On the Rocks (3 page)

“Why didn’t you break up with me then?” I was sobbing uncontrollably. I finally realized that this wasn’t something I was going to be able to talk him out of. My shoulders slumped forward, and I let my hair cover my face, as if concealing it from him would mask the pain I was feeling. “Why’d you let me run around planning our wedding like an idiot if you weren’t ready? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“I was scared, and I was selfish. I didn’t want to let you go.” He released my hands and rubbed my arm as he continued. “You’re kind of like a really old sock, you know? A really, really comfortable sock that you’ve had forever and love, so you keep it, even though you know it’s time to replace it. Do you know what I mean?”

“You didn’t just compare me to a gym sock. You didn’t,” I stuttered, suddenly feeling so very, very tired.

“That didn’t come out right,” he admitted quickly.

I couldn’t speak. I thought he was my best friend, my partner, the love of my life, the would-be father of my children.

And he thought I was a sock.

“I just started envisioning our life together, and I realized that we don’t challenge each other enough.” He got up and walked back to the window and leaned his weight against the panes of glass.

“I’m sorry, I have absolutely no idea what that means.”

“We’re too similar,” he whispered.

“No. That’s not good enough. I don’t think we’re too similar, as evidenced by the fact that you’re a psychotic asshole and I’m a somewhat normal, nice person. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“You make everything so easy on me, all the time. We’re always agreeing on everything, you know? Where’s the balance? Your partner in life is supposed to make you whole, but we’re two sides of the same coin, Abs.”

It seriously sounded like he was telling me we were too compatible. I mean, has any girl on earth ever been dumped for being too compatible with her boyfriend? Are these the same girls who get dumped for being too thin, or too blond, or too rich? I always thought those were urban legends that someone propagated through the single women’s circuit to keep the regular girls from killing themselves every time they got tossed away like last week’s
Us Weekly.
Now I was beginning to wonder if they were really out there, and if they all had some kind of secret underground sorority where they got together and drank wine and ate cucumber sandwiches and lamented being alone because they were too perfect in one way or another. I wonder if they advertised in the yellow pages.

“So you’re breaking up with me because we don’t fight enough?” I asked.

“No. I’m saying that you and I see everything the exact same way, and I need someone who can challenge me a little more, open my eyes to new things. And I know if I stay here in Boston that will never happen.”

“You’ve already accepted the job in Arizona, haven’t you?” I whispered, trying to figure out how I was going to survive not just without Ben as my fiancé but without him living in the same state. I finally understood how a woman could murder someone in a fit of rage.

“Yes,” he said, no emotion detectable in his voice. It was as if this wasn’t even affecting him, like once I left he’d move on to more important matters—like packing, or defrosting his refrigerator.

“What the hell am I going to tell my mother? She’s insane on a normal day. Do you know what canceling this wedding will do to her? She’s at a spa getting some beauty treatment as we speak. She will go bat-shit crazy if I tell her that the wedding is off. People will be able to hear her screaming up in Maine! Did you ever think of that?”

“No, Abby. I can honestly say your mother was not a factor in my decision-making process.”

“When do you leave?” I asked flatly.

He stared at the floor, then at the wall behind my head, then at his gym bag on the table in the corner, anywhere except into my eyes. I knew before he said a word that I didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Next Thursday. They need me to get out there.”

“And you care more about them needing you there than about me needing you here.” It wasn’t a question, which was good, because he didn’t have an answer.

“I don’t know what to say. I love you. I do. That’s never going to change.”

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t do this to me.” I wiped my hand across my face, not wanting to give him the power to see me so utterly destroyed, but there was no stopping the tears.

“I’m sorry, Abby. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Go fuck yourself, Ben,” I said as I removed my ring and threw it across the room. It bounced off the coffee table and rolled out of sight under the couch. I knew I’d never see it again.

