Everything I’ll Say to You Tomorrow

1 I finally understand all those sad songs

1

I finally understand all those sad songs

Miranda

The sky is leaden. It’s one of those chilly spring afternoons, but you could tell everyone picked out clothes this morning based on the weather they wanted, not on the weather they got. Girls are wearing ballet flats with no socks (as it should always be, if my opinion matters to anyone), and you can see tons of jean jackets and very few trench coats. Trench coats are made for weather like this, I think. But I’m also thinking about how pretty people fall in love more. I’m talking about quantity, not quality. They fall in love more. They probably even get their hearts broken less.

Thoughts are piling up in my head; it’s chaos.

I don’t consider myself ugly or pretty, to tell the truth. I have a lot of things going for me, but stunning and obvious beauty is not one of them. I guess you could say I’m attractive. Once, in a work meeting, they described me as a girl with a unique look, full of character. It’s true there’s something about my face people remember. They usually remember me, but that could also be because I’ve always been one of those honest people; I don’t even come close to rude, but I do usually tell the truth when I’m asked. Telling the truth politely when asked is revolutionary these days.

He is handsome. It hurts to think about and pops up in my head like a red thread tied to the previous thought: pretty people fall in love more. Maybe that’s why the man I share my life with is dumping me.

Because he doesn’t love me anymore.

Because our time is up.

Because he’s really hot and, dammit, hot people have to share their love around with loads of girls, and I’m trying to hog it.

My reptilian brain, the most primitive part, the one that I think will have to take responsibility right now for throwing my survival instinct into turbo drive, wavers. Tristan is attractive. The typical guy who wouldn’t turn your head on the street but whom you’d keep looking at on the metro because…what is it about him? At first, you don’t know how to put it into words. It’s that very Parisian je ne sais quoi, even though he’s only ever been a tourist in Paris. Then you realize that he’s too much. Tristan is a delicious mille-feuille in many ways; he’s got layers. There are lights and shadows that give volume and texture to his attractiveness. His bad sides are what give meaning to his good sides and make them better. Tristan…with his thick, black hair combed to one side, with no prissy part, his nervous smile and his seductive smile, which, paradoxically, are very similar. His long-fingered hands. His full lips… God, they’re so full. The leaden sky of the Madrid afternoon in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I’m vaguely aware that it isn’t the first time I’m hearing that phrase, but I don’t think it was really getting through until that moment. Ever since he blurted out, “We need to talk,” everything that has come out of his mouth has sounded like Esperanto. And I don’t speak it. Esperanto is a dead language, for fuck’s sake; no one uses it.

“Miranda…really…I’m sorry.”

I’m vaguely aware (or starting to be) that my name doesn’t sound the same on his lips anymore. My name that has always taken so many forms in his mouth: Mir, Miri, Miranda, baby. And sometimes “Miss,” which he always made sound so cheeky. My name doesn’t sound like it belongs to him anymore. Whatever it was that bonded us has broken for him.

“I need you to say something, Miranda.” He closes his eyes and presses his knuckle to the hollow formed by the perfect arch between his eyebrow and the corner of his eye.

If I didn’t know him so well, I would think he was fighting back tears, but this is Tristan. He doesn’t cry in public. He’s Tristan, the reserved. He’s Tristan, who handles most feelings with his head. I’ve envied that relationship between his brain and his heart so many times. He is definitely the most balanced partner I’ve ever had.

“I’m begging you,” he insists.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. You’re dumping me. I feel like this is completely out of the blue.”

“That’s not fair. We’ve been fighting for a while.”

“Fighting to fix it,” I retort.

“Fighting, one way or another,” he insists.

Our eyes meet for a second before mine dart back to the cup of tea I didn’t realize I was clenching.

“You don’t love me anymore?” I ask him.

He huffs. He huffs and looks up at the sky, watching the heavy gray clouds skitter across.

“Of course I love you. That’s why we need to end it here.”

