Come See About Me (36 page)

Liam’s ex,
Natalie. She nods at the look of recognition in my face, her eyes bitter.

“Then I guess
you’re the one with the plaything,” I declare.

Natalie’s head
snaps back as though I’ve made physical contact with her. “I see you’ve heard
his version.”

“Where is he?” I
ask.

Natalie opens
the door wider for me, motioning for me to come in. Once I’ve stepped inside
she shuts the door behind me and replies, “He’s not here at the moment. It’s
just me.” She smiles disingenuously. “Are those your earrings beside the bed or
do they belong to one of his other girls?”

I refuse to take
her bait but my cheeks are smarting. Liam and I never actually talked about
being exclusive. As things went on I just sort of assumed…

But what’s his
ex doing here? He told me it was over for good.

Natalie folds
her arms across her chest as we face off against each other in the hallway.
“Look, I know Liam’s cast me as the villain in this, but you have to
understand, we both made a lot of mistakes. There are things about him that
didn’t come out in the press, things you likely know nothing about. But I’m
here because after all we’ve been through I still think a relationship of four
years is worth saving.” Natalie lowers her eyes, her lips puckering as though
she’s holding back a sob. “I hope you’re not going to try to stand in the way
of that.”

I can’t believe
my ears. Liam’s message to me, only twenty minutes ago, was just that he
couldn’t see me for a few days, but Natalie’s making it sound as though they’re
ready to start over.

“Where is he?” I
say for the second time. “When’s he coming back?”

“Please, wait a
moment.” Natalie turns and stalks towards the bedroom. When she returns,
seconds later, she’d holding my earrings in her right hand. “Here they are,”
she says, dropping them into my palm. “They’re lovely. Did he buy them for
you?”

I don’t want to
talk to her—everything about this seems wrong—but I clutch the earrings and
mumble, “No. My grandmother.”

Natalie’s eyes
are glassy. She stares past me, blinking back tears. “Your grandmother has very
good taste,” she says.

The last time I
saw anyone this sad I was looking in the mirror, months ago. I don’t know what
to say. I’m stunned that Liam could lead me to believe one thing while acting
to bring about its polar opposite. Did he plan to wait until the play was over
to tell me?

I know we were
never going to add up to anything, but the deceit still comes as a shock. I
thought I could trust him.

“I thought you
were with someone else,” I rasp. “I thought—”

Natalie wipes her
eyes with her left hand. “I was. And that was stupid of me. I thought I could
get back at him for things he’d done, but it doesn’t work that way. Look, I
know he probably seemed to be one thing to you, and it’s not that he
isn’t
that person, but there a lot of sides to him, and I’m not saying this in
bitterness but…” She drops her hands to her sides and straightens her spine. “I
can guarantee that you’re not the only one he has over here because that’s not
what he’s like. He likes to keep
busy
.” The final word is delivered with
a venom that makes me wince.

I stare at
Natalie, trying to find some sense in the awful things she’s saying, some
kernel of information that resembles the Liam I’ve gotten to know over the past
couple of months.

“You’re younger
than his usual type,” she adds. “I guess you know about Becca and Isabelle, but
there were others before. I don’t know all their names but the ones I found out
about were all older than him.”

My face and neck
are hot. I feel dizzy. My stomach’s sour; the way it gets if I drink too much.

“I’m sorry that
I have to be the one to tell you these things,” Natalie says, a line popping up
between her eyes. “But I really need you to leave Liam and me alone to work
things out. So much has happened, but there’s a chance we could still have a
life together.” She begs me with her eyes.

I don’t have any
words for her. I’m free-falling inside my head. The only thing to do now is get
away from here as fast as I can.

I turn and latch
onto the doorknob, twist it open and bolt into the hallway. What shocks me the
most is that I didn’t think he could really hurt me. Lately I’d come to realize
it would be difficult to say goodbye, but nowhere near as bad as this poisonous
feeling of betrayal.

The worst part
is it isn’t really my betrayal at all—since Liam and I were never officially
together. Apparently it’s Natalie’s. And I made it easy. He didn’t even have to
try with me; I was just there for the taking.

