A Life That Fits
Heather Wardell
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Heather Wardell
http://www.heatherwardell.com
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HeatherWardell
Also by Heather Wardell at Smashwords.com:
Stir Until Thoroughly Confused
Planning to Live
Seven Exes Are Eight Too Many
Go Small or Go Home
Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo (free download!)
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Chapter One
I shoved my suitcase into the apartment with my foot and called, "Alex, come help me!" Hearing the barely suppressed annoyance in my voice, I forced away my disappointment that he hadn't met me at the door even though I'd called to let him know I was on my way and added, "Please? I've missed you," making my tone sweet so I wouldn't ruin the moment I knew was coming.
My soon-to-be-fiancé appeared and took the tray of cups and cookies from my hand, and I set down my carry-on bag and stood drinking him in like I'd been thirsting for years. I'd only been away two weeks, but we'd never been apart that long before and I'd missed him beyond anything I could have imagined. With his lean-bordering-on-skinny body dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, and his blond hair cut in a new style that no longer hung over those brown eyes I'd written terrible poetry about in high school, he looked perfect to me.
Or at least, he would have if he hadn't clearly been awkward and uncomfortable.
My heart melted. Of course he was. I felt the same way. We'd been dancing around the 'will we get married?' question for ages. I'd brought it up a few weeks before my trip and he'd said he still wasn't sure, but his nervousness when we'd talked on the phone during my absence had told me he'd decided. He knew I'd say yes, of course, but still, proposing had to be nerve-wracking.
He held the tray before him like he was offering it to me, but I didn't want my coffee yet, and I didn't want him drinking his iced coffee, a drink he'd never asked me to buy for him before, either. I wanted him to propose so I could say yes and cry a little and then we could snuggle on the couch and make giddy plans for our future.
But he didn't seem about to get down on one knee in the hallway, so I said, "Should we go sit in the living room? Oh, and I like your hair."
He turned away. "Thanks," he said over his shoulder. "How was your flight?"
I followed him into the living room and said, "Fine," saving the stories of my seat-mate who'd apparently bathed in a vat of spoiled milk and my 'fruit platter' snack which had been nothing but a blackened banana to tell him later when we'd exhausted the wedding discussion. "The conference went great. Anna and Gary should be thrilled. Tons of new business. And my parents say hi." Since the conference had been held in Vancouver, not far from where my parents had moved when Dad retired, I'd taken a week of vacation to visit them before returning to Toronto and Alex.
He sat and plucked his drink from the tray, and I sat next to him and waited. He didn't speak, though; instead he clutched his drink so tightly the lid popped off and iced coffee splashed over his stomach.
I leaped up and grabbed the paper towel roll from the kitchen, and he took it from my hand and said, "I'll clean up in the bedroom."
He disappeared, and I sank onto the couch again and shook my head, unable to hold back a smile since he wouldn't see. The poor guy, so adorably nervous.
As I waited for his return, I looked around the apartment and noticed the bookcases that flanked the TV. Not a single book or DVD out of place on the usually cluttered shelves, and somehow he'd managed to organize them so they looked far less crowded. True, he'd left a few empty spots that didn't look the best, but he'd obviously tried. He must have spent the entire two weeks cleaning. What a sweetheart.
He reappeared, wearing a fresh shirt I hadn't seen before, and I smiled at him and said, "You really cleaned up this place, didn't you? Thanks."
Instead of the cheerful "you noticed" I'd have expected, his face turned red and then pale.
My excitement about his upcoming proposal and exhaustion after the long day traveling gave way to confusion. He wasn't acting like himself at all. I took a more focused look at the bookshelves and realized something. "You didn't just clean up. You got rid of a lot of stuff. Those shelves look..."
I'd been going to say they looked amazing, but I trailed off when I saw they actually looked empty of anything that wasn't mine. Alex's collection of Stephen King novels, his Star Wars and Star Trek DVDs, even the picture frame with shots of him and his buddies on various camping trips... everything that belonged to him was gone.
I turned toward him, but before I could speak he sighed. "I didn't want to tell you right away. I was going to let you rest first."
Six weeks ago we'd celebrated my twenty-eighth birthday and our 'we've been dating half your life' anniversary on the same day. He was as familiar to me as my own face in the mirror. But as I stared at him I saw a stranger. "Tell me what?"
He took a long drink of his remaining iced coffee, then set the cup down on the coffee table. My coffee table, from my parents' old place.
He picked up the cup again without speaking and I looked around at the other furniture, terrified of what I'd see. Sure enough, anything that could reasonably be considered 'mine' was still there, and everything else was gone.
New haircut, new shirt, even a new choice of coffee... his stuff removed from our apartment... he hadn't even hugged me... the tray of drinks held in front of him so I couldn't hug him...
I turned back, to see him still sucking down his drink as if his life depended on it, and I knew. I could barely breathe, like he'd taken the oxygen from the room along with his belongings, as stunned as if he'd thrown a million iced coffees in my face, but I knew.
