Why Girls Are Weird (12 page)

There's nothing that turns Ian on more than emotionally unavailable women. He wants to dig in, break them open, look at their insides, and then move on. He's a relationship spelunker. That night at the Mexican food restaurant I quietly ate nacho chips and politely drank margaritas while listening to him talk about how he's thinking of asking for a raise at his job. I watched him tug his earlobes and scratch the backs of his hands and go through all of his physical tics that I knew so well. I could tell he was comfortable around me. And I knew that the quieter I was, the more intriguing he'd find me. My silence meant I was fine without him. He didn't know I was wondering what he'd think if he ever found out about the webpage. He didn't know that I was dying to tell him about LDobler and Tess. He had no idea that I'd been living in a world where we still slept together every single night. He didn't know what was going on with me and that was his sweetest ambrosia.

So Ian asked me to his house the next Saturday to watch a movie. I followed the directions to his place, convincing myself we were going to have a casual evening—one where we'd talk like adults. Maybe we'd sit and share a bottle of wine, watch the night sky, and laugh at how much we'd matured. We'd take some blame on our past faults. We'd share stories of our love like it was an old friend that had moved away. We'd respect each other and remind each other of our hopes and dreams. We'd have that wistful look old lovers have at the possibilities that never came to fruition. We'd suffer those tiny heartbreaks of what-never-was that made us stronger lovers for our future relationships. As I parked my car on his street, I congratulated myself for being such a mature, independent, modern girl.

Ian answered the door wearing a T-shirt and boxers. He pulled a pair of jeans over his thighs as he informed me we were having popcorn and watching a movie. So much for waxing nostalgic over Merlot.

Continuing the strange John Cusack thing going on in my life, Ian had rented
High Fidelity
, which I'd seen before but he hadn't. I knew what it did to me emotionally. I probably should have warned him what would happen. I watched the movie in silence, a good distance from Ian's side of the couch. I watched Rob, John Cusack's character, mope and wander from one woman to the next, wailing and whining, begging to find out what was wrong with him. I watched him ruin his long-term relationship with a girl named Laura, only to practically stalk her until she came back to him, when he finally decided to just be with her because she loved him in a way he liked being loved.

As soon as the movie ended, I started to leave. But I stopped at the door, holding my jacket in my hands, wondering if I should say something to Ian. Would he know why I was upset?

“Do you want to go get a drink?” he asked.

I didn't know what I wanted. I looked at Ian, wondering what he wanted. What did he really want from me all of those years? Why couldn't he just say it?

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He was standing by his couch, and I was frozen by the door. I could feel the rage bubbling up inside of me. I knew I should have left. I didn't. I just started talking.

“You liked the movie, didn't you?” I asked, more like a challenge than a question.

“I loved it,” he answered with total oblivion.

“I knew you'd like it.” I walked back and forth, trying to find a spot in the room that was welcoming. I couldn't breathe so well. My insides were twisting with spite and rage. Of course he liked it. He loved it. Anyone would love to watch a movie about himself.

“You say that with so much spite.” The more confused he looked, the more I wanted to kick him in the shins.

“Because that movie makes me mad at you.” I folded my arms.

“The movie?”

Kick him in the shins.

“The movie, the book, all of it. Mad. Mad!” I was regressing right there in his cheap apartment, standing next to a bar mirror on his wall. The neon light from the mirror hummed in my ear. I walked away from it. I hoped Susan's retinas bled nightly from the Guinness billboard in his living room.

“It does?” He laughed.

“Yes, it does.” I wasn't about to be mocked.

“Why?”

I inhaled. “I really don't think you need me to tell you why the movie makes me mad. And if you do need me to tell you why the movie makes me mad at you, then I'm
really
mad at you for not knowing why I am mad at you. You should be apologizing.”

“Um…”

I tried speaking slowly so he'd understand. “I knew the movie would get me riled up. I knew it, but I also knew you'd really like the movie. And you rented the damn thing. I had no control.”

“I did really like it.”

“I
knew
you'd really like it.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No, don't be sorry. I love that movie. Just like the book. I love that book.”

“Right.” He sat down, defeated. I stood behind his couch, near his kitchen. I was still holding my jacket. I wasn't looking at him. It was as if I was talking to his refrigerator.

“I threw that book across the room when I finished it. I loved it.”

“Right.”

“But the end makes me want to scream.”

“How about you tell me this while I walk you to your car?” He was walking me away from his breakables.

We walked and at first it was quiet. I didn't appreciate him cutting me off like that, like he had decided our evening was over even though I was in the middle of a conversation. He wasn't going to get the last word. Not if I could still breathe.

I stopped him suddenly, grabbing his arm. “Why do men think that being with someone who loves you is settling?”

“Oh, man.”