“You’re leaving me because you love me? What’s next? You’re dying to live?”

Tristan’s expression changes. It would be imperceptible to anyone else, but not to me. He’s getting tired of this; with each passing minute, he’s losing patience and faith.

“Look, Miri…this isn’t one of those ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ things. It’s a ‘let’s be mature and stop hurting ourselves’ thing. We can’t sustain something that has one good week, two average, and one really bad. I love you and you love me, but choosing each other over all that means we’ll be unhappy, and you have to be able to see that. We don’t deserve that.”

“Is this about the kid thing?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. I know perfectly well that’s only part of the problem, but in that instant, the only thing I can think to do is wield that weapon. I don’t know why. Maybe I feel like it will buy me time.

“We’ve already talked the kid thing to death.” He sighs.

“Maybe next year, Tristan. Maybe next year I…I could consider it. I’m at a point in my career where I want to enjoy my freedom a little more and not have any burdens.”

“Children aren’t a burden,” he objects, putting both elbows on the table. “I think you get more and more confused about that subject the more we talk about it.”

“That’s not true. It’s just that…”

“I’m not going to pressure you about that.” He looks away. He’s thrown in the towel.

“You’re leaving me because I haven’t found the time to be a mother?” And I’m trying to cause him maximum pain with that question, even though I know he won’t feel as bad as I do.

“I don’t know how to do it anymore. I feel like everything I do and everything I am makes you deeply unhappy. I’m sick of your job. The truth is your job at the magazine is worse than having a colicky baby, Miranda. It always needs attention. Because of it, we’ve postponed decisions, vacations… I can’t stand this city anymore. I came for one year…or two. I’ve been here five! For you! I can’t do it anymore. And I can’t blame you for not feeling at home, because you don’t deserve that. We’re both tired, grumpy, angry… We don’t even have sex anymore. At most every two or three weeks, and it feels suspiciously like we’re just ticking a box because we have to. You’re always too tired to tell me anything about your stuff, and I’m not enough of a zombie or alienated enough not to care.”

“I’ll quit my job,” I blurt out without thinking.

And even as I say it, I know I’m lying. I would never quit. The magazine is part of my life. It’s my passion. I adore my job as deputy editor. Tristan, who knows that, sucks his teeth. I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m making a fool of myself.

“Miri…you know I would never let you quit your job for me. You love it. And you know what? Even though I’ve had it up to here with everything it involves, I’m envious of it. I feel jealous. I want to feel like that too when my alarm goes off and I have to go to work. I’d like to love more things, more than you. I… You’re the only thing I love anymore.” Tristan’s voice quavers on the end of the sentence, but he recovers by clearing his throat, which, much to his regret, doesn’t camouflage the whimper of pain behind it.

He looks away and taps the table rhythmically with his thumb as he bites his top lip, waiting for the lump in his throat to dissolve. This never happens in movies, and it’s difficult to describe in books. When a couple is fighting, there’s a lot of silence. Long pauses where no one says anything while they’re screaming inside. There are minutes and minutes, all of them violent and uncomfortable, where they both understand that actually, there’s nothing they could say that would act as a lifesaver.

“It’s not healthy,” he tosses out finally.

“You don’t think our relationship is healthy? Since when?”

And suddenly I feel like a bag of ultra-processed food while he’s a fitness aficionado. I’m a Twinkie.

“For a while now.”

“Why?”

“Because we argue too much, we don’t talk enough, and we don’t understand each other at all. We don’t love each other the same way anymore. I don’t understand why one of us always has to end up hurt.”

I open my mouth to argue, but I hit the brakes because I know it’s ridiculous. Yesterday, we got pissed off about something so trivial: one of us had bought chicken strips instead of whole chicken breasts. The truth is neither of us had the nerve to bring up the topic of vacations. He had been asking me for a year to take a month of vacation days so we could go on a long trip. I didn’t want to, and I couldn’t leave the magazine for that long, and I was frustrated that he didn’t get that.

