What He's Been Missing

He tried

again: “I just want to say I’m sorry.”

“You think I’m gullible.”

“Rach, I’m—”

“You think my life is so empty that I’ll just be your fool. Come along for a ride. Short. Fast. Give you what you want. All while I think I’m getting what I want. When, you know, we both know you’ll be gone before that ever happens.”

“She’s my ex-girlfriend. We—”

“I don’t want to know! I don’t give a fuck who she is. Who you were.”

“I have to, Rachel. I have to tell, because—”

“Because what?” I stopped him. “Because you don’t want me to hate you? You don’t want me to think of you like every other woman does? To know who you are? To sleep with you again? Is that why?”

“No. I have to tell you the truth, because I don’t want to lie to you anymore.” His voice was cracking. He stopped and I heard a plop against the door that sounded like him leaning up against it. “Because I can’t lose you.”

“Maybe you never had me to lose.”

We were quiet for a minute and then I saw a little black rectangle slide through the small space beneath the door.

“Look at the floor near the door,” Xavier said. “It’s my cellphone. My code is 1905. Her name is Anabell.”

“What do I need that for? You think this is high school? You think I’m about to call some woman about you? Please!”

“If you look at my text messages, you’ll see that we stopped seeing each other a month before Ian’s wedding. She had a real bad time with it. Went to therapy. I even went with her. Thought it would help, but it only got worse. Then I didn’t know how to say good-bye. Now I’m just afraid I’ll hurt her too much if I tell her the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That I’m in love with someone else.”

“Well, that love should’ve made you tell me what was up a long time before your cell phone went off at the wrong time.”

“Rachel, you have to believe me,” Xavier said. “I thought I’d be able to get back to Chicago, sit her down somewhere, and tell her the truth. I just couldn’t do it over the phone. And I didn’t want to bring you any drama if I didn’t have to. I didn’t want our start to be dirty with one of my endings. I wanted us to just be happy.”

“Too late,” I said, getting up from my corner on the bed.

“I’m really trying to change. Please don’t hold this against me.”

I got into the bed. I could smell him everywhere.

I looked at the cell phone on the floor.

“Just read the texts,” Xavier said. “Call her if you want. I don’t care anymore.”

Donnica was standing on Peachtree in front of the office when I pulled up. She was wearing teal suede platform stilettos, an orange miniskirt, and a matching fur jacket. A tumbleweed puff of a dog was trapped in her embrace. Cars in swiftly moving traffic tried to cross lanes to get to her curb to stare.

“I’m sorry I came by your office without no invitation—I know that’s ghetto, but I had to!” She was sitting across from me in my office, crying and staining the dog’s tan coat with indigo teardrops from her fake eyelashes.

“You’re fine, darling,” I said. “I can see you’re upset.”

“I ain’t know what to do. Who else to talk to about this.” She clenched the little dog tighter and he jumped, but she caught him before he could escape. “I’m just so motherfucking pissed off.” Her sadness was punctuated by angry inflections in her voice each time she said a polysyllabic word. The dog jumped again.

“Hey, I’ll hold the dog,” I said, standing to reach for the dog. “You talk!” I said louder so Krista could hear me outside, “Krista, get Ms. Grant some water!” I looked back at Donnica.

She was blowing her nose on a Hermès pocket square.