Room for Love

by Andrea Meyer

  “Hey,” he says, pushing his chin out in the man’s direction, “I should bolt.” He nods at me and scampers off, leaving me alone with an endless loop of beautiful New York women that my exboytoy had sex with. There are so many of them. I watch for a while until my sister pokes me in the waist with a skinny finger.

  “Hipsters are so over,” she snarls over the music, “there are way too many asymmetrical haircuts here,” and drags me back to the bar for a refill and then onto the dance floor, where Steve and Jeremy are bumping and grinding all over each other. I wonder why I never thought of setting them up; they’re so obvious. Jeremy’s cradling a bottle of tequila, which he dangles in my face.

  “Where’d you get that?” I shout, taking a swig.

  “Blew the bartender,” he says.

  I take another sip and shake my head, hoping it will make it go down easier. “I was just drinking wine at Courtney’s,” I say.

  “Wine, then liquor—never been sicker, thicker, bicker, dicker,” he slurs, wagging a finger at me and offering the bottle to Steve, who’s gazing amorously into his eyes.

  “You are wasted, mister,” I say. “And in vino veritas.”

  “In tequila, vomit and stupidity,” he says, winding his arms more tightly around my boss’s waist.

  My sister and I dance with them to a trippy mash-up of “Superfreak” and “Sweet Home Alabama,” and I wave at Jake’s bland, cute roommate who is DJing. Jeremy doesn’t check his cell phone once during the entire song. From out of nowhere, Chester spills a beer on my arm and I shake it off flamboyantly, rolling my eyes in mock disgust. He sticks his tongue lecherously between two fingers in homage to the scumbag whose truck Thelma and Louise blew up, before shuffling off to harass Spencer and his wife, who are swaying on the edge of the dance floor, trying to decide if they should join us. The music transitions smoothly into Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” and we all abandon our cool, swirling our sweaty manes around shouting, “You’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to love.” Jeremy and Steve are pointing at each other and singing, “Might as well face it, you’re addicted to love. Might as well face it, you’re addicted to love,” when I feel a sudden urge to throw up and run. Steadying myself, I spot Courtney making her way out of the elevator. As I push through the crowd, Sam slams into me, apologizes without even looking to see whose bones she might have broken, and continues yelling at Charlie, flailing her arms around like a diva pissed off that her agent isn’t earning her enough money. If the music weren’t so loud, I’m sure Sam and Charlie would be making quite a scene. I wonder with a sick thrill what they’re fighting about and kick myself for falling prey to the worst type of schadenfreude—at the expense of my friends. I scold myself and grab Court by the bony shoulder.

  “You’re here!” I say.

  “Not just me!” she says with an ethereal grin.

  I follow her eyes toward the bar and see Brad’s familiar poofy head making its way toward us. “Oh my God!” I scream.

  Brad hands two beers to Courtney and picks me up and twirls me around. “Nice dress,” he says.

  “You can have it,” says Courtney.

  “Really?”

  “I never wear it,” she says. I hug her and ask Brad what the hell he’s doing here.

  “I missed my girls,” he says with a grin. “I couldn’t wait for Court to come to me. I had to prove my love with a grand gesture.”

  “Guess what!” Courtney says, bouncing. “I’m going on tour with Brad!”

  I squint at her quizzically.

  “Court’s going to look into getting someone to cover her summer school class so she can come on tour with me. I’ve only got another couple months, so it shouldn’t be hard.”

  “Shut up!” I squeal, relieved that they’ve decided to stay together.

  “This being-apart thing clearly isn’t working for us,” Brad says, putting his arm around her shoulder. “I’m a miserable wretch without her.” Court smiles and leans into his chest. “I start to lose touch with the things that are important to me. In a perfect world, Court will get knocked up immediately—” I drop my jaw and throw Court an expression of “Wait a sec—you said he didn’t want kids,” and she smiles back at me in an expression of “Of course he did, he just needed me to remind him.”

  “I’ll be the fattest groupie in the history of groupies!” she says.

  “Woo-hoo!” I say, swaying my hips drunkenly to the music.