I managed to say, "You're..." but couldn't finish. I had to be wrong. He couldn't be leaving me. We hadn't been sure about marriage but we'd been so sure about us. We'd been together forever and we were staying together for another forever. That was the plan.
Apparently the plan had changed, because he set his empty cup down on the table and stared into it then said, "I have to go."
No part of his voice or demeanor suggested a temporary departure, but I clung to that possibility anyhow. "For a little while? For work, or..."
He raised his face and looked at me, and his expression held something I'd never seen from him before. Pity. "Andrea. Forever."
I had a necklace in my jewelry box with those exact words engraved on it, his gift on my eighteenth birthday. He seemed to have forgotten. I had to remind him. "But I love you. And you love me. We're going to get married. Don't go. Please."
He looked at me without speaking, but his eyes said far more than I could stand. We weren't getting married. Not even close. I loved him, yes, but he... he was leaving, and nothing I could say would stop him. He'd always given me everything I wanted, and I'd thought I did the same for him. He'd said I did. We'd been perfect for each other. I couldn't understand, so I said, "Tell me why," in a voice that sounded nothing like mine.
He did.
Then he left.
And I didn't leave the apartment for the next three weeks.
Chapter Two
I spent hours that first evening, my first night as a single girl since I really was just a girl, huddled on the couch I'd bou
ght us with my first real pay check. 'Us'. There was no 'us' any more.
No tears. I was too numb, and too busy replaying everything he'd said, using the few details he'd given me to guess at all the ones I masochistically wanted to know, and struggling with all the questions I hadn't asked.
Where did you meet her?
What does she look like?
You're really leaving me for someone you've known for three months?
Why is she better than me?
Don't you love me?
Actually, it was probably just as well I hadn't asked that last one. I was horribly afraid I knew the answer. He'd basically given me the answer, when he'd dropped that so awful "I love you but I'm not in love with you any more" line on me like a bomb. What the hell did that even mean? Other than that he didn't love me like I loved him.
He'd stood up to go after saying it, and the terror that flooded me made me grasp for something, anything, to make him stay. "But what if you sleep with her and it's terrible?" I spoke without thinking but as I did I realized this whole thing could be nothing more than his need to sow a few wild oats since I was the only field he'd ever plowed so I kept going, words tumbling from me. "Then you'll come back, right? I'll take you back, I will, Alex, just come back."
Until his face turned pale and his eyes shifted away from mine like I was physically repelling him, it hadn't crossed my mind that he might have cheated on me. His reaction hit me like an airplane landing on my chest, and I whispered, "You have. You already... Right?"
He launched into the textbook "I'm so sorry, I never meant for this to happen" crap.
I barely heard him over the buzzing horror slinking through me. He'd slept with someone else. I'd never have thought him capable even of kissing another woman and he'd gone so much further. I didn't know him at all. Fourteen years with him and I knew nothing. Knew nothing, had nothing, was nothing. When I couldn't cope another second, I said, "Just go. Get out."
"Will you be okay?"
I laughed, again using someone else's voice. Someone frozen and stunned and not remotely amused. "Like you care. Go."
He closed his eyes and turned away, then left without a backward glance or a single word, not even needing to take a bag with him since my business trip had given him the perfect two-week packing period. In that two weeks, he'd ripped my life to shreds.
I'd stood frozen until I couldn't hear his footsteps any more then dropped onto the couch. I hadn't moved for hours, and still didn't want to, but my bladder would be ignored no longer.
I pushed my exhausted body to its feet, feeling like I was riding around in the body instead of it being mine, and dragged myself to the bathroom. As I washed my hands, noticing dimly the absence of Alex's toiletries, I also noticed the presence of something new.
A black ponytail elastic sat on the sink's edge.
I only used gold ones because they blended better with my hair.
She'd been here.
Rage blew away my numbness, and I grabbed the cleaning supplies from under the sink and scrubbed the bathroom to within an inch of its life and mine. Using enough caustic chemicals to clean an airplane's toilet to eat-off-the-seat condition, I scrubbed and sweated and swore until not a single corner or grout line remained unmolested.
It didn't help, though: I still blazed with fury and disgust. He'd brought her here. We'd picked the place together, and every item in it had, I'd thought anyhow, been about us. About our relationship. And he'd brought her here. That bitch had been in my apartment.
And my former boyfriend hadn't noticed that in fourteen years I'd never let a black elastic touch my hair.
I started in the front hall, and for the next countless hours I worked my way through the apartment and removed every possible trace of Alex and her. My hands were soon red and sore, my professional neutral beige nail polish chipped and several nails broken too, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't fix anything else, but I could at least give myself a clean place to live.
To live alone.
My cell phone repeatedly signaled new messages, and a few phone calls came in too, but I ignored them all. I couldn't talk to him right now. Whatever he wanted, he could bloody well wait until I'd finished scrubbing out my anger.
When I did finish, my body shaking and exhausted and my rage for the moment tamed by my terrible fatigue, I collapsed to the freshly vacuumed sofa with my phone in hand, bracing myself to see what Alex had to say.
