Chapter 22
izzy
Day 9.
“There’s food in the fridge and money in the pot…. Love you too, baby.”
So, the woman I took a picture of in his arms last night stayed over and he’s in love with her.
Devious. Sly. Lying bloody bastard.
I quietly close my apartment door as Brooks heads down the corridor. I back up, as if the door might reveal a lethal weapon and come after me. I stop when I back into the kitchen counter. Other than anger, I don’t know what I feel, but my eyes cloud with unfallen tears, and the pain that strikes my stomach is so fierce it makes me fold forward.
I slide my back down and come to sit on the cold tiled floor, wondering how I didn’t see this coming. Of course he has someone else. We never go to his apartment. He doesn’t talk about himself beyond the kind of movies and music he likes. He gave me a full lesson in the difference between American football and rugby but when I ask about his tattoos, he clams up.
He’s thirty-five and looks impossibly good. I mean, come on, Izzy. I feel ridiculous. Like, once again, I’m on the outside of a circle, only it’s not skinny girls and ladies who lunch in the middle, it’s a guy I have possibly fallen in love with.
How can I be in love with him? I don’t even know him.
How could I have been so bloody naïve to think that a few days of sex and laughter are the basis of anything real?
My head is awash with tears and fury. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know because I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about Brooks. He makes me question who I really am and what I want. No one has ever made me question that; they’ve only directed me to be something different. Brooks likes me the way— No, he doesn’t like me for who I am. He doesn’t give a shit about my happiness. He wanted a fuck.
Well, screw him. Screw this whole damn experience. He can fuck off if he thinks I’m just going to swan into the gym today and act like he didn’t leave me in stockings and suspenders in a candlelit living room while he fucked the person he’s really in a relationship with two doors down.
Tears roll down my cheeks and I have no idea what I’m crying over. My own embarrassment, or that I lost something I never really had.
Angry, I swipe away the wetness from my cheeks. As I stand, my mobile rings. My sister’s name illuminates the screen. A familiar voice.
“Anna.”
“How’s it going over there, author extraordinaire?”
The sound of someone who loves me brings back my tears. “It’s okay. I’m ready to come home.”
“Are you crying?”
I take a deep breath and pinch the bridge of my nose. “No, I was cutting an onion.”
“Isn’t it morning in NYC? Izzy, you never cry. What’s wrong?”
“Oh, you know, fell for the guy I’m supposed to be in competition with. Slept with him and found out he has a…someone.”
“Bastard. He’s married?”
“I don’t know about married but there’s someone else, for sure.”
“Dirty bloody wanker. But he’s not worth tears, surely? You’ve only been there a few days. I mean, you helped him cheat on someone. It’s not the end of the world. Maybe Mummy is right about his type.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, tattoos, no brain. He’s hardly husband material, is he?”
“You’re unbelievable, Anna. The last thing I would expect from you is I told you so. I’m going.”
“Wait, Iz, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to make you feel better, that’s all. You had a fling with a bad boy; don’t let it get you down.”
“Too late.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“There’s not much I can do about it. Get through the next few days and never see him again.” That thought stabs like a blunt knife in my chest.
“Well, it may be the vindictive journalist in me, but don’t you have a well-read blog? If it were me, I wouldn’t let him get off so easily.”
“I couldn’t blog about it. It’s my life too.”
“I’m not Yoda, Izzy—take or leave my suggestion. Bet it would make you feel better, though. Otherwise, go get yourself a tub of Ben & Jerry’s and a bottle of wine and stew Bridget Jones–style. Anyway, I have to go to a meeting. I was just checking in. Mummy asked me to call because she’s too proud to call herself when she doesn’t agree with your, how does she put it…?”
“Life choices,” we say in unison.
“Thanks, Anna.”
“For telling you I told you so?”
“Erm, more the other stuff. It’s just nice to hear from you. I’ll see you soon.”
“Be safe, sweetie.”
“You too.”
* * * *
After speaking with Anna, I wash my face and go out for a run. I had intended to clear my head but for the two hours I’m running, I just keep thinking, Brooks will be standing in the studio waiting for me to dance now. And, Brooks will be sitting in the bistro asking Angie to make him a breakfast shake. Or, I wonder if he fucks the other woman as good as he does me.
