Toronto Collection Volume 1 (Toronto Series #1-5)

by Heather Wardell

  She couldn't seriously think I would. I was more than confused enough without adding another man to the mix. "Sonya can have 'eyes' with my blessing."

  "I'll be back before the show starts."

  In fact, she actually arrived ten minutes into it, which greatly annoyed the people near us who had to get up to let her in.

  "Oops," she whispered to me as she took her seat, no concern in her voice. "Lost track of time."

  I gave her a tight-lipped smile and turned my attention back to the stage. She got the hint and fortunately kept quiet until the end. As we were all applauding, she leaned in and said, "Gotta go. He's waiting for me."

  And she was gone, while I looked after her, stunned. She'd said we should come separately, and we had, but I hadn't really thought she'd bail out and leave me alone. What kind of friend would do that, especially after the punch to the gut I'd received during the intermission?

  I left the theater, swept along with the rest of the crowd. Tina and the blond were nowhere to be seen, but I spotted Sonya and a furious Elaine in the lobby and they filled me in.

  "She came slinking up to him, after first undoing at least two shirt buttons, and he fell into her cleavage and that was that. He never looked at me again."

  Sonya patted Elaine on the shoulder. "It won't last, though. Probably just tonight."

  "Did you see him? Forget the night, I'd take an hour. Half an hour."

  This was a world I didn't know and didn't want to know. To Sonya, I said, "What happened to 'eyes'?"

  She shook her head. "Might be gay. He was friendly enough but he didn't open up at all. I did everything but give him my address and still nothing. Too bad, too... he was cuter than I'd expected up close."

  "Yeah, too bad. Well, nice meeting you guys."

  Sonya said, "We're going out for drinks and dancing. Want to come?"

  Elaine looked startled, but she didn't have to worry. "Thanks, but I'm done for the day. Have fun, though."

  We said our goodbyes and I headed out to the subway station, arriving on the platform as the train I wanted departed. I leaned against a wall and idly watched the train that would be going the other way, avoiding thinking about Alex by pondering the guy Tina had gone home with, and how I couldn't imagine just going home with a guy, and how gorgeous the other guy's eyes had been.

  Then the subway began to move and I found myself looking into those eyes. He stood inside the train staring out the window, and our eyes caught and held like crazy glue. Sonya had been right: he was cuter than we'd thought.

  Before I could do anything but look at him, though, the train pulled away and he was gone.

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time I got home my numbness was wearing off, and I barely made it inside before I lost control. I sat curled up on the couch clinging to my half-crocheted winter scarf in a desperate search for comfort and crying in great painful sobs. How could he act like that? Why?

  When I thought, "What did I do wrong?" the tears stopped immediately as a deep truth smacked me back to my senses.

  I'd done nothing wrong.

  Alex had decided to cheat. Decided to leave. Decided, quite possibly, to cheat in the past too. And I'd done nothing to cause any of that. If I'd bored him, he should have told me, not cheated. I hadn't made him cheat. And nothing I could do to change myself would bring him back, because he didn't want me any more.

  And...

  I had to try three times even to say it in my head but eventually managed it.

  I didn't want him any more either.

  It made me cry harder, but I knew it was true. I'd loved him, but he'd shattered that love. It didn't exist any more. But he hadn't broken my heart. I wouldn't let that happen.

  I wiped my eyes. No more crying and obsessing over Alex. Wanting a more definite commitment, I walked into the bathroom and looked into my watery eyes in the mirror. I took a deep breath and told my reflection, "I will not change myself for any man. Not now, not ever."

  As I stared into my eyes, something amazing happened.

  I believed myself.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning, after the best sleep I'd had since Alex left, I ceremoniously deleted the massive Word file of my thoughts about how to get Alex back since I didn't need it any more. I expected to be sad but instead I felt a huge relief, like I'd been carrying all those words on my back and had finally gotten rid of them.

  I looked around the apartment, and decided I would not be moving. I loved the place. I'd loved it from the moment we saw it; Alex hadn't been so sure but hadn't been able to find anywhere he thought was better. So I'd stay. I'd make my own new memories and let go of the sad ones.