“I feel alone,” he confesses, “hemmed in, ignored, and anxious. I know you’re not trying to make me feel like that on purpose, but still…I’m tired. And you’re always mad at me, like nothing I say is actually enough.”

“I’m not mad at you. Why do you say that?”

It crosses my mind for a split second that I have been thinking “this guy’s an idiot” a lot lately when I hang up the phone, but I swat the idea away like a fly.

“This is really hard for me,” he says apologetically. “But it’s like that song.”

Tristan gathers up his things from the table. His phone, his watch, which he always takes off when he sits at the table with me, his wallet…

“You’re leaving? You’re just going to leave me hanging? You’re going to be a fucking coward?”

He sucks his teeth again and stares at me.

“No, but as you can see, you’ve already decided to be pissed at me for something I wasn’t even going to do. A perfect example of what I was trying to say.”

“That’s so stupid.”

“Miranda, I want to end this relationship, and you have to respect me, because you don’t know how much willpower it’s taken for me to make this decision. Please, respect the fact that I feel it’s the best for both of us. Yes, I’m putting myself first over a relationship that has kept me up so many more nights than it should have. Let me want to be healthy. And responsible. Because I love you, Miranda, and I don’t want us to hate each other. I deserve the things that I dream of. And now, if you’ll allow me, I’m going.”

He stands up and, without looking at me, distributes his things among the pockets of his suit that makes him feel so disguised. I think about his strong legs wrapping around mine in bed. I think about the short hair on his chest, rough against my cheek… I think, but all my thoughts are so jumbled it’s impossible to see any idea clearly beyond not believing anything that just happened.

“If it’s okay with you, I’ll come get my things from your house tomorrow morning, while you’re at the magazine.”

“It’s not my house,” I whisper.

“What?”

“Don’t say ‘my house.’ It’s our house.”

Tristan stifles a sigh before he responds.

“No, Miri, not anymore. Now it’s just your house.”

I keep waiting for a kiss goodbye, mostly because I’m an idiot and I haven’t absorbed any of the conversation. He dumped me. Tristan just broke up with me. He broke almost five years of a relationship, and the thing that pisses me off the most is that he didn’t give me a kiss goodbye when he left. And while I watch him disappear into the crowd, I wonder what the fuck just happened, who I am, who that guy is, what I’m going to do, and how I’m going to get up tomorrow morning knowing that he doesn’t want to live with me anymore. Or even kiss me goodbye.

I can’t believe it.

There’s no way that just happened.

I don’t know how much time passed from when he left to when I throw a five-euro bill on the table and get up, not caring whether it’s enough money to pay for our two drinks or not.

The wind whirls through the streets, picking up papers dropped on corners, cigarette butts, and dog hair as it goes. I hate the cafés on Calle de Fuencarral because they’re all sad chains with fluorescent overhead lights, but we met up in one of them; it was the closest place between both our offices. I appreciate that it didn’t happen in one of my favorite cafés, because I would never have been able to go back. Or at home. Imagine not being able to go back to your own house. Though I don’t think I can go back anywhere. I think I’m dying.

I walk along hugging myself and go right past the metro stop. I stumble on. My intuition carries me home. To my home. A home that doesn’t belong to anyone else anymore. And what will I do with his stuff tonight? With his fastidious side of the wardrobe. With the sheets that still smell like him. With the book he’s reading that he left on his bedside table. It’s not possible. This has to be a tantrum. Like that other time, right?

I haven’t even made it a kilometer when I feel the first raindrop. By the time I get to my door, I’m drenched. My teeth are chattering, but I’d be lying if I said I feel cold. What I feel is a ball of heat in the middle of my chest that radiates an intangible but real pain from my head to my toes. It’s a ghost pain that I don’t know whether to describe as squeezing, stinging, burning, or stabbing. It’s a pain that suffocates, that shrouds my chest, that digs claws into my scalp like it’s going to flay me. A monumental migraine that crouches in wait by my temples like a wild animal. I’m a hiker lost on a mountain full of hungry and rabid bears.

