A Life That Fits (2 page)

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.

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...

My cell phone received another message, and I
shut it off. I couldn't talk to anyone. I would have told them all,
of course, eventually. But now everyone knew and I couldn't do
anything but accept their condolences and try to explain what I
simply didn't understand. I'd thought we were perfect together.
Forever.

I'd been wrong.

I simply hadn't been enough for him.

That thought, of course, just made me cry
harder, and I gave in. I cried until I had nothing left, then
picked up my poor drained husk of a self and headed for the shower.
I needed to get ready for work.

With my hand on the bathroom doorknob, I
reconsidered.

Alex and I didn't work together, but we did
work in the same group of buildings, frequently running into each
other in the shared coffee shop even when we hadn't arranged to
meet. I could bump into him today. What the hell would I say if I
did? As if my red swollen eyes wouldn't tell him enough. And what
if he was with
her
?

Not to mention all the people, from both of
our companies, who knew us and now no doubt knew we were no longer
together. Juicy gossip traveled fast, and I'd spend my day cringing
away from everyone, afraid of breaking down under their sympathy.
Or worse, of seeing in their eyes that they'd known about Alex's
affair all along. Poor Andrea, so gullible. The last to know.

I knew I should go to work. Anna expected me.
After a conference I always had to debrief her and her useless
tag-along co-boss Gary. Plus I had tons of people to follow up with
from the conference. And Alex would win if I stayed home.

Even so, I couldn't do it.

I emailed Anna and explained that I'd picked
up a bad cold on the plane trip home and wouldn't be in. Since I
knew she knew about Alex and I didn't want her to realize he was
the reason I wasn't coming in, I added, "Unfortunately, that wasn't
a Facebook glitch. Alex left me yesterday. I'll be fine,
though."

I did consider pretending the breakup had
been mutual, but I didn't know who he'd confided in and I felt
enough of a fool already without lying and getting caught. I
wouldn't get caught on the cold thing, though, since my crying had
me easily as stuffed up as a cold would have and Anna's horror of
germs would mean she'd be glad I'd stayed home, so that lie I sent
off.

Then I went back to bed.

When I woke up later that day, I made myself
post a generic "yes, we've split up, yes, I'm fine, no, I don't
need anything" message on Facebook and then shut it down with
relief. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I did respond to the email
from my poor shocked parents in Vancouver, who'd been informed of
the breakup by Alex's equally shocked parents, so they'd know I was
alive but otherwise I ignored the text messages and phone calls and
emails.

I appreciated people's concern, of course,
but only dimly. Mostly I hated it. I hated the need for it, I hated
the hint of 'about time you guys broke up' I sensed in some of the
messages, and I utterly despised the single friend who told me that
now we could go out man-hunting together. I didn't want to hunt
men. I had Alex in my sights and I wouldn't look for anyone
else.

All I did that day was look for him. I roamed
his Facebook page over and over, went back through three months of
his inane Twitter posts, and searched the apartment from one end to
the other for anything he might have left behind that would give me
a clue as to what I'd done wrong. I found nothing, but I looked
until I was crying too hard to see then collapsed on the couch
until I calmed down enough to search again.

Tuesday morning, after another sleepless
night, I only thought for a minute or two before sending Anna an
email claiming my cold had worsened so I still couldn't come in. I
knew that the longer I stayed home the more likely it was that
everyone at work would realize I was hiding from the Alex
situation, but I couldn't make myself care. The thought of running
into him was unbearable.

Since I hadn't found anything useful in my
online and in-apartment stalking on Monday, I spent Tuesday typing
everything I could remember from the last few months into what
eventually became a fifty-page Word file. There
had
to be
something. I'd done something.

When I collapsed in tears after a few hours
of fruitless recollection, I had a shock of awful realization.

No, there did
not
have to be
something. Maybe it wasn't what I'd done, it was who I was. If he
just didn't want me any more, then nothing I could do would change
it.

I forced that thought away the second it hit
me, refusing to allow it to take root. Not an option. He had loved
me. He would love me again. I would find the key.

Wednesday, I told Anna that I would let her
know when I felt well enough to come back and promised I would
start working from home. I didn't promise how much, though, so I
set aside an hour morning and afternoon for work then spent the
rest of the time thinking and analyzing the Word file I'd made,
though I was often crying too hard to read it.

Two friends called and left messages that
afternoon, since I didn't answer the phone, offering to come over
and keep me company. Sweet of them, but I couldn't imagine having
to talk to anyone so I sent text messages and claimed to feel
better on my own. They made me promise I'd let them know if I
needed anything, and I promised even though I knew I wouldn't. The
only thing I needed was the answer to what I'd done wrong, and they
couldn't give me that. I had to find it myself.

Every aspect of my life had been built on
Alex. He was my first and only kiss and boyfriend and lover, my
best friend and confidant, and without him I felt like the core of
my life was gone and the weak outer shell was far too shaky to
stand alone.
I
was too shaky to stand alone.

I would get him back. I had to.

But I couldn't figure out how, because he
wouldn't talk to me. I'd kept myself from trying to contact him on
Monday and Tuesday, but on Wednesday I'd realized that I'd only
managed that by assuming he would contact me, even if just to see
if I was okay. He hadn't, and maybe wouldn't, so I did. Over the
next few days I reached out in every way I could find: I sent him
text messages, phoned him, emailed, mentioned him on Twitter. By
Friday I was ready to send him a carrier pigeon, because nothing
else had worked. He'd cut me out of his life completely.

But the difference was, where I had an empty
core, he had the new woman, about whom I knew nothing. My earlier
'I'm better off not knowing' attitude had worn off and I was
desperate to find out what
she
had that I didn't. Because if
I knew I could get it and then get him back.

After the week at home, and a weekend spent
re-analyzing everything I'd found that might give me a hint about
her, I didn't even consider going in to work on Monday. My poor
eyes were so red and swollen from the still-constant crying fits
that I'd never be able to make myself look decent, and I couldn't
face the unfeeling crowds on the subway and the faked sympathy of
my coworkers and bosses.