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2
Natalie
If you’d told me ten years ago that this was where I’d be now—a drunk divorcée, with a PhD, sitting in a bar on a Friday night, getting wasted—alone—I would have told you to eat a bag of buttholes. Yet here I was sitting in a bar on the wrong side of town getting slowly wasted, and ticking another item from my Fuck It List.
The Fuck It List was a list—no shit—of a whole bunch of things I wanted to do or achieve since I was now not-so young, free, and most definitely single, after my soon-to-be ex-husband had ended our marriage almost two years earlier, on our wedding anniversary. To say that the move had blindsided me was an understatement of tragically epic proportions. I’d had literally no idea. Not even an inkling.
So much so that when he delivered the devastating news, I’d almost choked on the piece of steak I was swallowing at the time. Scratch that, I did choke on it. That was an extra level of humiliation I’d forever hate Douglas just that little bit more for. Firstly, what kind of a person ends their marriage at La Forge? Secondly, who does that while the dumpee has a mouthful of food? A sociopath, that’s who.
When I could breathe again—only after Doug had had to perform the Heimlich maneuver, sending the offending piece of meat spinning across the room—I think I was more distraught about making a spectacle of myself in one of the city’s finest restaurants than the fact that my husband was ending our marriage of five years, and our relationship of ten.
Maybe that in itself was a sign. As embarrassing as choking undoubtedly was, surely that shouldn’t have been my biggest concern at a time like that? I rationalized that maybe because I was in shock—and I most definitely was—my brain wasn’t working properly. Maybe focusing on the horror of choking rather than the end of my marriage was a coping mechanism.
As the thought crossed my mind, my body seemed to go into auto mode. I got up from the table and bolted across the restaurant toward the door. Douglas, ever the athlete—not—took off running after me, yelling my name at the top of his lungs as he did. I knew I’d never be able to show my face there again, and noted for the second time that I was more pissed about that than the break-up.
Maybe I was just a vain and shallow person, or maybe there was a legitimate reason for the numbness I was experiencing. I couldn’t be sure, but one thing I did know was that I didn’t want to talk to Douglas at that time. Hell, I didn’t want to breathe the same air as him, let alone listen to the rest of the lame platitudes he was laying on me to explain why he’d basically lost interest in our union, but had found an interest in another woman.
I stopped running, and pivoted sharply to face him. The abrupt stop took him by surprise, and though he skidded to a halt, it was too little, too late. He slammed into me, knocking me to the ground like a lone skittle. As I landed in the gutter at the feet of one of the valets, I remarked to myself that we must have been in the running for the world’s most humiliating breakup.
I was sure that Doug had chosen to deliver the news at the restaurant because he was short-sighted and cliché, and just about every romcom tells us that public breakups were the “safer” option. I should know, I’d seen pretty much all of them. It was both an occupational hazard and an obsession. Actually, it was probably more accurate to say that it was an obsession I’d turned into an occupation.
Evidently the plan had backfired horribly on this occasion, and if I wasn’t the wounded party in that farce, I’d have been glad. Douglas had definitely deserved the red face he’d been left with. He stood next to me, looking nothing short of horrified, before remembering his manners and reaching out to help me up. I swatted him away with my purse. The last thing I wanted from him at that point was physical contact, no matter how minor.
“Don’t touch me.”
The words jumped from my lips with a force and venom that had surprised me. It seemed in the few moments since being delivered the fatal blow to my marriage—and with it my ego, and the previous decade of my life—I’d cycled through of the stages of grief from shock to anger. I appeared to have completely bypassed denial, but maybe it had happened so fast I just hadn’t noticed. Or maybe it had been the brief moment after Douglas had first dropped the bombshell, and I’d asked him if it was some kind of joke. In any case, I was definitely angry.
I scrambled to my feet, digging in my purse for my parking card, grateful that we’d driven my car, not Douglas’s. As I rifled through it, Douglas tried again to placate me.
“Listen, Nat.”
“Don’t call me that. My name’s Natalie.” Nat was for close friends and relatives, and given that Douglas was no longer either of those things, he didn’t have the right to speak to me in such familiar terms.
“Listen, Natalie, I ca—”
“No.” I didn’t look up from fishing around in my purse, getting more frustrated with every second that passed.
“What do you mean no? You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Yeah I do. I’ve seen this scene a thousand times before, I can fill in the blanks.”
“But this isn’t a fucking movie, Nat. Natalie. It’s our lives.”
“Damned straight it’s not a movie.” If it was, I’d have found the goddamned ticket by now and would be riding off into the night, giving Douglas the finger as I did.
“It’s not our lives, anymore, either. It’s your life and my life. And right now, I don’t need your feeble words in my life, so save it. Actually, don’t save it. I’m never going to want to know.” In a move that was reminiscent of a movie, I finally found the ticket and flicked it to the valet, and he caught it swiftly between his thumb and index finger like Mr. Miyagi catching flies with chopsticks. I silently applauded him.
“Now you listen. You’ve said as much as I want to hear right now, and possibly ever. I’m going home, and I need to be by myself, so don’t bother coming back there tonight.”
“What?” The look of shock on his face was priceless. “But where am I supposed to…” He stopped speaking before I could interrupt him, which I had definitely been about to.
“You surely can’t be asking that question and expecting me to give a flying crap? Not my circus, not my monkeys. Not my problem.”
As if on cue, the valet sped out of the underground carpark, pulling up to the curb with impeccable timing. I felt like high-fiving him, but didn’t, not wanting to ruin the slick moment. I jumped into the car and slipped the valet a fifty—it was worth every cent for the sense of power I got from driving away, leaving Douglas standing on the curb with his jaw agape, literally eating my dust.
