CHAPTER THIRTY-3
Diana slammed the front door shut and fell to the floor in tears. She'd left the bar in a panic, and the whole way home, detained by one torturous red light after another, all she'd craved was this very moment of letting go. As she sat there, slumped over on the floor, tears clouding her vision, and shock making her tremble, the night played itself over and over, like a sickening rerun, in her mind.
TJ had been at the bar. But Diana hadn't noticed him right away. She'd actually arrived later than usual, around 11:30, so as not to seem eager or desperate or, heaven forbid, delusional. Although it really wasn't for anyone else's benefit but her own. She didn't care what the bartenders thought or what the Scott's Tavern regulars might say—she was sure they couldn't care less about her. But she wanted more for herself than getting there at 10:15 and waiting forever for him to show up. So she'd gotten there at 11:30 and, surprisingly, didn't have to wait very long before she spotted him.
He was over by the pool tables, as usual. But it was a crowded night, and Diana was on her second beer before the mass of people blocking her view had finally dispersed. And then she saw him. He looked amazing. At first, she thought she'd found a hot new guy to occupy her attention while she "didn't" wait for TJ. But then she realized that this hot, new guy was TJ, and her heart jumped into her throat. She had to tell herself: You've slept with this man. You've seen him naked. He's seen YOU naked (eek!). There is no reason why you cannot be an adult and say hello. And so she had stood up—knees weak, nervous chills racing throughout her body, and her mouth as dry as the kind of sand that burns the feet—and taking the deepest breath she could muster, she'd approached TJ and his friends.
"Hey, TJ," she had said, her speech feeling strangely robotic. It was a greeting so planned and so forced that the words weren't real. Now if Diana could have said what she really felt—Hey, asshole, where the hell have you been for two weeks? —then her hello would have been much more human. Still, it was enough to make TJ look up from his pool stick and meet Diana's gaze. But there was nothing there. No sense of a prior connection. There was no lust, no excitement, not even any awkwardness.
And all he said was, "Hey."
Her eyes wide with amazed devastation, Diana had stood there, in another new outfit from Jillie's, looking better than she'd ever seen herself look, and wondering why TJ had already gone back to playing pool. She was in the 150s now. She wasn't a big girl. She'd even started to believe she was beautiful. Why was he taking that away?
She didn't know what to do. Never when she'd play possible reunion scenarios in her head did she imagine TJ responding like this. It wasn't like she'd expected him to run to her with open arms and pick her up and twirl her around in front of his friends. But she'd expected that more than she'd expected this.
After the initial, punched-in-the-stomach feeling had subsided, Diana realized that she was standing amongst a group of strangers while the one person in the group who was not a stranger—the person she'd actually believed she had something with—ignored her like a hard-to-reach itch. She felt like the out-of-town guest at Cousin Dipshit's birthday party, where the only person she knew was Cousin Dipshit, who wouldn't talk to her because his real friends were there and he was trying to be cool. Only this time, she couldn't befriend the snack table, and there was no I'll-tell-your-mom-on-you threat to force TJ into decency. But if Diana had just walked away, she would have felt publicly defeated, like everybody would know that she knew she had failed, which could give them all something to laugh about later. Still, she felt like an even easier target just standing there. So, she chose the middle road and decided to nonchalantly slink back toward the pillar with the Ten Reasons Why Beer Is Good For You poster and pretend to read it before gracefully acting bored and proceeding to her seat, where she'd remain, waiting for TJ to come make it up to her. Her plan was shamefully un-Gloria-like, she knew—Steinem would stone her with feminist theory if she found out, while Gaynor would be forced to rethink the shelf life of the healing powers of "I Will Survive."
However, the Guilt Trip of the Glorias never really saw its day, for Diana's eyes were stuck somewhere around number seven on the poster—Beer: Helping to Build Egos and Soothe Consciences for Centuries by Giving Ugly People the Confidence to Try Their Luck with the Good-Looking, and Good-Looking People Something to Blame When They Awake Next to Ugly Strangers—when a woman with the most incredible-smelling perfume passed by and caused her to turn her head in the direction she'd vowed not to look—toward the pool tables. The woman, or girl really, wearing the perfume looked about twenty-five and possessed the exact features that Diana would have if she could totally redesign herself in any way she wanted: long, thin legs, a perfectly-rounded-yet-still-smaller-than-average butt, a tiny waist and flat stomach that, combined with a petite bone structure, made a B-cup chest look promisingly large, and those completely fatless upper arms that retain just the perfect amount of muscle, not female bodybuilder muscle, of course, but rather the kind seen on totally toned celebrity goddesses with personal trainers and heaven-sent genes. And that was just her body. She also had gorgeous, shiny, straight brown hair to her waist, exotically shaped brown eyes, a perfect nose, and a smooth and silky café au lait complexion. She had to be going with one of TJ's friends, for she stood among them, watching the game and looking worlds more comfortable and like she belonged than Diana had when she'd attempted the ill-fated "Hey, TJ" a couple minutes back.
