What Love Looks Like Read online

  Hi ladies, just spoke with Jay and he isn’t able to make it this weekend. Emergency at work with some international clients. Can we take a rain check? I wrote them.

  What? That’s bullshit! Erica wrote back.

  You’re kidding. I had to, like, clear a dinner with the Ohio Board of Plastic Surgeons for this, Stacey chimed in.

  Stacey, be nice. Elle’s probably more upset than any of us, Serena added.

  I’m sorry everyone—he was so excited to meet you all. I threw it in for good measure. The truth was, Jay didn’t even know that meeting my friends was part of the itinerary, but I lied to make him sound better.

  We can still go out without him, Erica wrote.

  I don’t think I’m up for it, I wrote.

  I’m out, Stacey added.

  Aw, Elle, I’m sorry, Serena wrote. You must be pretty bummed.

  I didn’t respond after that. I didn’t want their pity. I couldn’t fathom another dinner with all of them and their husbands and fiancés yet again and still with no one on my arm. So it was decided: I would have another weekend alone, another visit to my parents' house, another Monday with no water cooler stories to share with Maureen. For once I was thankful that East Coast Prime wasn’t even generous enough to provide us with an actual water cooler.

  The day after Jay’s cancellation, I went to work zombie-like and dejected. I didn’t go into Maureen’s office for our ritual coffee talk, nor did I immediately turn on my computer and start cranking away at e-mails. The first thing I did was shoot Jay a quick message. Sorry that you have to work this weekend. I’m really going to miss you, and I hope we can pick another date soon.

  He usually wrote back right away, but instead he was silent through the morning. When I didn’t hear from him by noon, I had the distinct feeling I was being played. And after lunch my disdain had sprawled into fury. He was blowing me off; I could feel it. And suddenly my anger morphed into resentment for every aspect of my existence. Why couldn’t I ever catch a break? Why did I have to have the sixty-five-hour-a-week-pain-in-the-ass job while my friends skated by on forty-five-hour workweeks with equivalent salaries and time for actual personal lives? That was if they even had to work at all. They found wonderful husbands with ease while I struggled in relationships year after year, only to spend what little free time I had with a dog.

  The days that followed got worse. Rather than enjoying the weekend despite Jay's blowing me off, I moped around, like an ill-tempered child. Was his work obligation the truth, or had he just lost interest in me? Maybe he’d decided that a long-distance relationship just wasn’t worth his time or money and wanted to let me down gently. I couldn’t be sure. I’d just have to wait and play off his next move. I just hated waiting around to find out what that move was.

  That weekend my bad habits stormed back with a vengeance. I spent the days and nights stuffing myself to the point of sickness; only wine and food kept me from going off the deep end. I must have paced the length of my apartment a thousand times, involuntarily ripping out strands of my hair like a schizophrenic who’d gone off her medication. I was looking for anything else to fixate on.

  The facts were clearer than they’d ever been. I was a masochist, a woman who went around looking for trouble and made things harder than they had to be. I stayed in a job I hated because I didn’t have the courage to leave. I threw myself at Jay, who lived too far away and admitted to being bad at relationships. I’d only landed him by pretending to be someone that I wasn’t—someone cool, popular, and confident.

  I had something to prove. I wanted to show myself and everyone else that I could land the hottest guy I’d ever laid eyes on. I was wholly to blame for my troubles and I was the reason I wasn’t yet a fully developed adult. My desperation to validate myself had made me succumb to the charms of an admitted player. And in doing so, I got fucked, in every sense of the word. And perhaps the sickest part was that still I thirsted for his attention. Nothing else could really fill the emptiness. I was furious with him, yet I sat and waited by the phone for him to call.

  I couldn’t take it any longer. Every wrinkle of my brain was filled with Jay. I had to do something, so I texted him. How’s it going? I wrote. Until recently, he'd usually gotten back to me right away, but ten minutes passed and nothing. Another twenty dragged by, and still not a word. I started to worry. True, he wasn’t the greatest communicator, but he always had his phone nearby and typically got back to me within a few minutes at most. An hour went by. I paced, I drank, and I worried. Was Jay okay? I had to know. I phoned him and got his voice mail. I was in agony. Another hour passed, and I called again. By then it was ten thirty, and I was exhausted. But how could I sleep without knowing he was all right? Thirty more minutes passed. I passed out on the sofa. I fought hard against sleep, but my body won. I woke every forty-five minutes to change positions and glance at my phone. Nothing. There was nothing until 3:00 a.m., when finally the phone rang.

  “Hey, hot stuff,” he said. His words were slurred. He was wasted. It was a Wednesday. I didn't understand.

  “I've been calling you all night.”

  “I was out.”

  “I was worried because normally I hear from you right away. How was your night?” He’d woken me, but I didn’t care. The sound of his voice instantly calmed me, as though all was right between us again.

  “I'm fucking rocked.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Scores,” he said.

  “Okay, let's just talk tomorrow.”