Did it ever mean as much to him as it did to me? Didn’t he feel like the earth stopped spinning when we were together? Like we were no longer part of a mundane routine but we were starting something different, new, and exciting; something remarkable?
I don’t know how to answer my own questions or put an end to my chaotic thoughts. So I find myself here, in Walgreens, taking Anna’s advice.
“That’ll be nineteen thirty-five,” the cashier tells me as she bags up my bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s.
I pay her and walk back to my borrowed apartment. By the time I’ve showered, it’s noon, a perfectly acceptable time of day to fill my body full of toxins and watch P.S. I Love You on my Mac.
While I’ve always preferred the book—it had me a blubbering mess from page 40—and I am one of those people more than a little angry that the movie was set in New York rather than Ireland, I’m dripping tears into my melting pot of ice cream within the first ten minutes. Subsequently drowning said tears with large gulps of sauvignon blanc, which are traveling straight to my head. Perfect!
When Brooks calls for the fourth time, I don’t send him straight to voice mail, I turn off my phone altogether. You choose another woman, I choose Ben, Jerry, and Gerard Butler all at once.
As I watch Hilary Swank playing a young widow, dancing around her apartment in her dead husband’s clothes, singing along to the TV through her hairbrush, with drips of Ben & Jerry’s decorating my white string vest, I ask myself what on earth I am doing. I didn’t lose someone who loved me enough to marry me. No, sir, I dodged a bullet.
My resolve wanes when Hilary Swank receives the first love letter, written by her husband when he was dying and signed P.S. I love you. I blubber away, opting to drink directly from the wine bottle, rather than topping up my glass.
Halfway down my bottle of sauvignon blanc—now room temperature—I start to think my sister is right. Why should I be the one in tears? Why should I be crying over spilled milk? Brooks is like the worst kind of milk—full-fat dairy. He deserves to curdle and smell like cheese.
I take another mouthful of wine from the bottle wedged between my crossed legs, then place it on the coffee table. I minimize the P.S. I Love You screen and pull up my blog.
In the blog title box I type: “BROOKS ADAMS: HOUND DOG.”
Ha, that’s funny. I take a much-deserved drink of wine and start to type.
I’ve learned a lot about Brooks Adams over the last week or so. Like, how he has two left feet and his hips move as if they’re stuck between steel girders. How he has tantrums when he can’t get his own way and needs anger management when he’s hungry.
In the last couple of days, I’ve also learned how he can lure women in, put them under a spell. He can be the guy singing country tracks on his guitar and the man who likes black-and-white movies.
My biggest discovery came last night, when I realized Brooks Adams is a lying, no-good scumbag.
I take another large gulp of wine before writing the next part.
I fell for the act. Shame on me. But once Brooks had left his mark on me, he turned to another woman, or his other woman.
I interlace my fingers and push my hands out until my knuckles crack.
The worst part is, if Brooks is reading this, he’s still trying to deceive me. He still thinks I don’t know that he carried this woman to his bed last night and kissed her good-bye this morning.
[IMAGE]
If you’re reading this, girl with the pink hair, and Brooks did the dirty on you, I’m so sorry. I had no idea you existed. I have never, nor would I ever, intentionally cheat. If you’re reading this and you, Pinky, did the dirty on me, I consider you the filth that lines sewage drains, just like your lover.
Well, Brooks Adams, you ain’t never caught this girl and you ain’t no friend of mine.
Ha, that’s witty. Very funny, Izzy. Very funny.
I’m too drunk to bother with spell-check, so I move my cursor to the Submit button. There’s a part of me that knows this is childish and petty. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to humiliate the man I had come to respect. But I remember, he was lying to me the whole bloody time, and I click the button to publish the post.
I stare at the screen, waiting for the moment to come, the moment when I feel a thousand times better about this whole situation. It doesn’t come. In fact, I think I feel worse. Now the world knows I’m a fool, as well as someone who has to try all the worst tricks to get people to buy her book, someone who doesn’t even follow her own advice.
I finish the wine and ice cream and watch the credits roll on P.S. I Love You. Then I hit play on Bridget Jones’s Diary, because at least she will understand how I feel.