There was no doubt about it—this utterly enviable creature was definitely not the gawky outsider at Cousin Dipshit's birthday party. Diana felt incompetent as she watched her joke around with all the guys while TJ took his shot. This was the kind of girl Diana had always wanted to be—the kind that was good-looking enough, and skinny enough, to joke freely, laugh shamelessly, and just be herself around a group of men without worrying if her candidness would catch her at a bad angle and give her a double chin. Diana couldn't imagine ever being that way. Even if she did get down to her goal weight, she'd always be posing and planning her moves before she made them. It made her realize what a loser she was. Even if TJ were to fall in love with her, she'd still have this tremendous hurdle to overcome of figuring out how to make his friends see how charming she was in spite of her complete incapacity to loosen up and be anything like this girl. Maybe if Diana were more like her, TJ wouldn't be ashamed to deliver more than a "hey" in front of his friends.
Diana had just turned to make her move back to her seat at the bar when a voice from the pool tables called out, "Is that her?" Turning back around, she beheld the girl she'd just been aching to become laughing sarcastically in her direction. Diana was frozen. Part of her had wanted to run away, but another part needed to know what this was all about. And since her feet felt like they'd been cemented to the floor, she really had no choice but to give into the latter. So she'd turned her eyes to TJ, making contact with his for only a second before he turned to the girl, grabbed her face in his hands, and began kissing her like he'd just been reunited with the long-lost love of his life. Diana remained motionless and stunned as she watched the passionate kiss subside into a soft and starry-eyed stroking of the faces. She didn't know what was happening, but all of TJ's friends were staring at her. This was, hands down, the most humiliating event of her entire life, and all she wanted was to be home, where she could hide her face under a pillow and cry without giving anyone at Scott's the satisfaction of seeing her fall apart. And that was exactly what she was about to do when one of the guys began waving at her with exaggerated effort, like he was trying to awaken her from a trance.
"G-o h-o-m-e!" he'd called out in slow motion, treating Diana like a totally clueless imbecile who needed to be reminded of her fight-or-flight mechanism.
His words pried the couple's attention away from one another long enough for the girl to turn to Diana and hold up her left hand, on which presided a giant, square-cut diamond that sparkled like crazy even in the dimly lit bar. "Mine," she'd said, pointing to TJ, who grabbed her by the waist and lifted her off the ground. And they fell into another passionate kiss as she slithered against him to her feet.
They were engaged?
Diana could feel the world laughing at her as she turned to exit the bar. The room had begun to vibrate, and all background noise had harmonized into a vicious buzzing sound, quiet at first like a swarm of distant bees, but growing steadily louder as the angry bees got closer and closer to completely encircling her—to trapping her in this threatening domain of degradation and fear until she could be stung out of her misery to lie on the floor like roadkill as a reminder to all the ugly people not to substitute beer for confidence and never to attempt sex with people out of their league.
She had just reached the door when a light tap on her shoulder made her turn around. It was one of TJ's friends. "Listen," he'd begun. "Wait, what's your name?"
"Diana," she had said, wanting to add that it was a name far prettier than her cracking voice made it sound.
"Okay, listen, Diana," he'd said gently. "That wasn't about you. TJ and Michele have been together for five years. And every time they have a major fight, it's like a contest to see who can hurt who more. Let's just say you're not the first woman Michele has said 'mine' to. Only now that they're engaged, we all really think they're through playing games. So if I were you, I'd just leave TJ alone and forget about it. It's nothing personal. It's just the way he and Michele are."
Nothing personal? Forget about it? It wasn't personal to have all of TJ's friends staring while he and Michele made an absolute fool of her? And what about the sharp and penetrating hurt that was suffocating her more than a dozen plastic bags over the head ever could? Just forget it? Although more humane than the others, this guy was obviously a simpleton who was undoubtedly looking out for TJ's welfare, and not Diana's emotional stability, when he gave her the lamest advice known to man. But she wasn't about to stand there and challenge his logic or his motives. So she forced out a less than halfhearted "thanks" and opened the door to a world she thought she'd left behind—a world in which loneliness, defeat and self-loathing were more familiar than home.