to believe it. “I’ll be right over.”

She took her time driving through the winding Glen Road to Theresa’s house, rolling down the windows and breathing in the first green scents of early spring. It was a beautiful evening. A tiny bit of optimism bloomed in the back of her mind. If she concentrated on one hour at a time, she could get through this, and this hour was fine.

It was only overwhelming if she thought about everything that had happened and imagined the rest of her life without Nate. But if she removed Nate from the whole equation and just thought about
now
, she’d be okay.

Hearts broke all the time. There were a million songs about it. And a million more about hearts being mended. She’d get through this. It was just going to take a little bit of time. And a super-hot guy wasn’t going to hurt matters any.

In five years, she might not even remember Nate very well.

At this point, she hoped she wouldn’t.

*   *   *

He
was
good-looking. His name was Brendan and, although she would never have done such a thing herself, Erin could see why someone had been moved to take a chance on giving him her phone number. Dark blond hair, light blue eyes, the kind of tawny skin that looked tan year-round. He could have been in a Coppertone ad or a beer commercial.

On top of that, he was charming—nice voice, intelligent, funny. He drove a Jeep, a nice manly vehicle. They parked in a parking lot off Wisconsin Avenue and as they walked over to Windsor McKay’s, Erin couldn’t help but notice that people were noticing him. He turned heads.

Better still, he seemed completely unaware of it.

It was a testament to how fucked up Erin really was that she wasn’t into him. At all.

“What is
wrong
with you?” Theresa asked when they went into the bathroom together about an hour and two pitchers of beer into the date. “He’s
gorgeous
and you act like you’re sitting across from the Elephant Man.”

Erin suspected her friends were tired of hearing about what was wrong with her, so she lied. “My head is killing me,” she said, adding a wince that was slightly too small and slightly too late to be convincing. “It must be the beer.” She’d had three of them so far and they’d done nothing to numb her angst.

“This is about Nate, isn’t it?”

“No.”

Theresa wasn’t buying that. It would have been surprising if she had. “Yes, it is, you walk around looking like you’re going to cry all the time. Snap out of it!”

“I
can’t
just snap out of it! Don’t you think I would if I could? Do you think I
want
to feel this way all the time? I hate it! I hate him! I hate me!” Tears burned, but she swiped impatiently at her eyes. She was
not
going to cry again. She was
not
going to drown in this. She couldn’t let herself.

“Don’t say that.” Theresa pulled her into a hug, and Erin closed her eyes tightly against her friend’s hair. It smelled like Flex shampoo and cigarette smoke from the bar. “Look.” She pulled back. “You’ve got to understand that he has moved on. JP saw him and Todd out together the other night.”

“He did?” It felt like a knife to her heart. Todd—the one who had committed the biggest betrayal—was right back in with Nate, yet Nate wouldn’t even give her the time of day. It was devastating.

“Yes,” Theresa went on. “Todd’s back for the week. They acted like everything was normal, like nothing had ever happened between them, so he’s obviously blaming you for everything, and
that’s not fair
.”

“It’s not!” Erin felt so sorry for herself in that moment. Pure, unadulterated self-pity. “I don’t think I can survive this.”

She cried.

Then Theresa cried.

Finally Theresa gave her a squeeze and said, “Maybe you just need more time. Just take it one tiny step at a time if that’s all you can do.”

“I need a lobotomy.” It was one of many thoughts that had actually occurred to her as a viable solution to her problem. “I’m not giving him more time. Nate is an asshole. He knows what this is doing to me and he doesn’t care. There’s
no
excuse for that!”

“I agree. If he loved you, he wouldn’t put you through this.”

Wow, that hurt. The truth hurt. Especially coming from someone else. When Erin had had the same thought, she’d been able to dismiss it and replace it with a more comfortable thought, but when Theresa said it, there was no way to ignore it.

If he loved her, he wouldn’t let her hurt this badly.

Because this was
bad
.

This was
way
beyond normal teenage blues.

Theresa put her hands on Erin’s shoulders, looked into her eyes, and said, “Now you need to get out there and get into that guy, because he can’t take his eyes off you.”

“Who,
Brendan
?” She hadn’t noticed that.

Theresa nodded and made a face that clearly indicated Erin was a blind idiot. “He’s so into you. Don’t ask me why.” She laughed. “I guess he likes that distant, I’m-not-interested thing you’ve got going on. Whatever it is, you should take advantage of it. The best way to get over someone is to hook up with someone else.”

It certainly seemed true for Theresa. She never seemed to spend too long mourning over a guy. And there was always—always—a new one waiting in the wings. Nate used to say Theresa was Teflon—she didn’t let anyone stick around for long.

Erin wanted to be more like that.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked fine. None of the crap that was going on inside her head was visible on the outside. It was stupid to be moping around, weeping over a guy who obviously wasn’t giving her a second thought.

“You’re right,” she said to Theresa, fresh resolution pushing her voice. She was going to go with this. She was going to go all the way with this. “I just need another beer.”

“Sure it’s not going to make that headache worse?” Theresa asked with a smirk.

Erin smirked right back. “It might just make the headache a lot better.”

Four beers and two tequila shots later—bartenders in those days didn’t card in D.C. unless you looked like a third-grader—Erin was in the seat next to Brendan, and he was telling her how beautiful she was.

She still wasn’t into him.

But she pretended she was.

And when he came in for the kiss, she pretended she was into it. Fuck Nate.