  “You know, Jacquie, my wife is a very silly lady,” Brad says. “Doesn’t she realize that’s what love is? You come with me, I go with you. We’re in it together. Know what I’m sayin’? Even the things I do for me are really about you, baby. We’re in it.”

  “Oh God, I feel a song coming on,” I say.

  Brad hits me on the head. I spin around and notice Steve and Jeremy making out on the dance floor and Alicia flirting with DJ No Personality. It all makes me dizzy.

  “My sister is so not ready to settle down,” I shout.

  “She’s finding herself,” Courtney says. “She’s going to be fine, Jacquie. You just have to accept that your little sister is on a different schedule than you are.”

  “You’re right,” I say. Alicia is never going to wash my dishes. She’s never going to call to let me know she’s alive after a night of urban escapades. And she probably won’t choose one man, one job, one city until she’s forty-two. And that’s fine for her. I guess I need to stop playing worried big sister and let her be.

  I jump when someone grabs me from behind and swing around to see Anthony, all smiles. I’m surprised that he’s here; he told me he had a meeting tonight. He hands me a beer and kisses me on the mouth.

  “Oh God, don’t know if I need another one,” I say. “Feeling a bit woozy. Anthony, you remember Courtney, and this is Brad, Courtney’s husband. Brad, Anthony, my boyfriend.” Brad winks at me and they shake hands. I down my beer.

  “Great to meet you, man,” Anthony says. “Love your stuff.”

  “Thanks, thanks a lot.”

  As Anthony babbles to Courtney and Brad about how excited he is that we’re back together, while checking his blinking phone to see who’s calling him and scoping out the room to see who he knows, I can no longer hear what he’s saying. Through a boozy haze, I watch his ridiculously sexy lips moving over his adorably crooked teeth as his words become a rumbling, a foreign language, static. He reaches over and takes my hand in his and raises it to his mouth to kiss my knuckle. I swell at his affection, as I always swell at his affection, so infrequent, so unexpected, like finding a twenty-dollar bill in my coat pocket when it’s raining and my wallet’s empty and I need cab fare home. If he were always this loving, always around, would I still want him? The party blurs as I ask myself whether Anthony loves me. How can he? He doesn’t even really know me, yet he is making an effort. He’s here, talking to my friends, blowing off a meeting, being the boyfriend I’ve wanted him to be. So what is my problem? It’s as if I am sitting here waiting for him to mess up.

  “Anthony?” I interrupt. When he doesn’t respond, I raise my voice. “Anthony! I have to talk to you.” The three of them turn toward me. I wave at the happy couple as I steer Anthony through the crowd. I don’t want to talk here, so I lead him by the hand out of the building, down the block. We dodge traffic and race across the highway until we are looking out onto the Hudson River, where he nuzzles my neck and inches his hand up under my dress. We fool around for a while, him fondling my thigh, me sitting on the railing, tugging him toward me with my legs.

  “Anthony,” I whisper, grabbing his hand. “Anthony, do you love me?”

  “Of course I do,” he says, kissing my fingers one by one.

  “You don’t really know me very well,” I say. “I know that’s my fault, I mean, there are things I kept from you, but sometimes it’s like you don’t want to know more.”

  “That’s crazy,” he says.

  “Since we’ve been together, I never see my friends or go out for work
or do yoga.”

  “You do yoga?”

  “Obsessively.”

  “Oh shit.” He laughs. “Well, yeah, I guess you’re right, but I’m looking forward to getting to know you better.”

  “So why do you love me then?” I ask, jumping down from the railing.

  “Because you’re hot,” he says. “Kidding! We have fun together and you’re smart and sexy and you get my work and love my dog and make me laugh.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, looking off into the night, trying to figure out what the hell I’m trying to express to him. “I just think sometimes that I’ve been trying to turn you into someone you’re not. I mean, I love so many things about you, but I haven’t really been happy, which is weird because you are exactly what I want in a man.” I look down, suddenly ashamed, and add quietly, “Or what I thought I wanted.” I look up at him. “My fear is that I liked you so much I didn’t take the time to really look at you or us and figure out if we were right for each other. It’s like we’re both in love with love and were so happy to find this person who fit the fantasy.”

