One less thing to stress about is a good thing in my book, so I give my gorgeous dog,
Ms. Pac-Man, a kiss on the snout as I grab my purse from the entryway table. She wags
her flag-sized, blond fluffy tail and places a big paw on my leg, her way of saying
goodbye. She’s a good dog, she’s well-trained, and she’s also particularly well-mannered
when I leave her home alone in the Victorian she and I share just a few blocks from
San Francisco Bay. She spends the entire time I’m gone snoozing on her Pac-Man decorated
dog bed. I know this because I once set up my phone camera to verify what I suspected
– that she was indeed a perfect canine.
“I’d tell you to be good, but I know you will,” I say, as I scratch her ears. She
leans her soft head into my hand, and I smile as I pet her. Sometimes, I think this
dog is the only reason I’ve smiled at all in the last year. Not much has made me happy,
but yet here she is, ably filling that role as only a dog can.
Then I’m off to another solo Sunday breakfast, heading down the stairs, to the garage,
into the car, and onto the street, driving past a local grocery store, where bag boys
fill canvas sacks with organic chickens, locally-grown asparagus and all-natural,
wheat-free cereals, then a membership-only nail salon that I don’t go to. Because
I do my own nails, in alternating colors, and today I am wearing mint green and purple.
I turn the radio up louder, and even though I should listen to angry girl rock given
how my heart’s been in a sling for the last year, I can’t bring myself to like that
kind of music. Because deep down I am still the old standards I love. So I sing along
to the music
– Frank Sinatra’s I’ve Got You Under My Skin – as I motor up steep hills that burn
legs while walking, then down a rollercoaster-y dip on my way into Hayes Valley. The
station shifts to the King, another favorite of this retro-loving girl, and he’s now
crooning Can’t Help Falling in Love.
My favorite song ever.
The song Todd didn’t want to be our wedding song since he’d insisted on Have I Told
You Lately That I Love You, the perfect tune since that’s how he felt about me, he
claimed.
A red Honda scoots out of the prime spot right in front of the restaurant. As I glide
my orange Mini Cooper into the space, I mouth a silent thank you to the parking gods.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m grateful for the way they look out for me and reward me with
perfect little nooks for my car, but I have other daydreams too.
Yet those ones seem so far out of reach.
Mainly, I’d like to find a guy who’s not a weasel. The kind of fella who doesn’t ring
you up from Sin City to call the whole thing off the day before you’re supposed to
slip into a gorgeous white dress with that perfect ‘50s flair you were looking for.
“Listen, I’ve had a change of heart,” Todd said on his voice mail because I was on
another call with the cake shop. It would have been a perfect wedding. We had what
I thought was a perfect life. Cramped but cozy apartment in the Mission, my business
was taking off like crazy and he’d helped launch it, we’d even picked out names for
kids we might have some day – Charlotte for a girl and Hunter for a boy.
Then he had an epiphany at a poker table in Vegas when he met a gymnast he married
instead.
The day before our wedding.
“I don’t really see myself having kids with you, or a life with you, so let’s nip
this thing in the bud,” he said in his phone message.
So yeah. That kind of sucked.
But as I listen to this song, I find myself longing for something more in my life.
For someone to join me for breakfast at my favorite diner in the city. Maybe a sweet
kiss, a nice goodnight make-out session, and maybe some love too, the kind of love
that lasts, always and forever, without leaving you in the lurch, I admit silently,
as Elvis croons about taking my hand, and my whole heart too.
Why do I do this? Why do I listen to this music that tortures me? I thought my almost-hubs
and I were meant to be, and I was wrong, but yet as The King sings about falling in
love, I can’t deny that there’s a part of me that wouldn’t mind falling in love again.
The kind where you can’t help it.
The kind that takes your breath away.
The kind that’s meant to be.
I know, I know. It’s like asking for the moon, so I’ll stop my silly daydreaming.