I walked over to him, the last time I planned on ever being close enough to smell his cologne, or his soap, or the detergent on his clothes, and with my left hand (because my right side was still throbbing from the attempt to break down his door) cracked him across the face as hard as I could. Then I turned and limped out of his apartment, knowing that in all likelihood I’d never lay eyes on him again. And for the next six months I didn’t. Then again, that shouldn’t be surprising, since I’d barely left my apartment, never mind the city of Boston, and that makes it kind of hard to run into someone who lives in Arizona.

I found Grace waiting for me on the sidewalk outside Ben’s building, or more accurately, she found me when I stumbled sobbing and in excruciating pain onto the street. She took me to the emergency room—where they checked out my shoulder and gave me some much-needed painkillers—and then she brought me home. I slept for twelve hours, but it wasn’t nearly long enough, because when I woke from my narcotic-induced sleep I begged her to medicate me again so that I could go back to sleep forever. Grace had called my aunt Patrice, who had served as my de facto mother for my entire life, and told her everything so that she could begin to run damage control.

“What time is it?” I asked when I woke up, my shoulder in a sling and still throbbing from the impact. So was my heart, but there were no painkillers for that.

“It’s two-thirty. On Sunday. You’ve been asleep for the better part of twenty-four hours. You need to eat something,” Grace said as she smoothed the hair out of my face.

“Have you been here the entire time?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Basically. I did run out for a bit.” Grace placed a white box on the bed next to me and opened the top. Cupcakes. Since we were little, we solved problems and celebrated victories with cupcakes. I appreciated the gesture, but unless these things were spiked with Percocets I didn’t think they’d cure much this time. She removed one with colored sprinkles and peeled the paper back halfway as she handed it to me.

“You have to eat something. The doctor said you can’t take the painkillers on an empty stomach. Please, for me. Eat one.”

“So I wasn’t dreaming,” I said flatly. I was so empty and exhausted, I felt like I wouldn’t have the strength to get out of bed for weeks.

Grace’s eyes welled as she gazed at me, but she didn’t say anything. What was there for her to say? In all our years of friendship, Grace had never been at a loss for words, and I had never found myself with either a busted engagement or a busted shoulder, let alone both at the same time, so there really is a first time for everything. I licked a small amount of vanilla frosting off the corner of the paper, and then handed the cupcake back to her.

“I can’t eat anything.”

“I’m so sorry, Abby. If I could do something to fix this, I would.”

Before I could answer, my phone rang. Grace picked it up and checked the caller ID before handing it to me. “It’s your sister,” she said softly.

“Let it go to voicemail.”

“Abby, she’s probably worried sick. I’m sure your aunt called her. Talk to her.”

I took the phone from her, preparing to try and explain to my little sister what just happened. I didn’t even know where I’d start. I didn’t know myself where or how any of this started—only how it ended.

“Hi, Katie,” I whispered, tears streaming down my face just from the effort of talking to someone in the outside world. I realized this was the first of probably hundreds of times I was going to have to relive this for other people, and I wasn’t ready to hear the pain in her voice as she watched her big sister’s life fall apart on the Internet. She had idolized me for her entire life, always wearing my hand-me-down clothes, following me around after school, copying my hair, my makeup, my hobbies, the way little sisters who are only two years younger tend to do. It used to drive me crazy—copying me like she was some kind of miniature body-snatcher—and I remember wishing the day would come when she’d want to be an individual, not a little sister coming dangerously close to being a single white female–type stalker. I guess that day had finally come.

“Abby! Guess what!” she shrieked, as if this was any normal day and not the day my world and shoulder were shattered. The tone of her voice told me that not only did she have no idea what had happened, she was in a very good mood. The wonders would apparently never cease. “Did you see my text message? I told you I needed to talk to you. Guess what?”

“Katie, have you talked to Aunt Patrice today?” I asked. “Or seen my Facebook page?” It was becoming very clear that when she sent me a text saying she wanted to talk to me, it was not to offer her condolences. She was clueless. That must be nice.

“What? No, why? I have news! You will never believe what happened! I’m engaged!”

“I’m sorry. What?” I fully believed that I didn’t hear her correctly. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them my head would be clearer.