  That settled, I headed off to the yarn store wearing my purple dress and the teal cotton scarf I'd made. I half-hoped the owner would remember me and like the scarf, but I'd never have expected her to be so excited about my work.

  She asked to hold the scarf and raved over how evenly made my stitches were and how fast I'd crocheted them. When I admitted that I was half-done the wool one too, she said, "But it's only been a week since you were here, hasn't it?"

  I nodded, and she shook her head. "You have a real knack for this." She studied me. "I'd love having you at our 'knit nights'. You stayed for it last Monday, right? Would you be able to come or are you usually busy Mondays?"

  "I'm not busy." Not busy any nights, but I didn't share that. I wanted to change it, though, and remembering how I'd enjoyed chatting with the knitters I said, "I'd love to come."

  She grinned. "Perfect. And yarn's ten percent off during knit night so you can buy this tomorrow if you'd like."

  I did like, so she tucked the skeins I'd picked, more wool for my scarf and some pleasantly crisp cotton for a summer shawl and some amazingly soft angora that would be something although I didn't know what yet, behind the counter and we said goodbye.

  I strolled to the subway station, toying with the ends of my scarf and enjoying the warm spring day. I could do whatever I wanted with the day, and indeed with my life. My life and schedule were wide-open now and awaiting my decisions on how to fill them. Nobody to answer to but myself. It felt good. Also scary, but good.

  I would fill the rest of that lovely morning with the trip to get my clarinet from my parents' storage locker on the east side of Toronto. It would only be fifteen minutes or so each way by subway, so I'd be there and back well before lunch and then I could spend the afternoon and evening crocheting and playing the clarinet.

  A full hour later, I still sat in the half-dark of the subway's tunnel on my disabled train. There'd been several announcements that we'd be 'underway momentarily', but their definition of momentarily clearly didn't match mine.

  Wishing I had something to crochet, I was reduced to reading and re-reading the subway's advertisements for entertainment. Reduce your debt. Lose your body fat. Locate an adult who'd gone missing. Cut your mortgage. Recycle instead of throwing things away. Other than the missing adult one, everything was about making your life smaller and tighter.

  A good thing, in a lot of respects, but I wanted mine bigger and more expansive. Not my body fat or debt, obviously, but my life itself. More freedom, more openness. But not openness like Elaine and Tina. I didn't see sex as a diversion like they did. At its best with Alex it had been almost a religious experience, and even at its worst it had bonded us together. I didn't ever want to have casual sex, not even with someone as good-looking as the blond.

  My mind filled not with him but with the other guy's aquamarine eyes. I'd never seen eyes that color, almost teal, but I knew if I ever saw them again I'd recognize him at once.

  I thought about him for a few moments, then pulled my mind away. I wasn't likely to see him again, and even if I did I'd probably need seven years or so to be ready for a relationship, so why bother focusing on a man, no matter how cute he was? Instead, I shut my eyes and considered the pink angora yarn I'd be buying the next night. A warm fuzzy cowl? Or mittens? Or trim on something. I cou
ld make a sweater, maybe...

  I was half-asleep, leaning against the subway's window, when we suddenly jerked into motion. Everyone cheered, looking around at each other as if we'd accomplished something, and I found myself grinning at complete strangers and feeling an odd sense of connection to them. It didn't last, of course; once we reached the next station a bunch of people left and new ones arrived and the bond was broken forever. But I liked that it had happened in the first place.

  At long last, I reached the storage place and found my parents' locker. When they'd moved from my childhood home north of Toronto to their retirement community in Vancouver they'd left a ton of things behind, and since it had all been arranged in the locker with my mother's legendary lack of organization I couldn't immediately find the clarinet.

  As I searched, though, I spotted a hot pink box, about the size of two shoeboxes stuck together, and my eyes filled with tears even before I consciously recognized it as my memorabilia box from high school.

