Heartbreak for Dinner: It's Kind of a Long Story

by Rondon, Annah

  A week after she finished the book, we went out for drinks. We hadn’t gotten our first round of libations when she began to enlighten me with a barrage of details about the grandiose plot. I bobbed my head up and down as she told me that the main characters were perfect for each other, but their love could not be fulfilled at the beginning because the male role had to chase his “personal legend.” She declared the last words with the boldness and wonder of someone opening a box holding the cure to cancer. I rolled my eyes dramatically and urged the waiter to keep the martinis coming at all costs.

  “This really pertains to you, Annah,” she continued, “as you are actively seeking and working on your personal legend, which is this book you’ve been writing for, like, almost a decade. That said, love isn’t in the cards for you yet, because there are personal legends that need taking care of.”

  I nodded mockingly in agreement and whispered, “Please tell me more.”

  “The personal legend is the only way to achieve perfection. If you ignore that calling, you will live a life of regret and sadness,” Britt glanced at me for the reaction that never came. “It is what makes a human life worth living,” she went on, “and Santiago had to seek his personal legend before settling down with Fatima in the desert, even though he really wanted to marry her from the start.”

  “Who’s Santiago?” I asked, beginning to question her sanity.

  “Santiago,” she sighed in exasperation, “is the main character of the book. He falls in love with this beautiful girl who lived in the desert and her name is Fatima. He realizes he wants to be with her right away, but Fatima asks him to go on so he can seek his personal legend. She is not selfish like most women, because she knows that if he doesn’t pursue his dream, he will be unfulfilled and unable to be the husband she wants for eternity. She tells him that she will wait for him, and she does,” her eyes turned to glowing moons. “God, it is so romantic.”

  I wondered if Santiago and Fatima would’ve made it in an age where you can stalk your lover’s every move online, or hire a private detective to see if he’s up to any funny business without you, but kept this thought to myself. “And Fatima?”

  “What about her?” Britt looked at me as if I just inquired where babies came from.

  “What’s her personal legend?”

  My friend was caught off guard with this question and bit her lower lip. “What do you mean?”

  “If we all have to seek our dreams in order to become whole and transcend to this new level of enlightenment,” I snapped, “then surely Fatima had a dream she had to follow too, no?”

  “Of course she had a dream!” Brittany beamed after a moment. “Her dream was to fall in love and be with a man worthy of her beauty. That man was Santiago and obviously, because she loves him so much, she is destined to be the greater person and wait while her man goes after his personal legend.”

  I suppressed my irritation and patted her hand lovingly across the table. “Oh, sweet face, it doesn’t make her greater that she waited for him to chase some dream of finding treasure in the desert without a map. Women are always waiting for men. Waiting for them to call. Waiting for them to realize how stupid they are. Waiting for them to grow up. Waiting for them to find their ‘personal legend,’” I sighed. “And I guess in one respect you’re absolutely right, all men do have a personal legend. It’s called the personal pussy legend, because they’re either chasing pussy, or being one.”

  Britt stayed quiet for a second, then looked at me as if I’d just tasered a pregnant lady. She sipped her drink in silent introspection then changed the subject to the Miami Heat. Following that night, we didn’t speak for nearly two weeks. I spent a lot of time mulling over our last conversation during the time we stopped talking. Sensing I’d been a bit harsh on her, I couldn’t help but wonder if my personal legend was to be a bubble burster to silly women everywhere. If I turned it over more than needed, I reckoned that sucked. Yet in the grand scheme of things, it sure beat waiting in the desert for some idiot seeking imaginary treasures while I took care of myself with a dildo made of stone.

  Britt and I officially made up a few weeks later when we reunited for a trip to Houston she’d convinced me to go to, after months of incessant begging. Her favorite band was playing at a music festival there and, of course, she felt it was my duty to play tour guide. Looking back on everything that had taken place, Houston was the last city in the world I wanted to vacation in. It was safe to say a perpetual cloud of cynicism loomed largely over my head since my last trip there, and the idea of romance was something better left for Disney movies and romantic comedies starring Jennifer Aniston. I started to think about the boundless obsession women have with happy endings, and how we’ve somehow become hamsters wearing horse blinders on a wheel that could only stop when we find “the one.” In all fairness, I was certain men were also enthralled by the idea of happy endings themselves, only theirs were performed in questionable Asian parlors by women who were remarkably good with their hands and worked for tips.

  On a June morning, we arrived to Houston for the festival with thirsty livers and an appetite for trouble. Against our better judgment, we had all gone out the night before. I was a crumbling heap of exhaustion as we finally walked through the gates that Saturday and braved the Texan sun. It was still Africa hot around 6, as I finally found a grassy spot to lie on. My friends had gone on a beer hunt and I’d been left to my own devices when the sandman came for me, my long dress acting as a blanket and cowboy hat as a face shield from the sun’s last rays.

  In spite of the perfect weather and music enveloping me, my thoughts were on the infinite quest for true love as I lay there motionless and surrounded by thousands. I blamed it fully on Britt and The Alchemist and all that nonsense talk about destinies and personal legends. I was flooded with the memory of Jonah and all my other failed attempts at something everlasting, wondering if and when I’d ever have a happy ending to call my own. I guessed it was inevitable to feel that way. I guessed I always did every time I returned to Texas, or Spain, or any other place on earth we’d roamed together. I began to dwell on endings, and how, for better or for worse, I was in the dark when it came to mine. I presumed closing chapters and beginning new ones was always harder than it seemed. I presumed letting go of the things we loved the most was the hardest part of being alive.

