“Do you remember what Brenna and Eddie said? It was at brunch when they were talking about their husbands.” I thought back to the day. My friends were married to the men of their dreams. Happy, in love, living a life that so many could only dream of. I wanted that life. I wanted to go to sleep knowing that there was someone close to me who cared that I woke up the next morning. That wasn’t the point of coming to New York but here I was.
“What part?”
“That sometimes you didn’t have to look for love, it just showed up. But then if it felt right, if the person was Mr. Right, you couldn’t let him go, you had to hold on.”
“Is that what you expect me to do? Hang on? To someone who won’t even answer my texts?”
“If he’s the one, then you can't let go,” she said. I knew that she was telling the truth, but it was still difficult to think about since the space between us felt so large. He wasn’t talking to me and I had done something almost unforgivable to him. Who was I to ask him to take me back? Why would he even listen? Would I do it if I was him? I had no idea. I felt desperate thinking about it. I didn’t like to think about our life apart. The weeks that we had been together had been some of the best of my life. He was Mr. Right. He was it and I had managed to lose him.
“How do I know it’s him?”
“I can’t tell you that for sure but judging from the way you’ve been lately, I think he might be pretty high in the running.” I wasn’t asking because I didn’t know. I was just scared that I had messed up the one true and honest romance of my life with a man who wasn’t going to dog me out of the blue.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked.
“Sure. Anything,” she said.
“What happened with your guy? Mr. Wrong?” I asked. I saw her hesitate and regretted asking her. I
didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. I thought that since I had just shared with her, she would be okay with opening up too. I retreated. We were still boss and employee, maybe that was the reason why she was comfortable opening up to me. As much as it felt like we were friends, there were still a couple of limits there.
“What do you want to know?” She asked me.
“How did you know that he wasn’t the one?”
“I think that was when I realized that I loved him, I loved him more than anything, but he would never love me in the same way. I knew that there was some love there, but not the kind I wanted and not enough.”
That opened up an uncomfortable can of worms for me. After all my failed attempts at romance, I wanted to say that I knew what love was, but did I really? I knew what I was feeling, but who’s to say that Easton felt the same way? He would be right at the moment to hate everything about me. He had no reason ever again to listen to a word that I had to say to him, but that was all I wanted.
“What if Easton doesn’t love me?”
“You don’t really believe that’s true, do you?”
“What if it is? What if this was all a fling for him?” I asked. What if, after I had lost days alone in my house, thinking about him, trying to contact him, thinking about how to make things right and how sorry I was, he was out there living his life like normal? He had moved on and he was seeing someone new. I never crossed his mind anymore. The thought was so painful it dug up the feelings I had been trying to combat since the interview came out. It brought back every humiliation that I had suffered in relationships in my life.
After being burned so many times, you tended to start to get cautious. You didn’t want to look desperate. You didn’t want to get taken for a fool. Maybe that was the wrong way to go about things, but after everything, I had a right to protect myself. I was not going to put myself out there for somebody who wasn’t going to do the same for me.
“It wasn’t just that,” Maggie said. “If you’re afraid of looking silly, by the way, you might as well forget ever being successful in love. You had no problem making Easton look like a fool during the interview. That’s the problem here I think. He put himself out there and did something that he’d never done before and to the public, you made him look like an idiot. Maybe it’s your turn to look a little foolish.”
More foolish than I already felt? I didn’t know there was still a depth lower to sink to. I got off the topic after that because I felt like I had an idea. When Maggie left, after eating our way through dessert and the leftovers were safely placed in the fridge, I finally went upstairs and took a shower. I washed my hair and scrubbed my skin raw, symbolically, and literally cleansing myself of the last few days. I didn’t like looking foolish but that was necessary sometimes. Putting yourself out there wasn’t successful one hundred percent of the time but that was no reason to stop doing it. How would anything happen if people were scared of looking foolish?
Once out of the shower I texted Maggie to ask whether she knew of any good thrift shops near me. With an address of one ten minutes away, I left. I had never been to a thrift shop before, admittedly. Never had the need to. Even when I was looking for more rare items that might have gone out of production, I tended to contact the designers directly or known collectors, rather than raid thrift shops. You could find some gems while thrifting, but thrifted clothes were also notorious for being the pits of fashion.
I walked the aisles looking over the clothes. I wanted garish, loud, mismatched, as bad as it got. I always took pride in my appearance but today, I had to flip the script. There was no use trying to look prim and put together right now. I found a tie and dye tracksuit which would do just the trick. Upping the ante, I picked up a pair of crocs and Birkenstocks, getting both. Going home with my treasures, I put the look together, giving myself 80s prom hair and throwing on all my chunky necklaces over the tracksuit. With one Birkenstock and one croc on, I hailed a cab and made my way to Rotorhead’s office building.
“You a dancer or something?” the cab driver asked.
“What?” I was in the backseat, sweating, heart pounding. The last time I had been to Easton’s office, he hadn’t been there. This look had taken me disposing of all, and I did mean all of my pride to put together and I really wanted the payoff at the end.
“Uh, no.”
“Going to a party or something?” he asked.
“Not that either.”
“That’s interesting fashion you’ve got there. You a fashion blogger or something?” he asked. A fashion blogger in a get-up like this deserved to be demoted immediately. I wasn’t a fashion blogger, I was just trying to prove a point. At the building, I took a deep breath and walked in, pretending not to notice everyone staring at me. They were right, I looked ridiculous, but I had to do it. The lift to their floor felt like it took ages. At the reception desk, I saw the receptionist physically restrain herself from saying anything about the way I looked.
“I want to talk to Easton Schultz. Is he in?”