Why I Love Singlehood: (3 page)

“I know. I wrote that comment,” said Spencer.

The comment that caught my attention, however, said:
Wake up and smell the bullshit. You are rationalizing your loneliness and disguising it in clever writing.

“You can ignore that one, Eva,” said Minerva. “Probably just projecting his own loneliness.”

“How do you know it was written by a he?” asked Dean. “The screen handle was Anonymous.”

Frowning, I retreated behind the counter.

“I think you should do it,” said Norman. “You know it’ll catch on like wildfire, and it’ll be good for business. We already have a large clientele of singles.”

“Norman’s right,” said Minerva, avoiding Norman’s raised eyebrows. “I know—shocking, isn’t it, Norman being right. You’re a great writer, Eva. When was the last time you wrote anything other than a recipe?”

“I write all the time. Menus, Grounds’s updates, invoices…”

“You know what I mean. You haven’t written anything since your novel. This could be a good creative outlet for you. We can call it WILS,” she said, pronouncing it “Wills” like the Brits called Prince William.

“C’mon, Eva,” goaded the Originals from their table. “Say you’ll do it.”

The comments swirled in my head: Wilmington’s own Carrie Bradshaw. Dispelling the myth. Wake up and smell the bullshit.

“Why not,” I said. “It was kinda fun to write it.”

In the shadow of Valentine’s Day, writing something so anti-marriage seemed sacrilegious. And yet, I felt idealistic rather than cynical, like a millennial woman casting off her dating shackles.

For the record, I meant everything I said when I wrote that post. I was so in the moment as I was writing it. Hell, I might as well have been Mary Tyler Moore flinging her hat into the air in the middle of the city street.

Then Shaun called.

The Jeanette

“HEY, EVA. IT’S
Shaun,” I heard him say upon my answering the phone.

“Hi!” I said, happy to hear from him. “What’s up?”

“I read your new singles blog.”

The revelation that Shaun regularly followed The Grounds’s Facebook page and read my blog created a tingling sensation in my chest.

“Really?” My voice sounded like I’d just sucked on a helium balloon. “Well, what’d you think?”

“It’s definitely a conversation piece. And it’s nice to see that you’ve got such a great attitude.”

“Well, I didn’t expect it to be such a sensation, but what the hell.”

“I’m just glad you’re doing OK,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure if you’d heard, which is why I decided to call before the grapevine got to you first.”

“Heard what?”

He paused before speaking again.

“I’m engaged.”

The tingling of hope in my chest—that’s what it was, I’d realized:
hope
—turned into the familiar feeling of post-breakup knife gouging.

“You’re what?” My helium voice was back.

“I’m engaged. To the new professor in philosophy. Her name’s Jeanette.”

Jeanette. He’s engaged to a Jeanette.

“You’ve met her, actually,” he said. “Or at least you’ve seen her. She’s been to The Grounds. She has long red hair.”

As if that description alone would clarify everything for me.

“She wrote a book on Kierkegaard, in fact,” he added after several seconds of silence passed between us.

Yeah, like that helps.

I wrapped the coiled cord of the antiquated phone around my finger so tightly that my fingertip turned purple. “Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing someone?” I asked.

“Um…” he started. Meanwhile, my brain frantically searched its databases in an attempt to recall a redhead spewing on about a Kierkegaard book. No hits. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I was afraid of hurting your feelings.”

I summoned all the strength in my body, as if I were about to lift a hundred-pound barbell, to sputter, “Well, congratulations! Mazel tov. Really.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad? Really, Shaun, I’m happy for you.”

Kill me now. No, kill Shaun. I’m already dead inside. Then kill the Jeanette.
Thank God he couldn’t see me. I thought I would actually break a tooth, they were clenched so tightly. I thought my jaw would lock into a creepy grin like the Joker. I thought the phone cord would actually sever my finger.

“Thanks. It means so much to me to have your blessing. You’re still one of my best friends, you know,” he said.

“Well, you deserve to be happy,” I said, wondering what “best friends” really meant to him. To me it meant not keeping your fiancée a secret. Better still, it meant not getting engaged before I did.

“Well, um, I just wanted you to know, and I’m glad to see that you’re doing so well. Hey, I’ll bet you’re glad to be out of academia, huh,” he said without missing a beat. “You know it’s midterm this week. Bet you don’t miss that.”

“When’s the wedding?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh, we haven’t set a date. I’ll let you know, though.”

Yes, because I’m dying for that piece of information. Then again, I was stupid enough to ask.

“Great,” I said. “Well hey, I gotta get going. It’s my turn to open the shop tomorrow, and you know how I am about getting my eight hours of beauty sleep.”

“It’s eight thirty, Eva.”

“Well, we open at seven, so that means I’ve gotta get up at five thirty, and you know what a morning person I am—not. Besides,” I rambled, “I like to read a bedtime story first.”

We bid each other cordial good-byes, with me congratulating him and his bride-to-be one last time. I hung up the receiver, my hand shaking as I did. In fact, my whole body trembled.

He’s getting married
.

What the hell just happened?

I hadn’t dated anyone since Shaun Harrison. We had met in the lobby of the campus library five years ago, expecting to attend a reading by author and NCLA alumnus Jack Sandoval. In fact, we were the only two people in the lobby because apparently we were also the only two people who didn’t see the sign or receive the campus notification that the gig was canceled because Jack had the flu (six months later, I found out that he had actually been too drunk to read—his wife had just served him with divorce papers). So we went out for coffee instead, and afterwards spent the better part of three years living together.

