Page 17 of Single-Minded
He drains his drink. “You wanna get out of here?” he asks.
“What?” I ask in disbelief.
“I live on Lido Key, my condo is ten minutes away. Let’s get out of here. We can take my car.” He lays his hand on my leg and I smack my knees together in surprise. What the hell?
“I just met you,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” My brain sputters out half a dozen doomsday scenarios, from kidnapping and torture to Ultimate Fighting or league bowling. No thank you.
“You’re hot, I’m hot, we could be hot for each other,” he says, with a slick grin. Clearly not the first time he’s used that greasy line. And he isn’t that hot.
“Thanks for the drink,” I say, “but I’m not interested in a hookup.”
“Why are you on Closr, then?” he asks incredulously.
“What do you mean, why am I on Closr? To meet interesting people, get to know them, maybe fall in love someday. Why is anyone on Closr?”
“Closr is a hookup app.Closr,as in sex, as in ‘close the deal.’ What did you think it meant?”
“Closr,as in meeting people brings you closer together, you know, romantic relationships—closer.”
“It’s a hookup app. Are we gonna get freaky or not?”
“Not,” I say. He downs his bourbon and abruptly stands up from the bar.
“Bitch,” he mutters under his breath. Misogynistic jackass. Michael would never call someone a bitch.
“Compensating,” I say, loud enough for him to hear as he strides away. Not very polite, but enormously satisfying.
I am not cut out for this. Closr is for sex! This means that in less than eighteen hours, twenty or maybe even thirty men in my small beach town of Sarasota, who spend time in the places I spend time, who live or work near where I live and work—twenty or thirty potential clients or connections to potential clients—these men all think I’m looking for sex on some trashy hookup app. I am way, way out of my depths here. Which is bound to happen, considering the fact that I’m most likely the only person of my generation who has never dated online. My romantic life, which has been so carefully planned and cultivated since grade school, is now the Wild, Wild West. I can’t take the chance of humiliating myself again. I’m going to have to find some other way to fall in love, get married, and have a baby, or even just have sex with a nice man sometime before I check into the old age home.
The jerk left me with the check. I hand my credit card to the bartender and wait while he runs it. As I get up to leave, I feel my phone vibrating from the depths of my purse. After rummaging around, I finally locate the phone and pull it out just in time to see HeartDoc’s text:Here’s what you’re missing—along with a picture of his dick. Oh, good gawd, my first dickpic.
Or maybe it’s the poor ferret, bound for the grave.
Dating sucks, and my unfortunate encounter with Dr. Creepy only confirms my worst suspicions. It’s not just that no man will want me, it’s worse—the only man who wants me is a disgusting chauvinist looking for a sleazy hookup. If this parade of perverts and fake ferret owners is what I have to endure in order to meet someone, I’d rather get really comfortable with spinsterhood and a vibrator.
14
I’m loathe to confess it, but I’m completely lost without Michael.
I have no idea who I am without him. How is this possible? I have a career I love and am great at; I have wonderful friends. How did I let myself be so dependent on a man that I don’t recognize myself without him? My great-aunt Thelma, who marched with Gloria Steinem and burned her girdle in a demonstration in New York City, is probably rolling in her grave at the thought. Aunt Thelma surely didn’t let her organs decompress for a whole day just so I could let my life revolve around some guy.
I’m a disgrace to feminists everywhere.
In the five months since Michael’s bombshell and our nationwide humiliation, I’ve been trying to keep my business afloat despite the fact that my head is no longer in my work. I’m operating on autopilot. ESPN’s publicity department did a fantastic job of killing the scandal, and after twenty-four hours only FOX Sports was interested in keeping the story alive. It died out there a few days later, as the sports media all moved on to cover the outrage over an NFL player who had been arrested for the eighth time on domestic violence charges, without ever missing a game or even a day of practice.
I’ve been working seventy to eighty hours a week, and then falling into bed exhausted. My brain is somewhere else, and the truth is, I feel like I need the extra work hours just to make up for the mental deficit. I find myself avoiding home—everything reminds me of Michael. At least my work keeps my thoughts occupied.
Michael shows up on my doorstep every few days to try to convince me I’ve forgiven him, and I waffle back and forth from blind fury, to protective sympathy, to just flat-out missing him. At first I couldn’t wrap my head around forgiving him, but after months and months of being so angry and heartbroken and obsessively recounting every single detail of our relationship in the shower, talking to myself in traffic like a crazy person, ruminating over every mortifying detail when I’m supposed to be paying attention in client meetings, I’m drained of my juices and I need to shut my brain off. Michael’s gay, there’s nothing to be done about it, and I’m too exhausted to keep being angry anyway. I give up.
My resolve against him is melting, and I wonder if it’s time to just try to let go of all the hurt and anger I feel.
What is it costing me, what am I giving up, so that I can stay infuriated with Michael? I’ve essentially lost my oldest and dearest friend, I’m lonely, I’m not sleeping, I’m outraged all the time, I can hardly focus on my projects at work. Is it worth all of that, is it worth everything, just to be right? Yes, Michael screwed up and he hurt me terribly and he lied, oh, how he lied. But how much am I losing every day, reliving every betrayal in my mind, coddling my heartache and indignation to keep them strong? Staying pissed at Michael is keeping me paralyzed in my own unhappiness. I’m spending hours, days at a time, too much of my time reliving the unjustness of his actions. So much of my existence is being squandered on the destruction of our marriage, leaving nothing but wasteland and embers with which to rebuild my life. I’m not helping myself. I need to let go, or I’ll be mired in righteous misery for the rest of my life.
“I’ve always loved you and I always will,” Michael tells me the first night I let him come back to the house since Connecticut. “But I was in danger of completely losing myself. Obsessively wondering if my family and bosses and you loved me for who you thought I was, rather than who I actually am. I couldn’t hide who I was any longer—it was hurting more to keep my secret than to let it come out.”
“Was anything with us real?” I ask, afraid of his answer but desperately needing to know.
“It was all real,” he says, pulling me close to him. “I love you, you’re my best friend, you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever known. There’s nothing that’s ever made me happier than making you happy.”
