Condos. Joking with each other over lunch. For the first time in a while, I feel lonely for Drew. Jerk though he was, he used to be my jerk.
“You know how he finally bought the ring and proposed?” Stacy asks me. Uh, is this a pop quiz? “Nate,” she says, answering her own question.
“Get out. Mr. Love Is a Battlefield? Mr. Grumpy Cat transformed into a human being? I’m surprised he didn’t hiss and turn into a pile of ashes when you showed him the ring.”
Nate tried to help his friends’ relationship? Nate the great divorce attorney was pushing for his friends to get married?
“He made Mike get the ring, haggled with the jeweler until he took down the price. Then he and Mike talked about where to take me to propose, everything. They decided on Wrigley Field, the very minute the Cubs lost. He knew it would cheer me up.” She smiles. “Nate pays attention to the people he cares about. He’s a genuinely good guy. I’ll admit, you didn’t see the best of him yesterday afternoon.” Stacy sighs. “Sometimes he can be a real asshole. I love him, and even I know it.”
“So does being an asshole just come with the lawyerly territory?” I ask.
Stacy smiles, but only a little. “He’s not usually this bad. I know he’s doing his best with this wedding, being the best man. But the love thing, seeing us celebrate it all weekend; I know it’s taking a toll on him.” She looks sad.
“What happened?” I ask. I smell a tragic back story. Actually, my stomach tightens just thinking about it. Is it bad that I’m curious?
“His girlfriend, Phoebe. She was almost his fiancée. Mike tells me Nate had his own ring, his own perfect spot to propose picked out. They’re both lawyers, met at U Chicago law school. Both really smart, really type A. It seemed like a match made in heaven.” Stacy shrugs. “And then she dumped him. Out of the blue. She told him on a Friday afternoon that it was over, packed her shit and headed out Saturday morning. There was a moving van waiting and everything when Nate woke up. She’d planned the whole thing. She was gone in twenty-four hours. I’d never seen Nate surprised before. Or crushed.” She sighs. “I didn’t like seeing it. He hid it fast, but those first few days.” She shakes her head.
“Jesus,” I whisper. “When did this happen?”
“Six months ago,” she says.
Holy shit. That wound’s probably still fresh, especially at a wedding. No wonder he’s been so pissed off.
“Then Nate kind of turned into robot lawyer man, and we couldn’t get him to even mention Phoebe’s name. He never talks about it, but I know it’s been eating at him.” She crunches a peanut.
“Why did she leave him? Do you know?” I ask, feeling that familiar knot in my stomach. Boy, do I know what it’s like to have abandonment issues. “There has to be a reason.”
“This was the part that really got to him. Phoebe told him she had finally met her soul mate. It was total serendipity. He was just some guy who lent her his coat at Wrigley Field one night. She told Nate the second she looked into this other guy’s eyes, she knew it was meant to be.” Stacy says it all with kind of a sarcastic bite, but I’m not so quick to make fun.
Isn’t that what I write about for a living? Two strangers meeting across a crowded room, or at a corporate meeting? Or—if I’m feeling kinky enough—in a Hungarian sex dungeon? Whatever the venue, I love to write about that moment of connection, eyes meeting, pulses elevating. That instant when you spy in someone else the missing piece of your soul.
Hell, how many times have I written the plotline of “she’s engaged to marry some bland doofus and ends up running off with her hot sports manager/corporate tycoon/rock star soul mate”? Normally, those “doofuses” are only guilty of not being the heroine’s perfect match. They’re usually sweet, kind, Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle types. Why don’t I ever write what happens to those people after they’re dumped?
Why don’t I talk about their quest to find love again, when they’ve been so thoroughly shafted?
I really need to think about the damage I inflict on fictional people.
“I guess this puts things in a whole new light,” I say softly.
“Give him a chance to get better. Hey, even if it’s just a fun fling in Vegas, I think it’ll be good for you both.” Stacy takes a sip of her Mai Tai. “He’s a real catch. When we were in college, I had a crush on Nate before Mike. Don’t tell him that.”
“What about hot college Nate?” Mike asks, ears perking up like a fox whose fiancée is hitting on someone else.
“What about still-hot me?” Nate asks, sitting down, putting his phone back in his pocket.
While Stacy and Mike banter some more, I clear my throat. Maybe it’s the writer in me, but now that I’m imagining Nate as the stoic, alpha lawyer whose heart was shattered and who can never love again, I’m finding a way to relate to him better.