Shaun was one of those guys with chiseled features—green, catlike eyes; long lashes; brown sugar–colored hair that fell in waves over his ears; glistening, white, straight teeth; and quarter-bouncing abs. He was five foot eleven to my five foot five. I was much more turned on by the fact that Shaun could recite all the amendments of the Constitution, in order, than the fact that he could do twenty one-handed pushups. I delighted in seeing his face light up every time he talked about the Continental Congress or Thomas Jefferson. Whereas I had taught creative writing at NCLA, he taught American history—still does.

We were the epitome of every romantic cliché: we enjoyed traveling, dining out, and long walks on the beach. We rooted for the NC State Wolfpack over the Carolina Tar Heels. We both grew up on Long Island and went back twice a year to visit our families. We were both Cancers and in our early thirties. We had great sex. We laughed at each other’s jokes, liked each other’s cooking, and even shared the same taste in television and movies.

You could’ve choked on the perfection. Or so I thought.

He didn’t cheat on me, if that’s what you’re thinking. One thing about Shaun—he was loyal to a fault. No, one evening as we sat on the couch reading our respective books, he just closed his, looked up at me, and said it.

“I don’t think I’m in love with you anymore, Eva. In fact, I’m not sure I ever was.”

I swear I heard the
wham
of my familiar world crashing down on me. I looked over at him, my neck actually snapping from the severity, and opened my mouth.

Nothing. Dumbfounded.

I checked the book he was reading to see if that had anything to do with it:
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
. Unromantic, yes. But I wouldn’t think relationship-threatening.

My mouth still refused to work.

“I mean, I love you,” Shaun went on without me. “I really, really love you and all that. You’re my best friend in the world. But that’s it. I just don’t feel anything past that. I don’t feel that
feeling
you’re supposed to feel when you’re in love.”

A sound finally came out of my mouth. Lots of sounds, actually.

“Which feeling is that? The one that feels like everything is right in your world? The one that makes you feel like you want to spend the rest of your life with this person? The one that lets you know you’re standing next to your soul mate?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You mean the one I’ve been feeling for the last three years? The one I thought you’ve been feeling all this time? The one you
told
me you’ve been feeling?”

“I thought I was,” he said.

“What changed your mind?”

“I don’t know. I just somehow know it’s not there.”

“You know, the romance fades at some point, Shaun,” I said. “It happens to everyone. If Romeo and Juliet hadn’t offed themselves, it would’ve happened to them, too. One day Juliet would’ve gone apeshit on Romeo for leaving his boxers on the bathroom floor and wondered what she ever saw in such a heathen, and in turn, Romeo would’ve gone out for a couple of beers with his fellow Montagues and complained about Juliet’s incessant nagging and how she let herself go.”

He was unfazed by my literary tirade. “It’s not that. I know the romance fades. It’s just…I mean…I just feel like we’ve been stuck in the middle part of the movie, ya know?”

I stared at him, wondering to which movie he was referring.

“And I’ve been waiting to get to the end, but I just don’t see it happening. I’m sorry, I really am. It’s not you. I know that’s a typical thing to say, but it’s really not. You’re a wonderful woman. Any guy is lucky to have you. I just don’t think I’m that guy.”

Have I mentioned how much I hate that “any guy is lucky to have you” line?

“So,” I said, “if any guy is lucky to have me, then you’re opting to throw away that luck? You’re telling me you’re less deserving? Are you just some humanitarian sacrificing your good fortune?”

“Stop trying to logically analyze this, Eva. Love is not logical.”

He had moved out by the end of the month.

The worst part was when he said he still wanted us to be friends. He meant it, too. Real friends. I didn’t believe him at the time. But since then, he’d lived up to his word and we actually did remain friends, once I was able to be in the same room with him and not feel the urge to either get on my knees and beg him to take me back or bludgeon him with a skillet. I’m not even sure of the exact day it happened. After months of going out of my way not to run into him—parking in a different faculty lot on campus, avoiding the pizza place where he grabbed a slice in between his classes—one day I walked into the auditorium to see a guest lecture by
Washington Post
reporter Bob Woodward, when I heard a voice behind me.

“Hey, Eva.”

My head turned slowly, almost in slow motion, and instead of my body going stiff as a board, my face relaxed into a smile as I saw his own face light up.

“Hey, Shaun.”

And that was that. I didn’t go out of my way to see him, but in the two years since, we occasionally exchanged phone calls or e-mails when there was a new book or movie or
Family Guy
episode out that we thought the other would like. Granted, we weren’t spending all of our spare time together in museums or downtown, but since he started showing up at The Grounds (almost to the point of being a Regular), I’d brought him his mochaccinos and cookies and joined him at his table and we shot the breeze for anywhere between five minutes to an hour, or until I was needed by Norman or a customer. In fact, his occasional presence at The Grounds was something I looked forward to. And yet, all that time he’d not said one word about dating anyone. About
the Jeanette
.

I’d denied that all along I’d been wishing for his pleasantries to turn into pleas for me to take him back, or that I’d been looking for some hint of desire in those cat eyes. But
this
. This was something different.
He’s getting married.

I reeled my mind back to the present moment and unraveled slowly. At first I just stood there, leaning against the wall and still clutching the phone’s receiver. Then I robotically dialed my sister Olivia’s number before sliding to the kitchen floor, unable to close my mouth or stop the trembling.

She answered without saying hello. “What’s up, Eva?”

“Shaun’s getting married,” I sobbed.

She paused for a beat. “Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“When did this happen?”

“Tonight. He just called me.”

“He got engaged and called you first?” she asked, a touch annoyed.

“No—I mean, I just found out tonight. Just now, actually.”

“Why’d he call you at all?”

“We’re still friends.”