  I was relieved he was home but humiliated by how many times I’d called him. I hoped that the alcohol would impair his memory of it. He said he was at Scores. I'd heard that name before. I Googled it, and it all came back to me—Scores, the strip club. I’d heard it mentioned on Howard Stern about a hundred times before. Jay was at a strip club, all night. I was enraged, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  Following the Scores incident, I morphed into a bona fide psycho. I developed the habit of checking my phone every sixty seconds. I pleaded with the heavens to push Jay to call or text, but apparently my message wasn’t getting through. I decided it would be best to abandon my phone in the apartment while I was out for drinks with Jenna. I didn’t want to be fixated on my phone the entire time we were out, checking it as if waiting for a terminal diagnosis.

  Jenna and I were meeting at Marcella’s, right below my apartment. That, of course, was by design, for if I went through total phone-checking withdrawal, I knew I’d be able to run upstairs and give in. The choice of bar enabled my own bad habits.

  “So what’s up with Jay?” Jenna asked immediately upon sitting down at a bar stool next to me.

  “I don’t know, Jen,” I said with a sigh.

  “What happened?”

  “He’s been acting so distant,” I said glumly. “And it started after he cancelled on me."

  “He’s been acting weird for a few days, not a month. And about him cancelling, shit happens. You know how much we work? It’s even worse in New York. You’ve got to work twice as hard to get ahead there.”

  “Maybe so, but something still feels off.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure, but just two weeks ago he couldn’t wait to come see me. And the next thing I knew he'd cancelled, and now he’s being so detached.”

  “Gosh, I feel so sorry for you. A gorgeous guy is totally into you but then acts weird for a few days, and now you’re a basket case,” she said sarcastically.

  “We were supposed to reschedule the trip, but he hasn’t brought it up yet.”

  “Have you brought it up?”

  “No! He should be the one to bring it up, since he’s the one who cancelled in the first place. Besides, he’s got this thing about girls being clingy—he can’t stand it.”

  “So what?” she asked. “What about you? What about what you want?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “So he says he doesn’t like clingy girls. Maybe he's dated some crazy c
hicks in the past. But you’re not one of them.” I appreciated her effort, but calling him numerous times in a night only to learn that he was at a strip club had certainly made me feel like a lunatic. She added, “And you shouldn’t have to alter your behavior or your instincts to prove that to him. He’s lucky you even know his name.”

  While I was grateful for her encouragement, she had things reversed. I was the fortunate one because I received his attention, which was why I was so intent on repairing whatever had gone wrong. “I appreciate that, Jen, but if you met him in person you might be singing a different tune. He’s a total ten.”

  “Maybe he’s waiting for you to make a move.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably what I’d tell my desperate friend too, but deep down I’d be thinking it doesn’t look good.”

  “I swear I’m not thinking that,” Jenna said.

  “I’ll be twenty-nine in a few months, Jenna. That means thirty is right around the corner. I don’t have all the time in the world.”

  “You have plenty of time.”

  “Easy for you to say—you’re twenty-seven and married.” I said.

  Later, it occurred to me that the one positive of Jay’s detachment was that since he couldn’t see or hear me, he also couldn’t smell the very powerful desperation I was emitting. Nor could he notice that I’d been unable to wash my hair in days because I’d been so distraught over him. I'd literally lost my will to primp. The only thing that might have lifted my spirits would have been Jay’s voice on the phone explaining how he’d had family in town, or that work had gotten even more chaotic. Any old excuse would have done if he said he was sorry and that he had just purchased a ticket to visit me in Columbus.

  Several days later I gathered what nerve I had left and e-mailed him. At least I wouldn’t come off as desperate via e-mail. If I’d called him, he might have seen me as demanding. But if I e-mailed, he wouldn’t have to reply immediately, and he’d at least know I was still thinking of him. I would ask about a few weekends in the beginning of May and try to remind him how carefree and cool I was. I carefully composed my thoughts, taking care to seem blasé.

  Hey, hope you’re having a great week so far. I have been absolutely slammed at work, but I checked out a few dates for you to visit if you still want to. The first two weekends in May work for me. Either of those good for you? If not, no worries. We’ll figure something out. Let me know. Later. xo Elle

  It was casual but direct. I hit send, and instantly I felt relieved. I’d reached out to him, and the ball was back in his court. A day later I heard back. Cool, I’ll check it out was all he said. My heart sank at his brevity. I sensed him distancing himself from me; there was an obvious shift in our energy. But I didn’t know why he wouldn’t just break it off. He’d yet to say anything was wrong. And I was still hearing from him, though only intermittently. But according to the conversation we'd had in New York, he was my boyfriend. We hadn’t broken up, at least not that I was aware of.

  Like Jenna said, I shouldn’t have to sit around feeling miserable when I could simply pick up the phone and insist on a reason for his evasiveness. His pretending nothing was wrong was unfair to me. I had to forget about trying to impress Jay and take care of my own heart. If I wanted to call him, I’d call him, dammit. No, I didn’t want to put him off by being neurotic, but I deserved an explanation. I clung to the hope that he’d come around and start wanting me again, but I’d only get the information I needed by picking up the phone and insisting upon it.