  I don’t know where these words are coming from. I’ve certainly never thought them, not consciously at least. “You let me down a lot,” I say. “You love your work and don’t really care that much about mine, and some people don’t need a boyfriend who wants to read their articles or ask how their day was or get excited about fixing up a house so it looks like a place where both people live, but I guess I’m somebody who needs a lot of attention, who needs to be adored.”

  “I adore you,” he says softly, with such a sad expression that I think I might dissolve into a puddle, like Amélie did after letting the man of her dreams walk out of her world without telling him that she loved him. “Look, Jacquie, I thought a lot over the last couple of days. I know I’m gone a lot and it’s been hard and we fight and stuff, but I’m aware of that and I want it to be different. I’m really trying. I love you, I want to get to know you better, I want us to get to know each other better. Shit, I’m putting myself on the line here.” His cell phone rings and he takes it out of his pocket, flips it open, looks to see who’s calling, opens his mouth as if to apologize for taking the call, then apparently changes his mind, silences the phone, closes it, and puts it back into his pocket.

  He really is making an effort.

  So what is wrong with me? I start to cry and Anthony reaches out to comfort me.

  “What’s wrong, Jacquie?”

  “Anthony, I think I fell in love with a version of you that I thought I could turn you into, the one who would take me into consideration and be interested in my life and include me in his, some future Anthony I thought I could force you to become. But that’s not fair, it’s not who you are.” Who the hell am I? This isn’t me talking. This couldn’t be thirty-two-year-old, unmarried Jacqueline Stuart. Anthony isn’t a guy you dump. Anthony is a guy you walk off into the sunset with, happily ever after, fade to black, cue generic classic love song covered by nineteen-year-old pop star. Who am I channeling? Courtney, who just two days ago told me that Anthony might not be The Guy? Joanne Love, advising strong women nationwide to hold out for the man with whom you can “truly be the version of you that you love the best”? Certainly not my mother, who, if she were here, would bang me over the head with a wrought-iron frying pan she just happens to have in her purse and apologize to this tall, handsome, potential son-in-law for my brief lapse in sanity. I just can’t fathom where these strange, unrehearsed words are coming from.

  Here is Anthony, beautiful Anthony, saying he loves me, saying he wants to make it work, promising that it will be different. And I am making all kinds of excuses, telling him all the things that are wrong with us. Fighting him as if I know some secret. What’s going on? Am I the commitment-phobe that Alicia accuses me of being? Am I so scared of love that I’m willing to let another wonderful man out of my life just to avoid having to commit? I start crying harder, my chest racked with sobs.

  The truth is simple. I am a simple creature, an Aries woman, baby of the zodiac, wide-eyed, trusting, basic in my desires, transparent of emotion, with the rudimentary needs of a child. I do know what I want. I know what I need. And no matter how often I choose to doubt it when it serves my purposes, my gut never fails me.

  “Anthony, I’m so sorry,” I sputter through my tears. I take a moment to breathe regularly again. “I…” I look into his sad, blue eyes, wanting so desperately not to hurt him. But I don’t have any choice. “I don’t love you.”

  He looks down at his hands.

  “You’re a confused girl, Jacquie,” he says, hitting the railing hard with his fist.

  “No,” I say. “I’m not confused. I am sorry and so sad, but I am pretty clear about this.”

  “Fuck,” he says, pounding the railing with his fist. I put my hand on top of his, and he tugs it away before turning to walk silently down the dark, empty path toward the highway to hail a cab.

  I look into the water at the glimmer of the city reflected in its blackness as hot tears spill down my cheeks, for Anthony’s pain and for mine, for yet another love lost. As I get older, breaking up becomes more and more terrifying. I know that every time I leave someone, I’m upping the ante, announcing to myself and the world that I am confident that someone better for me exists out there. But I am not confident at all. I am throwing myself into the abyss.

  Suddenly all I want is to be in my apartment. I know it’s a cold, black, dank hole these days, but it’s still my home. The home I should never have left. I wonder if I can sleep there, find a dry corner. I know it won’t be very comfortable, but I really just want to go home.

