The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (28 page)

Maybe he was in the bathroom, I thought, but then he called my name from somewhere else in the apartment. “Thursday,” he said. His voice sounded frightened. And I felt guilty for not telling him where I was going before just disappearing like that.

I deposited my house keys on his desk and came out from the office partition. I found Caleb sitting on our black velvet couch. Only … Abigail was sitting there with him.

They both had their hands folded, and Abigail had eyeliner smudges under her eyes. She was one of those women who wore lots and lots of eyeliner, like she was in a Middle Eastern harem or taking part in a French New Wave movie. The result being that I could always tell when she had been crying, because her eye makeup got all askew, like she was posing for the inevitable painted portrait of a pale woman who had been crying that all art students seemed to have at least one of in their portfolios.

I had seen this look on Abigail often, back when we had been roommates and Benny and she had been slowly but steadily imploding. I’d come home to find Abigail sniffling in front of an HGTV apartment-hunting program and she’d say something like, “I really do hate him sometimes. You’re so lucky to have a good one like Caleb.”

And we’d talk for a little bit, but then inevitably either Benny or Caleb would come in and we’d have to stop. It felt to me like every important conversation that my friends and I attempted to have these days got interrupted by boyfriends, by children, by jobs, by the start of an event, by life. My thirties had basically been a graveyard of unfinished conversations so far, and I had already begun to fear that I would never have a full and meaningful one again.

But that was beside the point in this case. After a few puzzled seconds, it occurred to me to ask, “Abigail, what are you doing here?”

“I’m …” she trailed off. “Oh my God.” Abigail turned left then right like she was searching for something to cry into, before just going ahead and plunging her face into Caleb’s shoulder and full-on wailing.

Then Caleb said the seven words that would change my life forever. “Thursday, we didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Apparently, Abigail and Caleb had been more than friends when they had worked on that movie together in Prague. Apparently, they had flirted and hinted and hugged and done everything but physically kiss, because Abigail had a boyfriend waiting for her back in Los Angeles. Apparently, Abigail had been so unsettled by her attraction to Caleb that she had invited me to the airport because she had known that we would get along. And though it pained her to see me with him, she wanted him to be happy.

But then they had kept in touch after I moved out. A phone call here, a lunch there. And when she had broken up with Benny, Caleb had called to tell her how sorry he was to hear about it. This had led to more phone calls and lunches. “That was it,” Abigail assured me.

However, that original attraction they had felt while in Prague—it was still there. But this time Caleb was the one in a serious relationship.

They were so drawn to each other, and Caleb didn’t want to cheat on me—he knew how much that would hurt me … “But I can’t settle for you, when I’m in love with her.”

I remember how he had assured me that he wasn’t hiding a girl at his apartment back when he wouldn’t allow me to come over, and my eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute, you were hiding a girl. But you weren’t hiding her in your apartment; you were hiding her in mine. The reason you always wanted to spend the night was because you wanted to be closer to her.”

From the way both of their faces turned red, I could see that I was right. And even more pieces fell into place. “That’s why you invited me to move in with you out of the blue, wasn’t it? You told her to leave Benny, and when she refused, you invited me to move in. Like a punishment. You were pretending to love me to get back at her.”

“No,” he said, standing up. “It wasn’t like that. I decided to see what I could have with you because you were available and into me. I had no idea this would happen down the line.”

Caleb had tears in his eyes, like having to do this was hurting him way more than it was hurting me. Abigail, who hadn’t met my eyes since I’d walked in, stood up and rubbed his back.

Funny
, I thought in the long silence that followed this tortured reveal. I had been so desperate to never let a man disrespect me or cheat on me that I hadn’t ever considered the other possibility: getting thrown away. I’d had some vague notion that white men did this. Black men often cheated on their wives, like my father did, or refused to marry their long-suffering girlfriends and babies’ mamas, yes. But I had heard stories about white men coming home to the sixty-year-old woman who had raised his children and informing her that he was trading her in for a woman half her age and size. Black men treated you like trash, but white men actually threw you away—I hadn’t calculated this fact into my “not getting hurt” formula.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. In that moment, when I could feel an earthquake running from my stomach to my heart, breaking it apart, I had no idea what to say.

I should have cursed them out. Black women were good at cursing people out. Everyone knew that. But my anger was having a hard time
shoving past the hurt and surprise. I could have cried, but then, Abigail was crying and it seemed too awkward to do the same.

Then it hit me: the perfect response. Our loft was on the fourth floor. I could go out to the metal stairway and throw myself over the railing and plummet down to the concrete below.

A better person would want them to be happy. I did not want them to be happy. I wanted them both to suffer like I had suffered after my mother’s suicide. And I wanted them to suffer apart.

There was no way Caleb and Abigail were going to be able to build a happy relationship on top of my dead (or, at the very least, quadriplegic) body. I could ruin both of their lives with just one leap. Unlike my father, they would always feel the weight of their actions, would always know that guilt, would never be able to move on from what they had done to me.

So without a word, I opened the heavy steel door and let it close behind me with a bang. I went over to the railing and gripped it. The parking lot was perfect right now. There was no one standing below, no guest cars parked at the bottom of the stairway to possibly cushion my fall.

Now all I had to do was jump.

But ten minutes later, I was still gripping the rail.

I heard the door open behind me.

“We’re going to go now. I’m staying with Abigail until the end of the month to give you time to find another apartment. Okay?”

Caleb informed me that he would be moving into my old North Hollywood apartment in hushed tones, like I was a friend’s widow as opposed to the ex-girlfriend he had totally betrayed.