I can’t even cry. Crying would help me…but I can’t.

I peel off my clothes in the bathroom and leave them in a heap on the white-tile floor. I never liked these tiles because they show every piece of hair I shed. But he loves them. Loved them, I should say. The juxtaposition of the tiny white tiles with the black faucets and the iron finish on the showerhead was one of the things he liked most about my apartment. And the light. It’s such a bright apartment…exactly the opposite of how I feel. Right now, I’m darker than Sauron. I’m the Dark Ages. I’m darker than the inside of an asshole.

I crawl into bed just as I am. In my underwear. I pull the duvet over me and slide over to his pillow with my heart in my mouth. I sniff it. His cologne… When I met Tristan, his scent gave me mixed feelings. It seemed too much to me… I don’t know. It was overwhelming. I thought it was the typical cologne that dudes who like themselves too much would pick. Stupid, preconceived images from working where I work, I guess. It seemed to me like the cologne a guy who just wanted to brag about his conquests would wear. Someone who wasn’t special. Someone with no style but with money in his pocket. How wrong I was about that first impression. He was always the complete opposite.

Over time, among other things, that intense, dense smell with a touch of the exotic, that trace of bergamot and vanilla excited me, calmed me, made me feel at home and ready to leave my life behind to run away with him…all at once. Fucking Tristan.

It’s not possible. He’ll be back. It can’t be. I’m going to die without him. Fine, nobody dies from love, but I’m going to succumb to this pain in my chest. A pounding and horribly hot, throbbing headache settles in above my eyebrows.

What am I going to do without him?

What’s going to happen to all the things we were going to be? We’re not “us” anymore. Have we died? How can something that was never born die?

The phone and internet bills are in his name. I’m going to have to do paperwork. For fuck’s sake.

How am I going to tell my father? He adores him.

And Ivan? Ivan will say something tremendously practical like “There’s a reason for everything” or “Just say fuck it and dance, darling.” And I’ll feel miserable because my best friend won’t understand that I’m going to die. Because this has to be what it feels like when you’re dying. I’m not fucking around.

Has he told his family? Definitely his sister…and that pig would have celebrated. His sister and I never got along, and she definitely will have poisoned his head, telling him that I’m too independent for him. That I’m too strong. That I’ll never want to have kids and he’ll be miserable with a life he didn’t choose.

God. The pain. I open my eyes, and a light that shouldn’t be there blinds me. Great. I probably have a brain tumor. Or aliens have chosen this moment to take me to their planet. I close them again while the sensible voice in my brain reminds me that it’s just a migraine. A fucking terrible migraine. The mother of all migraines. Everything is spinning.

Tomorrow morning, I have to go to a cover shoot. And they’ll see me with my face like a newborn rat. Isn’t tomorrow the quarterly advertising meeting? I have no fucks left to give about the phrase “our sponsors” being used for the 372nd time to justify decisions about our content that I’m sure we would never otherwise agree to. It all seems a little surreal to me. Is this my life? Are these the “important” things? I can’t get my head around having to get up tomorrow with this version of reality dragging me down.

Tomorrow, Tristan will come get his stuff.

No. I need to talk to him. There are so many things I haven’t told him. There are so many things I didn’t know how put into words. Not today or for the past few months.

What if I call in sick?

Yes. I’ll wait for him here. And I’ll tell him how much I love him. He didn’t give me the chance to say it. I’ll explain to him that he can’t leave me. That you don’t abandon the person you love. The person who is the love of your life, like I am for him. I’ll remind him of all our plans. Like starting to eat less meat, buying more plants, or saving up to go to Japan. I’ll promise to complain less, to cook more, to not be a slave to the magazine, to think about us. Yes.

Yes.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell him everything. And he’ll see that I’m right. And he’ll stay.

With a little luck, this headache will have disappeared by then.

Damn you, Adele. I finally understand all those sad songs.