  15

  It wasn’t until a few days later that I gathered the nerve to call Jay. Until then, I was playing defense, letting him have all the control. I'd always calculated my moves precisely to thwart any risk of his seeing my neuroses. I'd mirrored his every move. If he texted, I wrote back. If he called, I called back. Even on the day we met, I’d found a way to slip him my number, ensuring that he would be the one who made the first move. Everything had been on Jay’s terms, but that was about to change. I picked up the phone and dialed his number.

  “Hello?” he asked. To my surprise, he answered. It had taken five minutes of mental preparation and a double tall latte for me to get the chutzpah to even dial him.

  “Hey. How are you?”

  “Good, how are you?” He sounded tired.

  “I’m great!” I said, lying. “Just wondering what’s been going on with you.”

  “Work’s been a pain in the ass. My customers from Germany are really time-consuming. I’m with them day and night. Sorry I’ve been so hard to get a hold of.” He was being completely reasonable. I’d overreacted for nothing!

  “It’s okay. I just hope things calm down so you can come back and visit again soon.”

  “Definitely, babe. Just give me another couple weeks, and I’ll have everything figured out.”

  “Take all the time you need.” I instantly let him off the hook. How could I be angry with him for working hard?

  “That’s why you’re awesome. Thanks for understanding. Look, the customers are waiting for me to take them to lunch. Can I call you tonight?”

  “Of course. Bon appétit.”

  Peace returned to me. My anxiety dissipated almost instantly. His voice sounded warm and at the same time reasonable; he was simply a busy man. His lack of communication had nothing whatsoever to do with a lack of interest. He was just trying to make a living. And so I waited that night for him to call, as he promised he would.

  By the next day, I was still waiting. I waited until the weekend. Nothing. The wait was agonizing. But he made it sound as if everything was fine, so what more could I do? I knew he wasn’t a phone person, so I had no choice but to hold out and be content in the meantime.

  A week later I was out for a jog with Luna. The weather was finally starting to improve, and I had a sense of calm. The sunshine elevated my mood, and I had started to feel that things were going to take a turn for the better. When we got back, I noticed a text from Jay. Excitedly, I swiped my iPhone to reveal what I hoped was an update on the work front.

  What is my sexy little German going to do with this big sausage after this boring meeting? He wrote. Panic mounted in my body, followed by physical reactions: sweaty palms, a beating heart, and redness in the face.

  Pardon me? I replied.

  Oh shit, he wrote back. What was that supposed to mean? He'd obviously sent the message to the wrong recipient. He was sexting with another girl and had mistakenly sent it to me. He was talking dirty with some German slut! My brain worked overtime trying to piece it all together.

  You’ve got to be kidding me, I wrote, as my body continued to erupt with dread.

  Babe, I’m joking around, he said. He was trying to cover it up. It was too late; he’d shot himself in the foot. I was overwhelmed with hopelessness and rage. How could he do something so horrible to me? After everything he’d said to me in New York. After stringing me along all these weeks!

  Within seconds my phone rang. “What do you want?”

  “That wasn’t what it looked like,” he said.

  “It took you a week to pick up the phone and actually getting busted to make you do it. What more is there to say?”

  “Don’t overreact. I can’t handle it when girls yell.”

  “Oh poor you! I’ve been nothing but completely non-obsessive, non-clingy, non-everything that you didn’t want. And all it got me was lies. So now I’m going to do what I want. And that is to tell you to fuck off!”

  “Relax! It was just a colleague I was joking around with.”

  “You’re so full of shit. Tell me the truth, Jay.”

  He was silent for a few long seconds. “Listen, I told you I wasn’t good at this.”

  “So what does that mean? That you have the right to fuck one of your slutty German customers? That is what happened, isn’t it?”

  He sighed. “Yes.”

  “And when you were supposed to visit, you were—” I cut myself off, but my tone said it all.

  “Yeah.”


  “How is it so easy for you to be dishonest?”

  It was disturbing to think that someone could lie so effortlessly, as if he were telling me what the weather was like—and especially since we were in the early stages of our relationship. The sex was mind-blowing, and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. But apparently, he couldn’t keep his hands off other women either. I imagined a skinny blonde Swiss Miss look-alike with a German accent, flirting with Jay covertly at his office. I wanted to vomit.

  “I told you I wasn’t good at relationships,” he said.

  “Why did you tell me you wanted one in New York, then? This was your idea, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I didn’t want you to be with anyone else.”

  “So you wanted to be with other people, while I waited around for you in between trips?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You don’t want to lose me, or the sex?”

  “I don’t want to lose either.”

  “You just did.” And I hung up. I waited a few moments for him to phone me back and beg my forgiveness, but he didn’t.

  An entire week went by, and I didn’t hear from Jay. That he made no further effort to try to win me back pierced me like a stiletto to the heart. I’d felt the pain of a breakup before, but never so unbearably. In the past, breaking up was accompanied by a certain sense of liberation. But parting ways with Jay felt more like a fatality—the death of the ideal version of me. The casualty of the woman I thought I’d become. I mourned her loss with the same intensity that some reserved for an actual loss of life. The person I mourned was real to me, though. When I had nothing to look forward to, she'd given me hope that I had a shot at happiness. Elle 2.0, may she rest in peace.