Now would be the perfect time. I congratulated myself for waiting, because it would be even better to fall to my death in front of them. But I didn’t, couldn’t move. After a hesitant moment, I heard Abigail and Caleb make their way down the stairs. Abigail went to her Chevy Aveo and Caleb went to his Prius.

Do it now! Do it now!
the ugly voice inside me screamed.

The mechanical gate opened with a noisy jangle to let them out.

Do it now while they can still see you in the rearview mirror.
But the ugly voice was no longer screaming. It was a bitter, whimpering thing now, making a suggestion that it knew I wouldn’t go along with, because the truth was that it wasn’t just black men that had a problem with not being able to let black women go. My life was crap. My money situation, my boy situation, my career situation—it was all one big old pile of crap.

But it was
my
steaming pile of crap. The only pile I had at that moment, and I was unwilling to throw it away. I had been disappointed with myself before. There had been times when I could have gotten better grades if I had put in more effort, times that I’d miss payments on something because I bought something else that I shouldn’t have. But I had never been as disappointed in myself as I was when I finally admitted that, though I had been dreaming about committing suicide for years now, I didn’t actually have what it took to kill myself.

I wasn’t half as determined as my mother.

So I was going to have to live with myself. Even though at that moment I couldn’t think of a person I’d rather not have to live with.

I let go of the railing, my fingers sore from having gripped it so long. I went to the door, deciding that I could salvage some of my pride. I’d pack and go stay with Sharita until I could find a new job and a new apartment.

But when I reached into my pocket for my keys, I felt nothing but my cell phone, an old pack of Listerine breath strips, and some pocket lint.

The image of me dropping my keys onto Caleb’s desk twenty minutes ago when he called my name came back to me in a flash and I cursed. I was locked out of my ex-boyfriend’s apartment and if I wanted to get back in, I’d have to call him. Or maybe Sharita could call him for me and, while she was at it, come over and help me sort this mess out …

I grabbed my cell phone out of my sweater’s pocket and called my most dependable friend.

But then Sharita surprised me by answering the phone with, “I don’t want to make partner at my firm.”

Sharita, I found out over the next ten minutes, had finally had the epiphany that I had been trying to nudge her toward for the entirety of our post-college dating life. And it didn’t seem like a good time to say, “Hey, Sharita, I know you’ve just vowed to stop being a mule, but wanna put me up for a month or so and maybe help me find another job, since I got fired from the last one you finagled for me?”

After I put on a cheery front and hung up with Sharita, I sat down on the metal stairs, trying to decide what to do. The thought of throwing myself over the railing came to me again, but it was toying with me now, teasing me about what I couldn’t have.

Risa was out on tour and Tammy was dying. If this breakup had happened to me in my twenties, I would have had no shortage of friends to stay with. But now everyone I used to able to couch surf with had disapproving husbands and, in many cases, innocent babies who were too young to be exposed to a thirty-year-old woman who couldn’t get her act together.

Below me I could hear feet on metal, someone coming up the stairs. Probably our downstairs neighbor, a neat and vesty freelance editor who would call and complain whenever Caleb tried to play music without headphones. Music even at the lowest volume echoed through to the downstairs lofts and made it hard for him to concentrate, he claimed. Caleb hated the downstairs editor and had been talking about us moving because of him. But now he and Abigail would move together. Maybe to a hip apartment in Los Feliz like she had always wanted.

A fresh wave of hate and anger washed over me.

This is the place where I would have expected the tears to come, and to their credit, the tears did think about it, lingering behind my dry eyes, offering to give me something to do while I figured out how to proceed now that my future path had crumpled in front of me. But before I could give in,
I noticed three strange things about the guy who was now standing on the third-floor landing below me.

First of all, it wasn’t my downstairs neighbor. Second of all, he was looking up at me. Third of all, it was Mike Barker.

“Thursday?” he said. “What are you doing sitting up there?”

“What are you doing standing down there?” I asked, swimming out of my fog of confusion and shock. Then, remembering an
E! True Hollywood Story
I had seen one night long ago which had detailed Mike Barker’s rise from drug-dealing project kid to highly sought-after actor, I asked, “Hey, you used to be a drug dealer or something, right? Do you know how to pick a lock?”

A lot of women advise other women not to wait, to find a husband as soon as they possibly can. The sooner the better—especially if you want a successful man. But there’s often a big difference between what you want and what you need and, then again, sometimes there’s no difference at all. My point is that it takes a while to figure all of this out. I’ve yet to meet a woman who’s on top of things at twenty-two, and I remain unconvinced that any woman has any business whatsoever getting married before the age of twenty-seven. In fact, if you’re under twenty-seven, put this book down, stop worrying about finding a husband, and make sure you have lots of fun while fun is to be had. As quiet as it’s kept, women need to sow their wild oats, too.

—
The Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men
by Davie Farrell

SHARITA

I
had been cutting back at work. I hadn’t been taking on any extra projects, and when the partners asked me if I could stay late to work on their cases, I gave them excuses: I had a play to attend. I had plans with friends. I had already bought my tickets to a seven o’clock movie.

And the crazy thing was that all my excuses were true. Whenever I tried to turn on the TV, I would see Tammy dying on her couch and then I wouldn’t be able to sit down long enough to enjoy my program. So I went out to the movies. And when I had seen everything I wanted to see at the theater, I started watching the ones that only played at art houses. And when I had seen all the art films, I got a copy of
L.A. Weekly
and started going to plays and book signings. But then another movie would come out that I wanted to see, so I’d go to that. Then someone on Facebook would invite me to a party, so I’d go to that, taking Thursday with me so that I didn’t feel so awkward and alone.