The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank [73]
"Whatever," he says.
I say, "I don't want to go out with anyone else." I feel relieved saying these words, until I see that they have no effect on him.
"It's not that," he says.
"What is it?"
He takes a deep breath. "I fell in love with someone else," he says.
"Oh," I say. "Well." I once heard someone describe jealousy as ice water coursing through your veins, but in mine it's more like vomit.
"It's not that you're not great—you are great," he says. "I just thought you were different."
"What do you mean?" I say.
He says, "At the wedding, you seemed different from..." he hesitates "from who you turned out to be."
It takes me a second to realize—he means he fell in love with me! Then I realize he also means he fell out of love with me.
My voice is so low that even I can't hear it when I say, "Who did I turn out to be?" I have to repeat myself.
He shakes his head; I see that he doesn't want to hurt me, which hurts even more. "No," I say, "really, I want to know who I turned out to be."
"Like someone from my high school," he says.
I think of Faith and Bonnie in gym.
"Or I felt like I was in high school and I was going after you," he says. "Like I had to earn you or win you or something."
"Yeah," I say.
"We were dating," he says. "I don't even know how to date."
"But I don't either," I say.
He doesn't react. He can't hear me anymore; he's decided who I am, and that I am not for him.
"I know I'm weird," he says, "but for me our relationship started when I met you at the wedding."
"Same," I say.
"You're not the same, though, Jane," he says, and his voice is careful again. "You let me know that I had to ask you out, with notice, for dates. Datey dates."
"Datey dates," I say, though he has no way of knowing this is an expression I use myself.
"It's not that you did anything wrong," he says. "I mean, you're the normal one."
"I am not normal," I say to myself.
"I'm sorry," he says, and he means it.
"Who did you think I was?" I say. "At the wedding."
He shakes his head.
"Tell me," I say.
He looks at me as though I'm a good friend, and he lets himself reminisce about the person he was in love with. "You were really funny and smart and open," he says. "You were out there."
"I was out there," I say.
His voice is sad. "Yup."
"Listen," I say. He's sympathetic but I can tell he's wondering how long this will take, and I have to fight myself not to say good-bye and stand. "I got scared," I say.
He seems to hear me, but I don't know which me—maybe just the friend he hopes I will turn out to be.
"I felt the way you did at the wedding," I say. "But I'm bad at men."
He laughs for the first time in a long while.
"You get all these voices about what a woman is supposed to be like—you know, feminine." I do not want to continue. "And I've spent my whole life trying not to hear them. But . . ." I steel myself to go on, "I wanted to be with you so much that I listened."
He nods, slowly, and I can tell he's starting to see me, the me he thought I was and am.
Still, it takes all of my courage to say, "Show me your cartoons."
On the way to his apartment, I tell him that he can hold Jezebel's leash if he wants to, and he does.
I follow him up the steps to his building, climbing over the ghost of me from last night, up to his apartment on the top floor. Jezebel and I wait outside while he closes the cat in his bedroom. Then he leads us to his study, which has big dormer windows, all of them open, facing the backyard. He asks if I want a glass of wine, and I say yes.
One wall is covered with taped-up cartoons in black ink and watercolor.
I find the gallery of scents from my dog museum. Sea horses bobbing. I see cartoon him up there pining for cartoon me.
He hands me my wine. And I tell him that his cartoons are beautiful and funny and sad and true.
He smiles.
I ask him what else the review of his dreams says about him. He likes this question. He thinks. Then he says, "Robert Wexler is a goofball in search of truth."
I think, I'm a truthball in search