“And why did Laura have to be so boring? She was just there to love Rob and understand Rob and be confused over Rob. Couldn't she have her own passions and desires?”

“I really liked Laura. I thought she was charming. And she did get to have her own thing, like when her father died and she's sad at the funeral. I thought she was normal. Just the most normal person in the movie.” He took a step back from me.

I jumped onto the trunk of my car, stomping a bit too hard on the bumper. My brown boots made a decisive clack on the metal. “She's only sad at the funeral so they can have sex,” I said.

“To be honest,” he continued, “I thought she was a lot like…”

Don't say me. Don't say me. Say me and I will throw myself into my side-view mirror. I am not like that weak, boring girl. I am infinitely more interesting than that woman. I'm my own person and not an object for you to validate.

“…Like a normal person.”

But I wasn't listening to him anymore. I kept talking. “I hate that theory where the guy's like ‘Well, I'm an asshole. That's my
thing
. I screw up every relationship I've ever been in, and that's how that works. I'm going to be lonely and miserable forever, and occasionally moan about “Me Da” while I down a pint and no one is ever going to love me.' Meanwhile, someone loves him and he doesn't even notice.”

“Me Da?”

“You know, like in those Irish books, like Frank McCourt. Always raising a pint to Me Da.”

“Jesus, you're hard to keep up with tonight.”

My hands flew up, palsied in front of my face, and then slapped down on my thighs. “And Rob's not even learning anything from these relationships. And I hate ‘Well, things are going too well with my relationship right now, so there must be something wrong. I bet you don't love me anymore. Or I don't love you. Oops! I just thought it, so now it's a fact. We're breaking up.'”

He wasn't looking at me. I wasn't talking about
High Fidelity
anymore and he knew it. I wanted him to admit that there was nothing wrong with us and that we broke up because he got tired of being in a relationship. He got tired of being two people.

I lit a cigarette. I made myself calm down. “I'm not mad at you. I'm mad that you can identify with the film so easily. Because when I watch it I think of you and I wish I didn't. I don't want Lloyd Dobler all grown up and miserable because Diane slept with some French boy when she went to Europe.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He couldn't possibly understand. He didn't watch films searching for the kind of person to fall in love with. He didn't understand the power of Lloyd Dobler. He didn't even know about my fake Lloyd Dobler who sent letters in the middle of the night.

“I hated how Laura's new boyfriend was such a loser. Laura should have gone out with someone Rob could have a
real
problem with. But since he was lame, Rob's only concern was if she had slept with him yet. Not her happiness. Not if the new guy made her coffee the right way. He didn't want to know if he was funnier or richer or if he stole the covers. But he wasn't worried that someone was loving her better, he just wanted to make sure nobody had sex with her yet.”

“He does love Laura.” Ian said it quietly, looking down.

“How? How do we know that? Why? Because he finally figured out after two years how to make a mix tape? Buddy, if you didn't know that eighteen months ago—give it up. He wooed her with a mix tape, for fuck's sake.”

“But he didn't just move on to the next new thing. He loved Laura and stayed with her.”

“He settled.”

And there it was. The basis of our breakup, spoken out loud. Ian said he loved me, but then he wasn't sure. Then he decided he was sure, which only succeeded in making me unsure. So then we both weren't sure. I didn't want Ian settling for me. I didn't want to just be “good enough.”

Ian lit a cigarette and sat down next to me on the back of the car. I could hear him crafting his sentence. “He didn't settle. He realized that he liked what he had. And other girls might be exciting, but they wouldn't be Laura. You understand?”

“I guess so.”

“Then why are you so riled up?”

Because I'm never going to be good enough. Because we missed our chance. Because I'm the only one still in our relationship. Because I'm the only one who remembers how good it was. Because I'm in the past. Because I'm lonely. Because maybe he was the one. Maybe I should have let him settle.

“He's not settling,” Ian said again, as if he could read my thoughts. “He's realizing what he has. And he knows it's good.”

“But not great.”

“He didn't say that.”

“Whatever.”

Somehow he let me end our conversation with that. He kissed my cheek and held my hand as he searched my eyes. He walked away quietly, that final “Whatever” still floating around my ears. My dismissive tone ended the first conversation we'd had about us in a long time, even though we spoke in fictional characters. It was appropriate, since I'd recently turned our relationship into a work of fiction.

I sat in my car alone. I was afraid to turn the key. I was afraid to drive away. I was afraid of what I'd do next.

When I finally drove home, I read over all the entries I'd posted, looking to see the difference between Anna K and me. Would Anna K settle? Had I made more out of my relationship with Ian than there really was? Or was it possible that the two of us were so good together that it made people like LDobler want just a taste of it?

I felt like I was reaching backwards, desperately trying to find something to hold on to. Suddenly settling didn't seem like such a bad idea. At least settling had a forward motion to it.