Page 63 of Come Back To Me

“That’s the thing. I don’t know if I want to. Maybe it just ran its course.”

Posey looks dumbfounded. She sets her fork down and just sits there staring at me.

“All right,” I say. “I’m a narcissist and a coward. But, there isn’t really a cure and I’m not always sure what to do. Can we take into consideration that there’s a good chance I’m going to fuck things up with Ethan anyway, so maybe it’s better if I just walk away now.”

“Are you behaving this way because David’s back in the picture?”

“No. And he’s not back in the picture. He’s just reminded me of how awful I am.”

She drums her fingers on the counter as she considers my words. “But not everything needs to be focused on how awful you already are. That’s what makes you a narcissist. Even in the middle of hurting other people you’re focused on yourself.”

“You’re right,” I admit. “What do I do?”

“Stop overanalyzing yourself, first off. You spend enough time thinking about yourself, and even after you obsessively overthink everything you do, somehow everyone else lands up being the bully.”

“Do you think that’s why all of my relationships fail?”

“See, you’re doing it again.”

I sit up straighter. “Okay. Sorry. I’m going to practicenotthinking about myself. I’ll call Ethan and apologize for my thoughtlessness.”

“Good,” says Posey. “The first step was admitting you’re a narcissist. Now you need to change the way you think of things.”

“Yes,” I say, determined. “And I’m not allowed to think of myself, right?”

“Well, think more about how your behavior affects others, you know? Don’t be so focused on your feelings that they’re all you see.”

By the time Posey leaves I’m a new woman. I won’t even look at myself in the mirror. I call Ethan and when he doesn’t answer, I send him an e-mail begging for his forgiveness.

He e-mails me back and says we can meet for lunch the following week. We make arrangements and I stumble to bed still half drunk.

The following day I leave work, and instead of taking the Tube, I decide to walk to clear my head. Usually when it’s time to clear my head, I pack up my things and move to a new city…a new continent. New cities give new perspective. You leave all the old stuff behind, the stuff that was corroded with memories, and you start again. New starts are unlimited. Don’t like your friends? Go find new ones nine thousand miles away. It’s easy when you’re a bartender to just up and leave. Bartenders are needed, if you are good that is even better. Things aren’t so bad if you keep moving.

I’d told myself I was going to stop running. I’d become accustomed to it and I didn’t like the power it held over me. I read this book while I lived in Seattle, the author was local and that’s why I picked it up. It was mostly shit—the characters drove me nuts—except there was this one line that struck a chord: Live barefoot and fucking fight. I decide to do that here in London. It is my home and I am going to stay.

There’s a server at work we call Howie, even though his name is Stephen. We call him that because he looks like Howie Mandel and is as equally afraid of germs as the original Howie Mandel. I see Howie on the opposite side of the street. He waves at me and I pretend not to notice. He waves harder so I turn my head to the left. To avoid a conversation I don’t want to have, I abruptly change my mind about crossing the street and wander in the opposite direction. I have no clue where I’m going except that I need to keep walking.

In Leicester Square I stop and sit on the wall to smoke a cigarette. A little brick wall for weary tourists. A musician is playing a guitar and singing “Stand By Me” as an Orion truck beeps incessantly nearby. In between verses he plays the kazoo. He looks like an unkempt Michael Bublé and he knows it too. Middle-aged female tourists giggle like schoolgirls as they stop to watch him. One drops twenty quid into his guitar case and then scurries away. He reminds me of David in the early days. I don’t know what David is like onstage nowadays. I’ve avoided looking as to not cause myself injury. I imagine his presence has improved, much like his sound.

I can’t stop smoking. I haven’t smoked since I moved back, but I left work and went right to an off license for vodka and cigarettes. I feel as if I’m unraveling. I imagine myself as a spool of yarn rolling down the street. I roll until a bus squashes me. It’s a lovely thought. I’m being dramatic, I know that. I blow the last of my smoke through my nose like a French girl and stand up to leave. The Michael Bublé lookalike smiles at me. I tell him to fuck off with my eyes. I hate musicians. They have no boundaries between their lyrics and real life. They think everything is supposed to be good enough to sing about. Maybe that’s why I left David the way I did. I didn’t want to be his temporary shiny thing.