“Yes! Can you believe it? We’re engaged at the same time! We can do all our planning and everything together, isn’t that fantastic? And before you say anything, don’t worry, I’m going to wait until next summer to get married, so I’m not going to steal your thunder, but isn’t this great?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I wondered for a second if the painkillers were messing with my head and making me hallucinate conversations. I waved my hand in front of my face to see if there was a rainbow trail following it, searching for some indication that I wasn’t hearing Katie correctly.

“Abby? Say something?” she pleaded, surprised that she didn’t get the reaction she was expecting. In fact, she didn’t get much of a reaction at all.

“Ben broke up with me,” I said, the words sounding so strange saying them out loud for the first time. “The wedding’s off.”

“What? What do you mean you broke up? I’m sure it’s just nerves. You guys didn’t really end things. There’s no way.”

“It’s over. He’s moving. It’s on Facebook.”

“But I don’t understand . . .” I could hear the guilt in her voice. She didn’t mean to kick me when I was down, but she had, and I couldn’t muster the energy to even pretend to be happy for her. And that made me hate myself even more.

“Katie, please don’t make me get into it right now.”

“Oh my God. Abby, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I never would have called you like this. Does Mom know?”

“I have no idea, but I’d guess no, since I can’t hear her screaming from across town.”

“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll tell her. She’s my next phone call. I don’t know how I’m going to tell her that I’m engaged and you’re not. How do I explain this?”

“All she’ll care about is that there’s still a wedding to plan. She won’t care which one of us it’s for.”

“Abby, what can I do? I’d come over, but I’m supposed to meet my friends for celebratory drinks. I can’t cancel. They’re already waiting for me, and well, I did just get engaged, soooo . . .”

“Don’t cancel. Go.” I wasn’t trying to be the bigger person. I was just telling her what she wanted to hear, and what we both knew she was going to do. I didn’t want to ruin her moment. One of us deserved to be happy.

“I’ll come over first thing in the morning. I promise. I don’t know what to say. I thought this was going to be one of the happiest days of my life, and it’s the worst of yours. I wanted us to do this together! I’m so bummed!”

“You’re bummed?” I was pretty sure my sister had managed to make my rejection ruin her plans for some kind of co-bridal shower she had probably been envisioning where we would wear matching dresses and receive duplicate Cuisinarts. “I want to say I’m happy for you, Katie. I just . . . I can’t right now. Please don’t hate me.” I rolled over and looked at Grace, who had been able to discern what happened from listening to my side of the conversation. She went into the kitchen and returned with a glass of wine, just a sip or two swirling around the bottom of the glass. “I have to go,” I said as I threw my phone on the bed next to me, experiencing a virulent self-pity that I didn’t know was possible until that moment.

Grace sat on the edge of my bed. The tears that had been brimming before the phone call were now falling down her cheeks. “You don’t deserve this, Abby. I wish I could do something to make everything better. I wish I had a way to fix things for you.”

“What the hell is happening to me?” I wailed, choking on my breath, my words, and the bile that I felt rising in my throat. “I can’t handle this. Katie’s engaged now?”

“Do you remember when you were ten and you broke your wrist roller-skating?” she asked. I nodded, though I wasn’t entirely sure where she was going with this.

“Yes. You were the one who roller-skated over it. And it was my birthday party.”

“Right, and do you remember who came over every day after school and watched TV with you because you couldn’t play outside?”

“You did,” I replied, burying my face in my pillow.

“And when our class went on that field trip and you couldn’t go because your mom forgot to get the doctor’s note saying it was okay? Who stayed behind with you?”

“You did.”

“Exactly. You weren’t alone then, and you’re not alone now. You still have me.”

“Thanks,” I said apathetically. I loved Grace, but I didn’t want to marry her, so frankly it wasn’t the same.

“I know you’re not supposed to drink while you’re on these drugs, but a sip or two won’t kill you.” For the second time in twenty-four hours Grace handed me a glass and said, “Drink this.”