I’m infuriated
by my own naïveté. What made me think I could trust him? He’s an actor; fooling
people is what he does for a living. And then I realize that Liam probably
won’t even see what happened between us in the same way that I do because it
was only supposed to be sex and I got my fair share too. I got everything out
of this that he did and it was my idea. He even tried to warn me off him.

I keep striding
away from his apartment, distrusting the barrage of conflicting emotions
tearing through me, and heading steadily north until I reach the train station.
Part of me doesn’t want to stop walking, even then, but I can put more distance
between Liam’s apartment and myself by jumping on the train, so I buy myself a
ticket. I call Katie from my seat in the third car and tell her we’re not going
to the theater tonight after all. She wants to know what happened, but I’m not
ready to explain yet. I know if I talk about it now my eyes will begin to drain
from a toxic mixture of anger, sadness and disappointment. And I don’t want to
be sad, of all things. Not over this.

It shouldn’t
even matter.

I go directly to
the house Katie shares with three other University of Toronto students. Having
been warned that I don’t want to talk and instead need something to do, she
soon suggests we head out with one of her housemates for food. Later still we
meet up with a second housemate who is taking a night course in film. Because
they’re watching
The Godfather II
in her class tonight and she insists
that no one will notice a few extra bodies in the lecture hall, we tag along
and watch the rise of
Vito Corleone
.

I’ve never seen
any of
The Godfather
movies and my mind can’t grasp the finer plot
details now. As soon as the class is over, I squeeze into a bathroom stall
across the hall and check text messages again, thinking maybe there’ll be one
from Liam magically able to explain away Natalie’s presence in his apartment
and the nasty things she had to say about him. But the only new message that’s
come in is one from Yunhee asking me about the play.

After that the
group of us end up at a bar, but with the rest of them being students who have
to be up early for classes tomorrow, none of them want to stay late. Katie says
I can sleep on their couch and I prolong the inevitable return to Abigail’s
house and spend the remainder of the night, my mind jumping between sleep and
wounded disbelief, in a sleeping bag that smells of stale perfume spread out
along her living room sofa.

I’m the first
one up in the morning. I hear a dog barking outside and it reminds me of
Bastien patting the neighbor’s dogs through the fence. I remember telling him
once that I wondered if the dogs barked just to get him over there, and Bastien
grinned and said that was okay, because he liked hanging out with them too,
only he wished they’d hold off until the afternoons.

Like Liam said,
I think about Bastien all the time. Being sad about Liam doesn’t change that.
In a month or so it’ll be almost like Liam and I never met. He’ll leave me
warier than before, but otherwise make no lasting impact.

I know what it’s
like to be heartbroken and I know that I’ll never really be able to feel that
about anyone but Bastien. I only wish I could’ve been smarter about Liam. If
I’d played it right, maybe it never had to hurt at all.

Sometimes it hardly seems
possible that Bastien’s nearly been gone a year. I wish we were going home to
Burnaby together for Christmas like we did last year and that he could see what
I’m doing with
Johnny Yang
. I wish we could talk about
The Handmaid’s
Tale
. Imagining how he’d feel about it isn’t the same as knowing. Even
having him here to fight with me or walk away when I pissed him off would be
better than not having him at all. Just knowing that he was out there somewhere
in the world, even if we weren’t together, would be better.

But I’m glad
that Abigail let me move in with her in Oakville, and for my job at O’Keefe’s,
and most of all, that Yunhee’s going to be all right. When I text her the next
day to explain what happened with Liam she calls me long distance from Ottawa
to commiserate with me. But I still don’t really want to talk about it much. I
listen to her call him a prick and other names, but she knows as well as I do
that he didn’t make me any promises.

I can’t decide
whether I’m more sad or angry. It’s this lingering thing that I drag around in
the pit of my stomach. Not the kind of thing that would stop me in my tracks
like Bastien’s loss did, but the type that makes me tired and makes it harder
to laugh when somebody says something funny. It’s as if I’m on a time delay; I
need an extra ten seconds for a joke to register.

