Down the Rabbit Hole

“How long were you two together?” Macy asked, mostly to fill the silence that remained after the waiter left.

“Almost a year.” He said it with a note of pride in his voice. “We were doing great too, until I screwed up.”

“What did you do?”

He polished off what was left of his drink and looked at her ruefully. “I canceled on some plans we made for Thanksgiving. It was the stupidest thing. I had lost my job and I wasn’t feeling good about myself—I just couldn’t meet her family like that. You know?” His face suddenly cleared. “But it’s okay, I have a job now. No worries about that!” He laughed nervously. “Doing just fine now, it was a temporary problem, a layoff.”

“Hey, a lot of people have gone through that. But good for you for getting back on your feet!”

He nodded absently. “Yeah, yeah I did. But it was too late. See, my girlfriend—I’m sorry, ex-girlfriend, she’s a great girl, but she tends to make snap decisions. That’s why we were good together. I’m the deliberate one, she’s impulsive. I thought we brought out the best in each other.”

It crossed Macy’s mind that it probably wasn’t a good sign to be talking about a guy’s ex-girlfriend right off the bat on a first date, but she wasn’t feeling any immediate attraction anyway, so she figured they might as well have a genuine conversation.

“So you canceled on Thanksgiving and she broke up with you?”

“Yeah.” He nodded to himself again. “Yeah.”

“Did you explain why you canceled?”

He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I did. But she . . . she didn’t think that was a good enough reason. I guess she thought I was being weak, or something.”

“Really? It’s a big deal to meet someone’s family. You want to be confident.”

“That’s what I said. But she said I needed to man up.”

“Man up? She said that?”

He tipped his head. “But hey, enough about me. Jeez, sorry. Tell me about you! Have you got an ex-boyfriend we can talk about?”

Macy laughed. “Sure, we can talk about me, but I have one last question. How long ago did you break up?”

“Just a couple weeks ago.”

“And you’re online dating already?” She thought of Jeremy, online after only a couple of weeks. Then again, so was she. She held up her hands. “Sorry! That sounded really judgmental.”

He leaned forward. “No, it’s okay. In fact, I want to explain. I had thought, initially, that in order to ‘man up’ in the wake of the breakup I should get right back on the horse.”

“Hence the cowboy hat?”

“Oh, hey, I never thought of that! No, see, I got online, found iLove, and who do you think popped up in my Girls You Should Look At list?”

“Your ex-girlfriend.”

“That’s right. So I put the hat picture up as a sign. To her. A reminder that we had something, that I could be someone else for a minute. Or something like that.” He gripped his head with his hands and gave a mock growl. “Argh, I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to remind her I’m still here. Like I said, she makes snap decisions. Guess I was hoping I’d be one of the ones she regretted.”

Macy thought about Jeremy’s picture. He had zillions of pictures of himself, several of them professional head shots for his job. Why had he chosen that one when there were dozens he wouldn’t have to crop? Was it meant as a signal to her?

Then she thought about his essay. It had been full of things she’d said to him, criticisms and complaints and cynical observations. She spent a horrified moment wondering if that was all she’d ever said to him, negative, complaining things. But maybe he was trying to tell her he got it. That he understood the problem she had with him.

But if that were the case, why wouldn’t he simply call her?