But, hey, at least right now I have a coveted parking spot.
I snatch my purse with its saucy cartoon of a pirate girl winking ironed on to the
side and head into The Best Doughnut Shop in the City. It’s not really a doughnut
shop. It used to be a doughnut shop and then the owner converted it into a diner with
green upholstered vinyl seats. It’s my absolute favorite diner in the whole city and
it feels a bit like my special place.
I tell the hostess I’m a party of one, and look, I’m not going to lie – it still hurts
to ask for that solo table, even though Todd never once, in all our five years together,
came with me to this diner. He said he didn’t care for cheap, hole-in-the-wall eateries.
Snob.
But even when I came here all by myself for Sunday breakfast, at least I was still
part of a two-some, even if the other someone was sleeping in. Now, it’s just me.
Party of one.
I keep my chin up, as the hostess guides me to a two-top, one of the last remaining
ones. The place is packed. See Todd? You don’t know what you were missing. This cheap
diner knows how to bring it in the breakfast department.
I sit down and smooth out my flouncy knee-length poodle skirt. Even if I’m all by
my lonesome, I still like to dress up. Fashion is like a shield to me. The clothes
I wear center me, make me strong and steely with their distinctive style.
I order my usual – scrambled eggs, toast and a Diet Coke. Yep, I’m one of those people
who drinks soda in the mornings. I’m sure I should kick the habit for many reasons,
including the fact that Todd was my Diet Coke partner in crime, and we both downed
the carbonated beverage morning, noon and night. But I refuse to let the memory of
what we shared ruin my favorite drink.
One minute later the waitress brings me a glass that’s fizzing just the right amount.
I thank her and take a drink, then reach for my laptop from my bag. I might as well
work on my fashion blog as I wait for the food. As I flip open the laptop, the waitress
guides a gorgeous young blond over to the two-top next to me. I scan her outfit first.
The gal is wearing sparkling white running shoes with a pink swirly stripe, black
workout pants and a color-coordinated pink and black form-fitting, snug workout top.
There’s something about her face though that’s eerily familiar. Like I’ve seen her
somewhere, but I can’t place it.
She flashes me a warm smile that shows off perfect teeth.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hey.”
“This placed is jammed today.”
“It’s like this every Sunday. The food is amazing.”
“I’ve heard great things about it. I’m so excited to finally try it.”
Okay, maybe I won’t need the laptop. Maybe this gal and I will chat for the next thirty
minutes, seeing as she’s mighty friendly. I wouldn’t mind the company, to tell the
truth. It beats eating over a keyboard. “You will not be disappointed. Everything’s
good.”
“My husband said he’s been wanting to go to this place for the longest time. He’s
just out parking the car,” she says and tips her forehead to the door.
I half expected her to say her dad was going to join her because she looks like a
teenager. But maybe she was a teenage bride. “Well, both of you will love it then.
I’m a total regular. A devotee, as they say,” I add in a silly little affected accent
that makes her laugh.
“What do you recommend?”
“Anything. Except for hard-boiled eggs, because they’re totally gross.”
“Oh god, yes. They’re so gross. Like the most disgusting food ever.”
I lean closer and say in a conspiratorial whisper. “My ex used to love them. I couldn’t
even be in the house when he ate hard-boiled eggs.”
“You want to hear something funny? My husband used to love them too. But I laid down
the law. No hard-boiled eggs ever in my house. I cured him of his hard-boiled egg
addiction like that.” She snaps her fingers.
I hold up a hand to high five her. “You deserve major points for that.”
“Oh, look. There he is,” she says, and when I turn to follow her gaze, it’s as if
I’ve just had a pair of cleats jammed into my belly, and I don’t even play softball.
But I bet this is what it feels like when the batter slides into home and you’re the
catcher who’s not wearing a chest protector.
Blindsided.
Because she’s looking at Todd.
