Page 13 of Lessons in Love
“What do you mean you swore it off?”
“Why did you lie about your name?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to be someone else for the night.”
“Why?”
“The truth is I was ashamed to be doing what I was doing.”
“What were you doing?”
“I wanted to feel good. I wanted to know what it feels like. Katie says I’m beautiful. I think I am, but something’s broken because I can’t seem to find love.”
“With a stranger? As for love, you weren’t looking for love, sweetheart. You were looking for a good time. I get it. I really do, but that’s not how your first time should go down.” My gaze dips down her body, that feeling in my gut returns. I can’t believe I didn’t notice sooner. “Considering you’re wearing the same clothes as last night, guess you found it anyway.”
The cab comes to a stop and as much as I want to know why she’s shame-cabbing it back into the city. The stop is my cue. I open the door and get out. Just as she’s about to speak, I say, “Have a good life, Virginia.” I shut the door and start running again. With the Manhattan Bridge up ahead, I pick up speed not wanting to get trapped at a light again. When I make a right, back on track, I’m tempted to look back, but I know there’s nopoint. She slept with that asshole after spending time with me. There’s nothing really to discuss anymore.
When I turn down my street, I go inside the coffee shop. The morning line is long, but I wait. Watching people is a good way to take my mind off things. My favorite barista is working today. When I reach the counter, she eyes me over the pastry display. “Good morning, Hardy.”
“Good morning, Luisa.”
She giggles as her smile grows. “What can I get you this morning?”
“The usual.”
With a tease in her tone, she says, “Coming right up.”
Not able to stop my mind going to the gutter, I reply, “You’re naughty this morning, but I’m naughtier at night.” I wink.
“I remember all too well, Hardy.”
“When are you going to stop in The Hideaway again?”
She raises her hand and wiggles her finger. “No more Hideaway for me. The boyfriend has become the fiancé.”
“Whoa,” I say, thrilled for her. “That’s fantastic news. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. Just happened over the weekend, so it’s new.” She shrugs to play it off.
“I’m happy for you, Luisa. You deserve good things.”
That brightens her back up. She hands me my coffee—simple, classic, black—and leans in. “You do too, Hardy. Don’t settle for anything less.” Speaking in her usual chipper voice, she says, “Coffee’s on me. Have a great Tuesday.”
“Thanks. See you soon.” I start walking, but say, “Congrats again. He’s a lucky guy.”
“Yes, he is.” She laughs and I leave feeling a little lighter myself.
The street has gotten more crowded with the rush to work happening all around me. Two blocks down, I punch in the codefor my building and head up the two flights to my second-floor walk up. I toss my keys in the silver bowl my mom sent me from Europe last year for Christmas. I kick the door closed and bolt it. My sneakers are toed off just inside the door, my socks pulled off and left in the hall as I start for the bathroom. I set my coffee on the kitchen bar as I pass. My three shirts are pulled off as one and dropped just inside my bedroom. I start the shower and peel my pants off waiting for the water to warm.
I rest my palms to the cold marble and check my complexion. It’s clear with a healthy sheen of sweat earned from my run. Running my hands through my hair, I look back at my reflection and for the first time in years, I wonder if this is it. Is this how life is always going to be? Simple and uncomplicated, like my coffee? I glare at myself. Thoughts like this haven’t crossed my mind since I was working seventy to eighty hours a week in the city. Thoughts like this are the reason I cashed out financially and left a career I thought I liked. I didn’t. It was making me into a person I didn’t want to be, a person I didn’t like, but didn’t realize it until I woke up between two women who were traders down on Wall Street in an apartment in SoHo that belonged to my boss.
My boss was found under the nanny by his wife when she came home from visiting her dying mother with their two kids. The divorce papers cited cocaine and philandering and listed me as a liability. My hands were clean when it came to the drugs, as for the philandering—I didn’t make him do it. But I didn’t stop him either.
I resigned that day and I found a new job. He went on to marry his secretary and had another kid within the next year. After I heard about his first wife’s large settlement, I figured she was off living the high life without the baggage of her cheating ex-husband. Then I ran into his wife in Saks Fifth Avenue three years ago. She was on the phone arguing. I heard her tell theother person that her kids missed him and that they hadn’t seen him since his “new” family was complete with the little boy he always wanted. She hung up on him and broke down crying.
I approach with caution, with care. She looks tired, not like the woman I knew years earlier on the arm of my boss. Everything I had seen was one-sided, his side. Now staring at the other side, I felt like shit. I was part of this. I helped cause this. Sure there was a huge group of us always partying together, living the high life as we raked in the money. But there were consequences I never had to face. I was single. I only had to think of myself, and that’s all I had done. Until that moment. Seeing her break down after losing her husband, her kids losing their dad, and that love for money is no substitute for the real thing, I walk up to her, and say, “I’m sorry.”
She looks up. The beautiful woman that was once the star of the holiday parties now carried dark circles under her eyes and her wounds in the blues. As her eyes look into mine, I wait for her to speak, for her forgiveness, for anything. I don’t get her words. I get slapped across the face, and left with words that scar me to this day. “Don’t ever fall in love, Hardy.” She walked away that day, I hope feeling a little lighter.
