Love Leaps: A Short Story (5 page)

I open the door and my face drops.
It’s not Kate. It’s Michael. He just stares at me for a second.
Just from his expression, I know that I really must look like a
pitiful mess.

“
Look, Meg, we need to
talk,” he says.

“
We have absolutely
nothing to talk about,” I say and try to shut the door, but he
reaches out and holds it open.

“
I hate that it happened
like this. I wanted to break it to you gently,” he says.

“
You're unbelievable. Get
out of my face!”

“
When you calm down,
please call me so that we can straighten this out,” he says. The
slight crack in his voice gives away his annoyance with me, but I
don’t care.

“
I hope that your life is
cursed with pain and misery and that you never experience happiness
again!”

With that, I slam the door in his
face. I wait to hear his footsteps walk away, then I crawl back to
the sofa and cry again. How could I have thought that Michael was
so perfect? I’m such a fool.

I really have to stop crying. Looking
up at the ceiling, I try to keep the tears from rolling down my
cheeks as I take a deep breathe. I close my eyes wishing that I
still felt numb. Instead, I feel raw pain, and it’s piercing. Maybe
watching some TV will distract me from all of this crap. Before I
can turn on the tube, that obnoxious buzzer is going off again. My
heart sinks and I feel like I’m going to vomit. I drag myself off
the sofa once more, hoping Michael hasn't come back.

As I crack open my door, Kate gives me
a great big hug. I start to cry again. She brings me back to the
sofa and gets me a new bottle of water. It’s such a relief to
finally have Kate here. She wants to know what happened, but the
events are so hideous, that I only want to go through the story
once, so we decide to wait until Cecile and Julia
arrive.

Kate sets down copies of People
Magazine, National Enquirer and US Weekly on the coffee table.
During a crisis, this is standard issue. There’s something
comforting about reading outrageously sensational stories. It kind
of makes your own drama seem a little less, well, dramatic. Kate
reads me an article about this celebrity couple on the brink of
divorce and an article about a nasty fistfight between these other
two celebrities. Even in the midst of my crisis, these articles
amuse me.

The buzzer goes off again. Kate
answers the door for me and lets Cecile and Julia inside. They both
hug me and flop down in chairs, tossing their purses and jackets on
the floor. Kate picks up the phone and calls our favorite Mexican
restaurant. She tells Miguel to have the dark corner booth ready
for us in about an hour.

Now that Kate is off the phone, and
Cecile and Julia have arrived, I guess it’s time to tell the whole
morbid story. Just thinking about where to begin, makes me start
crying again. They look at me a little bewildered, murmuring words
of encouragement. Kate hands me a box of Kleenex and squeezes my
hand. I take another deep breath. Okay, I’m as ready as I’m going
to.

“
Since it was such a
beautiful day, I decided to walk to the deli to get my lunch
instead of eating at my desk. On my way there, I stopped outside
Bailey’s Fine Jewelry store to look at this beautiful vase that was
in the window. But, when I stepped closer, I could see inside the
store,” I say and gulp down another couple cries. “That’s when I
recognized Michael. At first, I was so excited thinking that he was
picking out jewelry for me. But then I saw her, a blonde leggy
bitch wrapping herself around him. He actually put his arm around
her and smiled. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I
just stood there staring as the jeweler brought them pieces to look
at.”

“
Oh my God! He’s cheating
on you!” Cecile shouts.

“
Oh, it’s worse than that.
I got up the nerve to go inside the store to confront Michael with
his tramp,” I say sniffling.

“
Good for you, Meg,” Kate
says, squeezing my hand again.

“
Well, what happened?”
Julia asks.

“
I walked into the store
and the door chimes went off. Michael turned around and saw me. He
went totally blank. I glared at him and simply said, ‘Hello,
Michael’. He quietly muttered ‘hi’. The blonde leggy bitch turned
around and she was all smiles and bubbly. I seriously wanted to
smack her. She asked Michael who his friend was, and all he could
do was mutter ‘Meg’. She came over and shook my hand and said how
nice it was to meet a friend of Michael’s. Then, she announced that
they had just gotten engaged and were shopping for a
ring!”

“
You have got to be
kidding!” Kate exclaims outraged.

“
That bastard! Did you
slap the hell out of him?” Julia asks.

By now, tears are streaming down my
face again. I’m trying not to get choked up, but I’m not succeeding
very well.

“
No. I wish I had, but I
was too shocked to say or do anything. I just said that I was late
and had to go. Then I went back to the office and sat in utter
shock until I was able to call Kate.”

“
So, that lowlife has been
cheating on you with someone this whole time and now he got engaged
without telling you!” Julia says.

“
Apparently.”

“
Meg, I know that it
hurts, but its better that you found out now. Who knows how long
Michael would have waited to tell you,” Cecile says
pragmatically.

“
I know. I just haven’t
been able to process the whole thing yet. That’s not even the end
of the story.”

“
You’ve got to be kidding.
There’s more?” Kate asks.

“
Yeah. After I got home, I
fell asleep on the sofa. I woke up to hear the door buzzer, and I
thought Kate was here. When I opened the door, it was actually
Michael.”

“
That jerk! What the hell
was he doing, showing up at your house,” Julia yells.

“
Well, he kept trying to
insist that we needed to talk.”

“
I hope you told him off!”
Kate says.

“
Not really. I wasn’t
thinking that clearly. I had just woken up. I told him there was
nothing to talk about and that I hoped his life was cursed with
pain and misery and that he would never experience happiness
again.”

“
Wouldn’t it be great if
we could actually put curses on people?” Julia says with a sly
smile.

“
I’m sure that he’ll get
what’s coming to him. It’s only a matter of time,” Kate says and
she squeezes my hand again. “Karma always catches up with people
sooner or later.”

“
I hope so,” I say. “I
can’t stand to think that he’ll get away with doing this to me. I
hope the universe gives him one hell of a karmic kick in the
pants!”

To finish reading Karen
Jerabek's
Helping Karma
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