  No doubt almost entirely full of memories of Alex. I put it by the door, though, so I could take it home and see what else had mattered to me back then, and kept looking until I found the clarinet case beneath a bag full of winter coats and a box labeled 'stuff box #18'.

  Ah, Mom. So not the source of my analytical skills.

  *****

  Back home, I had lunch then ignored my clarinet in favor of spending two hours browsing through the memorabilia box.

  As I'd expected, nearly everything inside was Alex-related. I flipped through what I remembered as my bad poems about how much I adored him and had to smile at how much worse they were than I'd thought. "Eyes like the richest hot chocolate" indeed. I'd made one using the first letter of 'Alex and Andrea' for each line, and I remembered being so thrilled that our names started with the same letter. At fourteen, that seemed like enough to prove we were meant to be together.

  Under the poems were the tickets to various semi-formal dances and our prom, along with my carefully pressed corsages, and pictures of us grinning away in our formal wear. I'd felt so grown up in the fancy dresses and I remembered thinking he looked gorgeous and mature, but now I saw how young we'd been. Scary to think that the girl in those pictures had determined the course of my life before she was even old enough to vote.

  Not that I couldn't change it, of course, but she'd certainly carved out a pretty definite path. If I could go back and ask her, she'd have been sure that by the ripe old age of twenty-eight she and Alex would have been married for years, married and blissfully happy. Poor kid.

  The condom wrapper from the first time we had sex. I shook my head, chuckling at my seventeen-year-old self. Of all the things to store! At least I hadn't kept the condom. We'd had no idea what we were doing, but over time we'd managed to figure it out to both of our satisfaction. He was, naturally, the best I'd ever had. Now, of course, he had at least one other with whom to compare me, so maybe I didn't top his list any more.

  I hid the wrapper under a few deflated balloons from my eighteenth birthday party and moved on, not wanting to dwell on Alex's newly active sex life.

  Another picture, taken the summer we graduated from high school, with me standing next to Alex and the tiny baby he held. He didn't quite have the kid, his cousin's son, at arm's length, but nearly. His awkwardness was clear in every line of his body, though I remembered that he'd thought the baby was cute. I flipped over the picture, knowing what I'd find written on the back.

  The future. Love, Alex.

  Hardly. I'd assumed that when we graduated from university we would marry and then have kids, but as the years wore on he became less and less into marriage. That same cousin, not long after the picture was taken, left her husband in a truly hideous divorce which dragged on for years, and watching the drama changed Alex's opinion of matrimony.

  As we neared the end of our last year of university he told me he didn't think he'd ever want to get married. I was shocked at first, but then came around. What difference did that piece of paper make? We were together in every way that mattered, so why did we need to legitimize it?

  I'd begun to change my mind on that in the last few months, as more of our friends got married. We'd discussed it before I left for my conference and he'd said he still wasn't sure but would think about it; of course now I knew he'd been thinking more about leaving me for Kelly than about marriage.

  We'd also decided not to have kids, which had helped me not worry too much about the marriage thing. I had never felt the desperate drive for children that tormented some of my friends, and so I'd gone along with Alex when he made it clear he didn't want them.

  I sighed, realizing how many of my recent memories seemed to involve some variation on the phrase, "I went along with Alex." How had that happened? Back in high school I hadn't been like that. When we hadn't agreed I hadn't automatically given in to his way of thinking.

  In fact, what struck me most as I looked through the box was how feisty I seemed. Pictures could lie, of course, but as I looked into my photographed eyes I saw fire and spark and a refusal to settle. In nearly all the pictures Alex and I were cuddled up together, but I didn't look soft and squishy and google-eyed over him. Instead, there was a wildness and boldness about me. I stood up straight even when Alex had his arms wrapped around me, and I looked more alive than I'd felt for a long time.

  I wanted that back. I wanted to do something definitive to take back control of my life. The reversing project was slowly making that happen but I felt a strong need for something more, a marker, a line in the sand, to underline to myself, "I am doing what I want now. I'm in charge."

  But what?

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Harrison!"