Then I decided not to. Nothing he would say could make a difference, unless he said he'd changed his mind, and somehow I doubted he had. I couldn't bear the idea of hearing his voice if it wasn't saying he was coming back to me.
Instead, I turned off the phone and headed to bed.
I didn't get there, though. I stopped in the bedroom doorway, studying the bed I'd stripped and made up with fresh sheets and a newly washed comforter, and couldn't bring myself to climb in. She might have been in it. They'd had two full weeks where they knew I wouldn't walk in on them. They could have been sleeping in our bed every night. Probably were.
Yes, and they were probably making out on the couch and having sex in the shower and doing unspeakable things on the kitchen counter. Nowhere here was safe. But the idea of leaving and going to a hotel was utterly overwhelming so I forced myself to squeeze past the laundry hamper by the door and slip between the sheets.
I lay in the dark staring at the ceiling. Still no tears. The whole thing felt unreal, like a bad dream. A nightmare I would wake up from soon.
Please. Let me wake up.
*****
I had a few bouts of fitful sleep, but none after three o'clock in the morning when I thought of the things I'd said to him. I'd been replaying his words and actions over and over, and they were bad enough, but my own sickened me. I'd begged my cheating boyfriend not to leave me. Worse, I'd offered to let him try out his new girlfriend then return to me if he wasn't satisfied. "Take her for a test drive, honey, then come back to the old reliable ride waiting at home."
And God help me, if he'd walked into our bedroom at that moment I'd have taken him back in a millisecond.
I hated myself for it with a depth that made my stomach clench, but I couldn't help it either. I'd loved him for so unbelievably long, and every single element of my life was inescapably tied to him. We'd been 'Alexandandrea' forever. I didn't know who 'Andrea' was.
Except that she wasn't what Alex wanted. Which meant she was nothing worthwhile.
He'd told me his new woman was the opposite of me, and I hadn't been able to bring myself to ask exactly what that meant. I hadn't wanted to know, hadn't wanted to picture her. I still didn't but I couldn't help wondering. Taller, darker, bigger? He'd always joked about how I was too short and delicate for him. At least, I'd thought he was joking. Now I didn't know.
It probably wasn't just physical either. Was she more fun than me? Less focused on work, more outgoing? A better flirt? Of course, a brick wall was a better flirt; I hadn't ever learned how since I'd never even tried to see if I could catch the eye of anyone but Alex.
I couldn't stop dwelling on all my possible imperfections, and on how clueless I'd been not to know. There must have been signs. I had missed them. So much for female intuition. Of course, I'd never been the intuitive type. Like the good data analyst I was I focused on facts. And the facts were that my boyfriend had cheated and I hadn't had even an inkling. But there had to have been signs.
I examined every insignificant detail of the weeks before my trip, trying to understand what I'd missed and why he'd decided to cheat, and when my alarm finally went off at six it was a relief. I'd shower, go to work, and let myself forget for at least a few hours. Nobody else knew yet, so I could hide from it.
But it didn't work out that way.
As I headed for the bathroom, I passed my phone, which seemed almost to be pulsing with Alex's messages from last night. I tried not to think of them, and actually turned the shower on, but then couldn't resist any more. I had to know what he'd said.
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Nothing, as it turned out.
The messages and calls the night before weren't from him.
The first text was from my cousin's wife. "You okay? Give me a call if you need anything." Sweet, except that she lived in New York and probably couldn't do much for me in Toronto. But we almost never talked, so how had she known to contact me now?
I didn't get that question answered until a few messages of shock and condolence later. Anna, who I'd reluctantly friended on Facebook after she'd called me into her office and said she wanted to be friends with her subordinates, made it clear with her text.
"See you and Alex are no longer in relationship on FB. Hope it's a glitch and not for real! See you tomorrow."
Had he...
I flipped open my laptop and logged into Facebook, and my fingers froze on the keys as the sight of so many wall postings smacked me in the face.
He had. Barely ten minutes after he'd left, he'd changed his Facebook relationship status to 'single' and unfriended me. Since his profile had wide open privacy settings because he liked being found by anyone from his past who cared to look for him, even unfriended I could see that he'd set his status to 'Offline for a while', leaving me to answer the shocked questioning of our friends and family. Charming.
At least he wasn't listed as in a relationship with her; I didn't want to know who she was.
I closed the computer without responding to any of the posts. What could I say?
Everyone knew. There was nowhere for me to hide. I wouldn't be waking up. This nightmare was real.
The tears I hadn't shed last night now overwhelmed me and I sat sobbing as every word he'd spoken to me in the last fourteen years became suspect. Had he ever really loved me? I knew he'd lusted after the big-boobed girls back in high school, but then all the boys had. Maybe most of them still did. How would I know? I'd always felt secure though, because I'd been sure Alex did want me despite my more fragile proportions, and certainly after we'd gone through university and into the work world together I'd figured I was his type after all. But now...
A Life That Fits Page 1