  I start walking back to the party. After dragging myself for a minute, I begin to run—like a bandit with the heat on my tracks, which is not easy to do in three-inch heels. By the time I collide with the crowd spilling onto the sidewalk and see Steve and Jeremy getting into the only cab on the block together, I’m done with the shoes and pull them off. I keep running, but have to glue my eyes to the ground to avoid broken glass and rusty nails, and I smash into Sam, who’s stomping angrily down the street with Charlie limping after her. I wonder if she kicked him in the shin—or the balls. She glares at me and keeps stomping. My sister is passionately kissing DJ Boring against the door of a gallery across the street. I imagine she’ll crash at Jake’s place tonight. I stand in the middle of the street, cushioned by the balmy air, for a moment before taking off sprinting again.

  When I reach Fourteenth Street, I admit to myself that I cannot run any longer. Craning my neck for a cab, I see a crosstown bus coming. I jump on, greeted by a frigid air-conditioned gust, and collapse, winded, into a solo seat on the left side of the bus, jiggling my left leg over my right into the aisle as the city drifts past—fast food, dive bars, the all-night bustle of the Meatpacking District. I look at my reflection in the window, my hair pulled up on top of my head, makeup long gone, face calm, even the little wrinkle usually visible between my brows at peace. I rub my goose-pimpled arms for warmth and wipe smudged mascara off the skin under my bottom lashes and focus again on the passing city. I love New York so much, I could make out with it. I look at the front of the bus, suddenly aware that we’ve been immobile for a while, impatient that we’re only at Seventh Avenue. When an insistent clanging indicates that the driver will be lowering the front steps to allow a disabled person to board, I lose it.

  “Oh my God!” I announce too loudly, shoving through the standing passengers and banging out the back door, swooning into the caress of hot air that catches me as I burst from the icy bus. Now I run as fast as I can again, waving my arms around, hoping to catch a cab. They’re all full of passengers, their extinguished call lights taunting me. I’m contemplating hitching when I miraculously spy a taxi spitting a raucous foursome into the street. A man in a steel-gray suit and I leap at the back door at the exact same time, but I am a woman with a mission and he sees “don’t even consider it, buddy” all over me and demurs, stepping backward and bow
ing his head.

  “Eleventh Street and Avenue A, please,” I tell the driver, now zipping past Urban Outfitters, cheap shoe shops, discount lighting emporiums, gyms, 99-cent stores, Diesel, Whole Foods, Union Square, Virgin Megastore, Trader Joe’s. I’m bouncing up and down on the cheap vinyl seat. We can’t get there fast enough. I hide my face in my arms as we screech to a halt behind a tow truck making a left turn onto Third Avenue, telling myself to breathe, dammit, breathe, breathe, breathe. Finally we’re whizzing down Avenue A, by the cigarette-smoking crowd outside a chic Asian place on my left, a woman talking and gesticulating wildly to herself on the right. For a minute I think she’s crazy, despite her slender hips and good haircut. I stare at her over my shoulder, mystified as she shrinks behind me, until it hits me that she’s deep in conversation with another person on the other end of her phone. I had forgotten cell phones existed for a second. It occurs to me that I know exactly which charming two-bedroom in Park Slope I’ll be sleeping in while my apartment’s in rehab and start to laugh, feeling a bit crazy myself, hopping out onto the crowded street nearly hysterical.

  I run toward my apartment, fast, hard, till I’m out of breath and sweating and feeling like Bridget Jones racing to catch Colin Firth in my underwear or any number of starlets running breathlessly through airports and train stations to stop the love of their lives from zooming off to a new life on the opposite coast. But I am alone, racing only to get home. The air around me warms my damp skin like a furnace as I unlock the front door to my building and jet up my stairs. When I push the door open, my apartment is completely black and it smells bad. I feel completely let down. I stand in the doorway and wonder what the hell I expected anyway. A surprise party?

  I drop my bag in the hallway outside the front door and slowly enter my apartment, the door clicking shut behind me. By the time I’m halfway through the dark hallway, I’m deflated and acutely aware of the fact that I have nothing—no boyfriend, no apartment, no life. As I’m standing there paralyzed by self-pity, a rustling on the other side of the room startles me and I scream.