  I shifted my position on the floor and smiled at the woman sitting across from me.

  She called him once more, then smiled back and said, "When I want him gone he's all over me, and when I need him he's nowhere to be seen."

  "Typical male."

  "So true."

  We shared 'been there, done that' half-smiles, and I realized I wasn't as alone as I sometimes felt. Women all over the world had been hurt by their men and they survived. I'd survive Alex's departure too. I already had survived, and now it was time to thrive. And Harrison might well help with that. If he ever showed up.

  "Come on, Harrison. Oh, there he is."

  I turned to look where she was pointing and burst out laughing. "He's gorgeous!"

  "You mean funny looking."

  "Well, a bit. But in a gorgeous way."

  "Now, he doesn't always warm up to people right away so--"

  As she spoke, Harrison walked by her and stepped into my lap as though he'd known me for years.

  "Well," I said looking down at him making himself comfortable, my heart suddenly so full it hurt, "aren't you adorable?"

  "I have never seen him do that."

  I didn't look at her, too busy watching the fuzzball in my lap. Harrison's orange fur was longer on his head than on the rest of his body, giving him a baby lion appearance, and the tufts of fur sticking out between his toes were quite possibly the cutest thing I'd ever seen. I reached out and ran my hand over his fluffy back, amazed by the softness that put the angora yarn I'd chosen to shame, and was rewarded with a deep rumbling purr.

  "Oh, Andrea?"

  I looked up.

  She smiled. "I think you've got yourself a cat."

  "Or he's got me. But yes, I think you're right."

  I signed the paperwork and the check to adopt Harrison from the cat rescue group while still sitting on the floor with him in my lap. I couldn't bear to let him go. When I was all done, though, the woman said, "I'd let you stay but I have to get dinner going. Let's get him in his carrier."

  She watched me struggle to slip Harrison, whose half-asleep form was so relaxed he seemed nearly boneless, into the carrier I'd bought from her. Once the puffball end of his tail was inside and I'd latched the door, she said, "Good stuff. Congratulations on your new best friend."

/>   Tears rose but I pushed them back. I wasn't crying over the cat, of course. It was the finality of it. Alex had never wanted a pet and now I had one. I'd been watching TV that afternoon and saw a cat food commercial and I'd known it was time. An Internet search for local pounds and cat rescues had found me Harrison, and now he was mine. I had drawn that line I'd wanted, a plushy orange line, between my old and new lives and it felt wonderful.

  Harrison and I headed home, and to my surprise and relief he didn't meow at all in the car. He more than made up for it, though, once I got him and the food and the toys and the litter and the litter box and all the other goodies his former foster mother had so graciously provided into the apartment. He toured the whole place, meowing the whole time and hardly seeming to take a breath, and I was just beginning to wonder where the off switch was on this adorable but mouthy creature when he sat down on the floor and stared at me.

  "Hungry? Need the bathroom? Want a hug?"

  As it turned out, all three, in that order. Once he'd eaten and made a truly unbelievable stink in his litter box in the ensuite bathroom, where I'd put it so guests wouldn't be faced with it, my new furry friend came to me on the couch and hopped up into my lap. I squeezed him tight. "How about some TV and crocheting?"

  He purred.

  He also tried to eat my yarn for a few minutes, but I kept telling him not to and moving the strands out of his reach and eventually he gave up and put his head down on my knee, and his purring gradually gave way to a surprisingly loud snore.

  "You're going to be interesting to get to know, Harrison," I murmured, stroking that amazingly soft fur.

  My very own pet. My first-ever pet. A dream come true.

  Chapter Fourteen

  To see if that teenage girl I'd been, the strong-willed one, could be coaxed out of me, on Monday morning while dressing for work I decided to wear the hot pink skirt I now suspected she'd made me buy. With the matching jacket I felt like a big piece of bubble gum, so I toned the pink down with a black tank top and the sweet ivory cardigan I'd been saving for a special occasion. I didn't want to do that any more. I loved that sweater and should have been wearing it constantly. Why couldn't today be a special occasion?