Chapter Nine
Arabella insists on coming with me to get my things from Jordan’s flat. I appreciate her coming, as I feel a little afraid I’ll collapse in a puddle and refuse to leave if I’m on my own.
I’ve been looking for a good time to go over there, and I know that tonight he has a show at Whitechapel Gallery, so he won’t be home. I was supposed to be at this show with him. We’d planned to go to this restaurant called Brick Lane after the show for Indian food.
I try to stop thinking about it as I turn the ancient key in the doorknob and let us in.
All around the place, I see our ghosts. Me, standing at the kitchen sink rinsing out wineglasses when he came up behind me and kissed my neck and we let the water run. The times on the couch when we fell asleep watching some old Bu?uel movie. The shower with its low pressure that we never minded because we were so often in there together, skin to skin, keeping each other warm.
The way my heels used to be in a pile by the door from kicking them off after arriving home late at night. Or the way my lipstick would leave a print on the rocks glass. Or—wait.
“Oh my god,” I say, feeling suddenly weak in the knees.
“What is it?” asks Arabella.
There are shoes by the door. There is a glass with lipstick. But they’re not mine.
I tell Arabella that those things aren’t mine and she immediately picks up the glass from the coffee table and throws it into the empty fireplace.
“Arabella!”
“What? Fuck him!”
“No, no, just—we’re not breaking things, just let me think.”
“Fine, okay, I’m sorry, darling, I’m sorry, men just make me so fucking mad ! How dare he move on so quickly without you? And who knows how many women? Is it worse if it is just one?”
“Okay, you’re making it worse now, I’m not even there yet.”
She does a zip-lip gesture. “I’m done. Lo siento, lo siento .”
“Todo bien,” I say with an eye roll. “Let’s just get my stuff and get the hell out of here.”
I go to the bedroom and get my big black Samsonite suitcase and throw all my clothes and dance wear into it without being neat. In the bathroom, I throw all my perfume and makeup and everything into the Longchamp backpack I brought, freezing when I see a toothbrush by the sink that isn’t mine and that isn’t Jordan’s.
There are a few pairs of shoes of mine in the closet, which I indicate to Arabella, and she puts them into an old leather bag I’ve had my whole life. She finds my Canada Goose jacket and shoves it in.
And that’s pretty much all there is to get.
I look around.
“Aw, no, not these sad eyes,” says Arabella, coming over to me and swiping hair out of my lashes. “No, baby, no sadness.”
Tears fill my eyes as I shut them hard, thinking of the women’s shoes by the door. He’s moved on.
“It’s just…we weren’t here for long. In this flat. But somehow, I had thought I really might have this place to come home to. I lived out of a suitcase as a kid and now I am again. As a child I was either at my mom’s house or at my grandmother’s house. Then ballet.”
“It’s the life we chose, right?”
“Yeah, but. Still. For how long?”
She laughs, which surprises me. “Look, baby.” She holds my face in her hands. “One day, you’re going to have a home with all your kids or dogs or birds or whatever you want then—”
“Birds?” I laugh, the tears properly coming now.
“Who knows? But then you’re going to remember this time of running around, and you’re going to miss it. Try to miss it now. Maybe you can love it that way.”
I don’t have time to process just how profound and deeply comforting that thought is, because we both suddenly jerk our heads toward the sound of a key in the lock of the front door.
“Shit,” says Arabella, who jumps to action, throwing the bags and suitcase in the closet and then stuffing me in, too, following and shutting the door just in time.
I brace myself, looking through the slats, unsure just how I’ll feel seeing Jordan. Especially now, after realizing he’s moved on to another girl already.
But it’s not Jordan.
It’s a woman.
Arabella puts a supportive hand on my bare thigh. The faint hairs stand on end and I stay frozen.
The woman looks around for a moment and then pulls out her phone. After a few rings, she says, “Okay, where the hell are they? Your place is a mess.”
He’s on speaker, so I hear Jordan say, “Fuck you! It’s not usually a mess. It’s ever since you’ve been around.”
“Whatever.” She laughs. “Asshole. Okay, where?”
“They’re in the bedroom in a velvet box full of tie stays and things like that. Emerald and gold, and they’re probably just loose in there.”
She comes into the bedroom, and Arabella and I go even more still. Jesus, this is like a movie.