I don’t want to go home. I don’t know why. I get on the Tube and ride it all the way to South Harrow and back again.

I can’t stand it. I wish he’d just hand me the paperwork and disappear again. Marry that fucking bitch and be done with me for good. That’s not true. I’m hurting and I don’t know how to deal. It sucks.

I take my vodka home and get drunk on the floor in between the boxes. I don’t even like vodka, but there was a sale and I like sales the same way druggies like drugs. I don’t need or like half the things I buy. When I wake up I’m in my bed and I have no recollection of how I got there. I immediately think Ethan came over at some point in the night and put me to bed. I rush from my room despite the sharp pain in my head and the sick feeling I get in my stomach, but Ethan is nowhere. I put myself to bed. My phone is dead, but even after it’s charged I see that no one has texted or called. I deserve it. I’m awful. I am the type of person that drives other people away.

I stare at the pink concrete of the bar and wait. David doesn’t come back, not after one week or two. Not even after my lunch date with Ethan, who is cold but hears me out. I think something terrible has happened to David. I Google his name expecting to see headlines like: Lead Singer Dies in Terrible Accident. But, there’s no such headline. There are, however, dozens of articles about him. I decide to save reading them for later. First, I have to find out if he’s alive. It takes me a while, but I find a recent article online, a tabloid that has photographed David in New York. David was in New York, not London, about to deliver divorce papers. Maybe he never had them, I think. Maybe that’s where he is now—having them drawn up. I suppose there are a lot of complications involved. He has a lot of money now. I don’t want a thing from him, but his lawyers don’t know that. They’re trying to find a loophole, get him out of giving me anything. In the picture he’s with Petra. The photo is grainy but I can see that she’s wearing a light blue coat over a black dress that goes mid-calf. They are walking arm-in-arm and her head is down, but I know her profile, her lips. I spent enough time thinking about the way they were all put together, why they had to be so perfect. Her coat is blowing out around her like they’re walking fast, perhaps trying to get away from the paparazzi. I bet Petra the skank loves that, having paparazzi follow her around and snap pictures. David looks exactly the same as the last time I saw him. He’s wearing a white V-neck T-shirt and a grey beanie that covers his hair. He looks like a beautiful, greasy hipster. There’s a tattoo I hadn’t noticed when he came to see me, on his forearm. It makes me feel sick to look at them together; her so beautiful and doll-like, him so sexy. He doesn’t give a fuck, that’s the best thing about him.

“Hey David,” I say to the photo. “You have terrible taste in women.”

Petra smirks at me. I slam my phone face down on the counter and walk away.

Ethan and I have many talks over the next few weeks, during which time he seems to forgive me. He tells me that the offer to move in with him is still open on two conditions: I have to let go of David, and he wants me to get divorced. One of those things I can do, and one of those things I cannot. On the day before I’m supposed to move in with Ethan, I buy a train ticket and move to France instead. Divorce is easy, anyone can get divorced—the letting go part is next to impossible. Hearts are wild, uncontrollable things, you can’t just instruct them. I imagine he’ll burn my things when they arrive with the movers, but there’s nothing I’m that attached to anyway. Not even Ethan. That’s a hard ugly truth. It’s sad how much of an asshole I am, but there it is. I thought that after David I could be more open to love, but as it turns out, I’m lost in him.

I have a friend in Paris. Well, friend is a stretch. We roomed together in college and barely spoke the first year, but then decided we liked each other enough to do it again the next. She once told me that if I ever ended up in France I could crash at her place for a while. I’ve never been to France. My determination was for America, so when I step off the train at Gare Du Nord, my eyes are as wide as my mouth. I have the sense that I’ve arrived somewhere familiar. The buildings tower, old and important. They’re snobbier than London’s mismatched buildings. Much of London was destroyed during the war, rebuilt in a different way. The Parisian buildings are not showing off, they’re too gothic to care. I want to be like them. I walk with my head bent back so I can see everything closest to the sky. I walk into people, they swear at me in French, but I don’t give a fuck; I’m a Parisian building now. Paris is going to change my life. I stop for a bite to eat at a cafe and check my e-mails. There’s one from Posey.

Where the fuck are you?she writes.

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