Tammy reached across the dining room table and put a sympathetic hand on top of mine. “Be happy for him. He seems better these days. More at peace. If you had seen him after you two broke up, you’d be happy for him now.”
I took my hand away from hers and got up from the table, nearly colliding with Veronica, who was coming back into the dining room with a tray of martinis.
“What’s going on?” she asked, when she saw the look on my face.
“I have to go,” I said.
Veronica turned on Tammy. “Did you tell her?”
“She asked,” Tammy answered. “What did you want me to do? Lie?”
“It’s okay,” I said to both of them. “I just need to . . . go.”
“I can’t believe you told her.” Veronica threw her sister a baleful look. Then she said to me, “No, Davie, you’re staying here. We’ve still got a lot of work to do on the invitations. You’re my bridesmaid. This is your duty.”
I no longer had the mental energy to engage in an argument with Veronica. I just grabbed my purse from where I had deposited it on the table and rushed out the door, not stopping to retrieve my coat from the closet where Veronica had hung it.
I wasn’t suffocating, but I had to work on breathing. In fact, something inside of me wanted to hold my breath until it hurt, wanted to hold my breath until James dating Erica London again was no longer true.
I got in my car and drove back to my apartment. I couldn’t let the Atwater musician I was staying with now see me like this. I was supposed to be the professional in our relationship, and I didn’t want him to see me this upset over a guy I had only dated for four months, a guy who had dumped me over a year ago.
But I had loved James for almost forever. Even before I knew him, I waited for him and I loved him. And now he was back in Los Angeles, and he was dating a woman who had chosen a TV series and a puff piece in Celeb Weekly over him. And now he would probably marry her. And I would never ever have my Molly Ringwald Ending.
I pulled into the club parking lot and got out of the car, but I didn’t go up to my apartment. Instead, my thoughts chased me out to the busy sidewalk, and the next thing I knew, I was walking up Vine in short angry strides, my arms folded around me. The night air was nippy and I was only wearing a yellow vest over my usual Strokes T-shirt.
But I didn’t go back for a jacket. I kept on walking. It occurred to me for the first time in years: Life is hard. Even when it looks easy, it’s hard. And you know what? The problem with knowing you’re insane is that you can no longer do anything truly crazy, because you can see your imagined actions for what they are: psycho.
But my heart was screaming for me to go to James. Go to him now and get him to take you back.
My brain also wanted to see him, but for different reasons. On some perverse level, it wanted to see him happy with Erica London so that I could stop carrying around this constant guilt over what I had done to him. My brain wanted me to stop longing for him before I went to sleep at night. It wanted me to stop thinking about him every time I heard some Muzak eighties song in an elevator or at the grocery store. It was time for the obsession with James to stop once and for all. That would be the best thing for me, my brain insisted.
My brain and my heart warred until I was in front of the Metrolink station. Then a crystal-clear idea formed: a note. I would go to his house and leave him a note like the one I had given him in high school.
. . .
The cool October night air bit into my skin, when I emerged from the Metrolink station on Vermont. And as I hiked up the commercial street toward the Los Feliz Hills, I couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that I had been replaced by the woman who plays the smiling black wife in antacid commercials. A woman who was all unblemished light skin, glossy weave, and artificially whitened teeth. A woman who was not me.