had.
The next morning I laid in my bed, uncomfortable. My entire body felt off. Like the meds that were working against the infection in my body were attacking the wrong cells. How could he do this to me? How could I do this to myself?
I was ready to take part of the blame. After all, we should not have been hooking up. I should not have called him that night like I did. We weren’t together at that point, and he had every right to sleep with whomever he wanted.
But still, it made me question every part of our relationship. If it was so easy for him to have a random hook up now, who knew how easy it could have been for him at anytime. Especially during our final year of college when we lived a full three hours away from each other.
My phone vibrated on the nightstand. I unlocked the device to see a text from my friend Becca asking to meet her for a drink.
“I am on antibiotics for a few more days so I can’t drink but sure I’ll meet ya,” I responded.
“Why? Are you sick?” She texted back.
“I’ll catch you up when I see you,” I added a crying laughing emoji and hit send.
A week passed and I felt completely normal again. No more symptoms, no more gonorrhea. Which meant one thing: David and I could talk about what was next for us.
We decided to meet at a coffee shop we frequented when we were still officially together. The barista knew us by name and gave us free coffee when his manager wasn’t around. David always argued that it was because he thought I was cute and I argued that maybe he was just a nice guy to all of the frequent coffee shop patrons.
I sat alone on the couch in the back, reading a book that a co-worker gifted me at our last holiday party. A murder mystery book wasn’t my normal go-to but I decided I would read it to be polite. So I could act shocked about how the person you least expected ended up being the killer even though it was foreshadowed on the very first page.
The book was actually holding my attention until I heard David’s voice saying hello to Eddie, the barista with the free coffee. I watched as he talked and chastised myself for ever letting that beautiful man get away from me in the first place.
How could three years end in a single moment? Because of what? I was in a bad mood that day? Or because his anxiety kept him up late the night before? There wasn’t a real reason for it. It was like a tornado touching down. A fight that only lasted a couple of minutes but the damage would take months to fix.
“Hey,” he said as he took a seat next to me with his iced mocha.
“Good morning,” I said with a smile, folding the edge of the book page to keep my place. David had obviously tried to make himself look extra nice. His hair had gel in it, he was wearing a nice polo shirt, and I could smell his cologne pretty much from the second he walked into the shop.
“So you will never believe what just happened,” he said.
“Tell me all about it!”
“Eddie just asked me for my number!”
My cheeks were warm. “Oh. Really?”
“Yeah, I guess I was right this whole time about the free coffee thing, except it wasn’t you, it was me!” He was grinning.
“Well, what did you say?” I asked hoping he politely turned the cute barista down.
“I gave it to him,” he replied flippantly. “He’s cute. I’d totally take him out.”
Growing up my mom always told me that I needed to be careful about my facial expressions. When I was in elementary school I would be sent to the office multiple times a week for rolling my eyes or frowning when someone said something I didn’t like.
“You’re very expressive,” she would tell me. “And that’s okay. It’s a good thing. But there is a place to show your emotions and there is a place to hide them.”
This is one of those times where I should not have let my expressions speak for me, but my face disagreed because David was already apologizing for being stupid and not thinking about what he was saying.
“He’s cute but that doesn’t mean I want to date him, I was just being polite,” he argued while I was packing the book into my backpack. “Come on please talk to me. I came here today for you. I want to talk to you.”
“David, I came here so we could try to make this work. I want to make things with you work. I want it so bad. I want to not feel like I made a huge mistake by losing you.”
“I get that and I want the same…”
“You don’t though,” I said, my tone getting more and more annoyed. “We break up and within weeks you’re sleeping with some gono boy, and then you give it to me in a Taco Bell parking lot.”
“I know and I said I was sorry for that but come on-“
“I’m not done yet,” I interrupted him, my voice growing louder. “And then you come over to my place again just assuming that I want to sleep with you, and you say you're sorry and you cry in my arms and now you’re going to do the same thing to the barista boy over there. And you’re going to brag to me about it? Like I’m your best gal friend?”
The entire room was looking at us now. I was standing over David, still in his chair. He tried to say something but the words were stuck in his throat.
I still had plenty to say and had no problem saying any of it. But I wasn’t going to waste any more of my time.
“I hope you figure out,” I said gesturing at him in a circular motion, “whatever all of this is.”
And then I left.
Dating App
I watched the glass of my phone as the square-shaped icon loaded an app onto my device. When it finished loading and the dull colors became fully vibrant, I hesitated to open it. A dating app. Something I hadn’t tried before. But my friend, Jon, had just used this app to meet the man that he is now dating. So, I figured what’s the worst that could happen?
I clicked on the icon and my phone turned black, only the small green logo in the center of the screen. It asked me for a username and a password, a photo of myself, what I was looking for specifically, and some general age and height stats.
My fingers felt heavy as I typed the words into the text boxes and uploaded photos of myself that had been pre-approved by Jon, and soon, I had an entire profile set up.
It felt strange to me that this was the new normal way to meet people. As if parties or nights out or introductions by mutual friends could no longer cut it.
The main screen of the app looked like an early 2000’s chat room. A list of profiles like a ladder down the side with an option to “chat” or “wave.”
“Now what do I do?” I asked Jon who was sitting sideways on the chair across from me at the bar.
“What do you mean,” he said. “You just look through and talk to someone you think is cute.”
“You