The diner is shrinking. The walls are closing in, gripping me. I can’t breathe. This
has to be a mistake. An error. She has to be joking. I have to be seeing things. There
is no way her husband can be Todd. There must be another man behind him, maybe a short
man I can’t see. A pipsqueak little fellow right behind Todd, who’s walking over to
her table. But there’s no mini man hiding behind him. It’s just him, and he freezes
when he sees me, then quickly recovers, taking the seat across from his wife.
Wife.
It’s as if there’s a knife in my heart, digging for all the soft spots and scooping
them out. Serving them up on the table for the two of them. The girl-child I’ve been
chatting with, my new fucking breakfast best friend, is the college-age creature from
Vegas who stole my about-to-be-husband.
I’ve never seen her in person before. I have only seen one photo I found of her on
Facebook the day after his voicemail, as I sobbed and clicked, surrounded by unopened
wedding gifts sent to our apartment. Now I feel stupid for not studying her photos
more, for not hunting out more pictures of her online. I stopped after that one –
a faraway shot of her at a gymnastics meet since, of course, she’s a gymnast – because
it hurt far too much. But now with her here in front of me, I catalogue her features.
Her cheeks are red and rosy, her skin is soft and smooth, her hair is natural blonde
and sleek, and her boobs remind me of Salma Hayek’s.
They’re so freaking huge.
Fine, I’m only six years older, but I have dark hair, and weird eyes that are sometimes
blue, sometimes green, sometimes gray, and my breasts are decent, but not dead ringers
for cantaloupes. I’m only twenty-seven and I know it sucks to be left at any age.
But the fact that he left me for a co-ed – giving himself a trophy wife for all intents
and purposes – didn’t help my self-esteem. I’d been with him for five years; she’d
been with him for one night, and she got him all the way to the altar. I got stuck
with two mixers I never use, and party-of-one as my middle name.
“Hi McKenna,” Todd says in his best business-like voice.
“Oh….” It’s like a long, slow release of air from Amber, as her mouth drops open,
and she shifts her gaze from him to me, registering who she’s been chatting with.
She recovers faster than me though, because I’m still speechless and stuck in this
chair, sitting next to Amber. She is the name of all my heartbreak, of all the ways
I fell short. Amber is the name that drummed through my brain for the better part
of the last twelve months, like an insistent hum in the pipes you can’t turn off.
Amber, Amber, Amber. The woman he wanted. The woman he chose. I will never hear that
name without thinking of all that she has that I don’t. The man I once wanted to marry.
“You know, why don’t we just get a new table?” she says to Todd.
He scans the restaurant. This is the last empty table. “There’s no place else to sit,”
he says, and it’s clear he has no intention of leaving.
What’s also clear is that he’s the only of us – him and me – who doesn’t care that
he ran into his ex-fiancé. That realization smacks me hard, but it reminds me that
I need to pull myself together and channel whatever reserves of steely coolness I
have in me.
“It’s fine. I’m almost done anyway,” I manage to say even though my food hasn’t arrived.
“So how’s everything going with you?” he asks as he reaches for a menu and scans it.
He doesn’t even look at me while he’s talking. It’s not because he’s rude. It’s because
I am nothing to him. There’s a stinging feeling in the back of my eyes. I tighten
my jaw. I won’t let them see me cry.
“Great. The blog is great. The dog is great. Life is great,” I say, pretending I am
a robot, an unfeeling robot who can spit out platitudes. I have to. I have to protect
my heart because it feels like it’s being filleted. “I see you like this place now?”
“I love it. Favorite diner in the whole city.”
My throat catches, and I grit my teeth. “That’s great. And such great news about the
hard-boiled eggs too.”
He gives me a curious look.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” I affix a plastic smile when the waitress brings me my food.
She turns to Todd and Amber. They order as I slide my laptop into my bag, and consider
ditching the place right now. Who needs food when there are ex-fiancés and their new
wives to remind you of all that was stolen from you?