I know from the description that she’s looking for the cuff links he was given by the gallery owner. He told me more than once to remind him to wear them tonight for the show. Looks like he forgot, as anticipated.
Also, I know where they are. They’re by the front door in the key dish. I put them there a couple of weeks ago so we wouldn’t forget.
“Oh, wait,” he says. “They’re in the key thing by the door. I forgot. Jocelyn put them there.”
The woman pauses. “We’re saying her name now?”
There is silence on the other end of the phone. “Just grab them.”
She leaves and goes toward the front door. “Holy shit, these are so hideous.”
“Tell me about it,” he says. “Listen, I gotta go.”
“You’re so lucky I love you,” she says. “I did not feel like coming all the way over here, it’s very out of my way.”
He laughs. “I love you, too. Now get your ass here, I don’t think I can do this without you.”
Arabella’s hand tightens on my leg as the woman leaves, locking the door behind her.
It’s over. It’s really over. I can’t come back from this, even if he wanted to. My mom just died, for fuck’s sake, we break up, and he’s already with someone new? And they’re saying I love you ? Was he cheating on me? Is she an ex?
My mind reels.
We wait a moment, making sure she’s really gone, and then we burst out of the closet.
“Why did she have to be hot?” I ask. What I really mean is…did he really just say I love you to someone?
“It would be worse if she were ugly,” says Arabella.
“How’s that?”
“Because then it would be love. Come on, let’s get your things and get the hell out of this place.”
Arabella’s right, I think. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
Whoever that was, she was tall and thin with a sleek blond bob, olive skin, and plush, puffy lips painted with bright red lipstick. And even through the slats I could see that she had long black lashes as thick and pigmented as any mascara ad.
And they said they loved each other.
They love each other? Already?
It doesn’t make me feel better, but it must be an ex or someone he used to have something with. Otherwise that’s way too fast to fall in love.
Or…is it? Once Romeo and Juliet closed last year, and he surprised me by showing up, he and I were only together a week or so before we decided to move to London. Not only that, but I’d been willing to give up everything for him.
I had thought that was because we were special. Soulmates. But maybe this is just what he does. Maybe this is what everyone feels like when they’re with him.
It’s hard to suddenly see him through this new light, but…what other explanation is there?
When I say all of that to Arabella, both of us stuffed into the back of a taxi with all my things, she says, “I don’t know, does he have a sister or something?”
There’s a moment of hope. “Wait, he does have a sister,” I say. Then I remember. “But she’s got long black hair and last time she FaceTimed she was much heavier than that girl was. She was pregnant, but still.”
“She might have bleached her hair?” says Arabella encouragingly.
The taxi driver glances back in the mirror and then I see him give a small shake of the head, not for my benefit. He probably hears things like this all the time. Scorned women trying to rationalize away the fact that whatever dumb man is just not that into her.
“She also lives in California and has another young kid and she’s married. That woman, on top of not looking like her, was not wearing a ring.”
“You’re like Sherlock Holmes,” says Arabella. “I guess that makes me Whatsit.”
I snort. “Whatsit?”
She’s not making a joke. She furrows her brow. “Yes, Sherlock and Whatsit. You know, that line? ‘Elementary, my dear Whatsit.’?”
I don’t know if it’s the intensity of the other emotions rolling around inside me, but when she says that, I start laughing and I cannot stop.
She starts laughing, too. “Is that not right?”
I shake my head, still unable to speak for laughing. “Wat—it’s Watson !”
“Shut up, you’re kidding me. My whole life I thought it was the silly name Whatsit.”
When I finally catch my breath, the crushing fear and frenzy of what I just did and heard hits me. Jordan. That woman.
I’m not like that political wife Arabella told me about, the one who found it sexy to imagine her husband with another woman. Have I had a threesome? Yes. But do it with the person I’m in love with? I could never. It would kill me.
I shut my eyes.
“Are you okay?” asks Arabella, seeing me.
“Yeah, sorry.” I fight the tears that want to pour out of me. “Just a hard breakup.” I bite my tongue and then add, “Something big better be coming. Or the fucking universe hates me.”
“Oh, something big will come. I promise you that.”
She laughs and then looks out the window. I think she’s making a sex joke, but there’s something just a little bit off about the way she said it.