I notice when I
go to the dentist on Friday for my final crown appointment that everyone from
the receptionist, to the hygienist and the dentist himself, seems downright
jovial.

A bad cold keeps
Marta in bed on Saturday and she calls Kevin to come in and help me out at
O’Keefe’s for a few hours in the afternoon. Since Kevin’s a talker—unless he’s
exhausted—he quickly makes me feel monosyllabic in comparison.

I pretend I’m
hung over so he won’t ask me what’s wrong. Then Kevin tells me Marta keeps some
aspirin in the back room but that he always finds the best cure is cold pizza.

I smile at the
fact that a fifteen-year-old is giving me hangover advice and point out that
it’s not really possible for me to get my hands on cold pizza at the moment.
“Warm pizza might work too,” he says. “Or chocolate milk is another good one.”

I let Kevin go
out in search of chocolate milk for me and when he comes back with a small
carton and a straw we somehow land on the topic of comic books. I tell him,
without going into all the back-story about Bastien, that I’m trying to write
one, but more like a graphic novel. Just yesterday I checked out several from
the library including
Black Hole
,
Scott Pilgrim
,
Blankets
and
Skim
. Kevin says he’s really only read some manga and superhero
stuff but that he has a friend who’s into the same kind of stuff that it sounds
like I’m into.

“She’s a wicked
artist,” he proclaims. “Better than half of the stuff you see in print for
Marvel and Tokyopop.”

I wonder to
myself if his friend would ever consider working with me on
Johnny Yang
,
but I have no way of paying her, and anyway, it’s too soon. I should finish the
text first. Then maybe I can get Kevin to introduce us.

Sunday I’m on my
own at O’Keefe’s as usual (because the shop’s only open for five hours). In the
middle of the day I close up for ten minutes so I can refuel with coffee at The
Cunning Café, and standing in line there I can’t shake the uncomfortable
feeling that Liam and Natalie could sashay through the door together at any
moment. Or maybe they’ve already left the country.
Philadelphia, Here I Come
closed on Friday and if they’re back together Liam doesn’t have a reason to
avoid Ireland any longer.

He’ll hate their
reunion being in the press, though. He’d want it to be private.

For the first
couple of days I was surprised that he didn’t bother to call after my run-in
with Natalie. I guess he figured there was no point since she’d done his dirty
work for him. Of everything, that’s what makes me the angriest, that he didn’t
own up to his actions.

When I was in
the vicinity of free Wi-Fi a couple of days ago, still in shock about what
Natalie had told me, I searched the Internet for Liam’s name again along with
the word “affair.” Though I couldn’t find any evidence that Liam was sleeping
around on Natalie while they were together, there were plenty of entries
concerning Isabelle Fitzgerald and Becca McNamara. Liam’s involvement with
Isabelle, which occurred in the direct wake of his break-up with Natalie, was
brief and concluded amicably. But Becca’s relationship with Liam started at a
private party where an intoxicated Liam had just bedded someone else in an
upstairs room while the party continued downstairs. Becca is quoted as saying
she initially rebuffed his advances, but she admits that she’d changed her mind
by the end of the night and blames her lapse in judgment on Liam’s charm and “a
very convincing imitation of sincerity.” Intimate details of their sexual
relationship are available on various gossip sites, but those I’ve avoided. I
don’t want to hear what he did with Becca and how she felt about it. Reading
about Liam trying to snare Becca right after sleeping with someone else makes
him sound hopelessly sleazy.

I miss the
person I thought he was and sometimes wish I hadn’t met Natalie and found out
the truth. But I don’t allow myself to wallow in disappointment; I just want to
jump to the end of the process of putting Liam behind me and feel normal
again—as normal as I possibly can without Bastien.

Being busy
didn’t help when I lost Bastien, but I know it will now, and after my shift,
when I stop in to check how Marta’s feeling (thankfully much improved), I let
her know that I’d be happy to put in some extra hours before I go away for
Christmas if she’d like me to. She tells me that she thinks additional shifts
would be quite helpful over the season and that she’ll mull over exactly what
days and times would be best and let me know soon.