  I began to think about the day I met him, how the cold air had descended on my shivering body that unsuspecting night that would change everything. Of how scared I’d been the afternoon of the bull fights as he held me to safety in arms that made my world stop. I thought of our first stolen kiss, and the passion I’d tried to clone over and over with lips that would never measure to his. I thought of Vegas, two doves taking flight and my heart soaring with them as we held hands on that concrete bench the afternoon it became clear we would never be together. How he’d fought for my honor that night at the country club, only to forget about it hours later when we made love behind curtains that contained a story doomed from the start. Mostly, though, I thought of how every instance I made a conscious decision to escape him, he eventually reappeared, as if somehow his existence was part of a greater design I was yet to figure out.

  And then it hit me.

  Sometimes, we seek to find our personal legend. Other times, it finds us.

  I was startled from my daydream when a party goer shook my legs lightly in an effort to wake me. Bending them toward me so as to allow them to pass, the rest of my body remained still. Once again the person moved me, this time with gentle but persistent force. I removed my hat and realized the night had come, stars suspended brightly above me on a dark sky full of promise and wonder. I shifted my eyes upward and there he stood, all blue eyes and tanned skin as my name left his lips. I rubbed my face slowly and half smiled, attempting to remove Jonah’s mirage from the crevices of my altered imagination. At that moment, it became evident I needed to drink less and sleep more; the previous day’s activities conjuring ghosts from a p
ast I no longer cared to recall. I got up and resolved to find my friends as a sweet melody filled the air, only to find Jonah still standing there taking me in with inquiring eyes that spoke volumes.

  I moved closer in the dusk until the space between us turned to nothing, placing a hand on his face to confirm the veracity of his existence. Dazed, I pinched myself repeatedly to waking, yet nothing changed as I realized a mirage would never instill such truths, nor could an illusion of the heart ever replicate the feeling he evoked time and time again.

  “What are you doing in this place?” I caressed his face with both hands in the twilight.

  He shrugged his shoulders and smiled, “Someone said you’d be here.”

  There are times when you just know a moment belongs to you and try as they might, no force could ever stop the unraveling of what’s already been laid out. It is at junctures such as these where you ignore your doubts, and instead ride the wave until you’re able to view the world from its highest crest. Certainly, the possibility exists that it may crash and kill you, but that would only consist as further proof that you actually lived. I wasn’t sure of anything as we stood there facing each other in the uncertain dark, a body of moving life surrounding our existence as we levitated in frozen time. I wasn’t sure of anything except, he was real, just as he had always been to me, and just as likely and without question, as he would forever remain.

  Acknowledgments

  No woman is an island, and this book is the sum of all the fascinating people I have met along the way and the experiences they so kindly offered me. My apologies to those I forgot in advance. It means nothing except old age is quickly getting to my once pristine ability at retaining information.

  I’m compelled to kick this off by thanking Angie, whose invaluable gift of loyalty reigns so true it makes me want build a fortress around us and pray we remain sisters forever. To Jeannie, two decades of friendship classifies you as family and I love you oh-so-much, even when you think I’m an immoral heaux. My eternal gratitude goes to Chris, who changed my life by pushing me to write this book and into the light of something that brings immeasurable joy to my humble existence. To Cynthi, I’m so lucky to have met you, as you’re the only girl I know that shoots people for a living and that makes me feel safe and cuddly, like those gummy bears we love to freeze in vodka jars. To Claudia, Janet, Bee, Honna, and all the friends who contributed in shaping me to a better version of my former self, you have no idea how much you changed me. This book would not exist without the thousands of strangers who read my blog and gave me kind words of encouragement. I’m aware it may not have seemed like much at the time, but for me it was everything.

  To all the men of my world, I am eternally indebted to your peculiar ways of execution. To Douglas, who offered me so much and accepted so little, may the light always guide you toward places worthy of your soul. To all the boys who came after, thank you for the hilarity and confusion and writing material; you are all a bunch of bitches. To Sadick, for being everyone’s husband and personal advisor on drunken nights we really wanted male perspective, even after our hearts had been broken for the hundredth time. To Miguel, who’s kindly agreed to marry me if I’m still single at 35 and I love more than cream-filled donuts after a week on the Atkins. And last but not least to Xavier, who edited this work and was still able to look me in the eye after being subjected to my neurosis before anyone else.

  A very special recognition goes out to my partner-in-heinous-crimes, Glenn Rehn. You shall have an infinite supply of vegetarian quesadillas from that restaurant on 68th once this book makes me famous. Also, I swear to hurl two computers and a fax machine at you-know-who just like we discussed while I yell, “I’m rich, bitch!” and jump out the window with a parachute made of garbage bags.

  I presume it would be mandatory to take this portion of my acknowledgments and thank my family, but none of them speak English and it would be a complete waste of my precious time (te quiero, Mimi). Instead, I will draw them this picture, and they’ll know exactly what it means:

  Thank you, and to all a goodnight.

  About the Author

  Annah Rondon is the writer and creator of the (almost) famous blog titled Red Means Go. You probably know more about her than most of her family if you made it this far, so high-five yourself and take a shot of apple moonshine right this instant. When she’s not busy writing or stalking Channing Tatum online, she’s eating tomato sandwiches, cursing people out in traffic, perusing your grandma’s garage sale, or making duck faces when being photographed in spite of those who judge her. She currently resides in Miami with her four rescue dogs and stuffed animal, Sir Care Bear the III. If this book makes her wealthy, she’s moving to Sydney with her canine zoo and buying a koala, which she shall name Georgia Peaches.

  Koalas are pretty damn awesome, guys. But peaches from Georgia . . . well, they are the absolute best.