but if I would have known it was this easy to take control of the situation, I would have done it from the beginning.
As short-lived as it ended up being, it still would have been worth the risk.
POST 37
Revelations
When trying to convince someone that their actions may have fallen short of your expectations, taking a strong stance on your position in spite of the fact that you might also have been somewhat wrong – even if you aren’t quite aware of your wrongness – can sometimes work to your advantage. Sometimes, it serves to put the person on the other side of the table on the defensive from the get-go. And sometimes it just makes you look like a total ass.
In my case, it did all three.
For a solid minute after we sat down at a window table in the corner café where I had dreamed our Hollywood kiss would happen, I just looked at her through my Ray Bans. I couldn’t help myself; somehow I’d forgotten how truly lovely she was. I think our last exchange may have stunted my memory, and as a survival technique against the damages of heartbreak it washed our past with a filth-ridden haze – one that didn’t belong over the whole experience. I could see that now as I gazed across the table. She finally broke my unintentionally sinister stalker-stare. “So, you wanted to talk. Go ahead… talk.”
“Yeah. Um… ” I suddenly remembered what I wanted to tell her, but however I had prepared it in my head sounded sort of silly and not good enough anymore. So I started with something small and simple instead. And totally freaking lame. “I haven’t seen you in a while. You look nice.”
The compliment didn’t take. “That’s why you pulled me away from the million things I have to do, because you needed to tell me I looked nice? Seriously, Joe. That’s just… not good.”
Then everything else started falling out of my mouth, without any of the kindness I had included in the prepared version. “Yeah, well, it can’t be all good all the time right? Things can be going along sweet and smooth for a great long while, and one day when you least expect it, they get all shitted up… and just when you thought they were about to get even better.”
This, she understood. “You’re still stuck on what I wrote in that card, aren’t you?”
Okay. Maybe she didn’t quite understand all of it. “Screw the card, Chloe; it’s not the card. It’s everything. I thought we were headed somewhere beyond playing coy at the copy machine, and I’m pretty sure you thought we were headed there too.” She wouldn’t respond. “I’m not wrong, am I? I wasn’t kidding myself that all the build-up came to a screeching halt right about the time I… ” I was so close to telling her about This. Ultimately, I felt it would clutter the issue, so I did the duck-and-cover thing I’ve become so skilled at. “… about the time I got sick.”
“Right. About the time you got sick.” Oh. I see how it is.
I could practically hear the italics of her sarcasm.
But I wasn’t giving it to her. If she thought I’d turned into an addict, she was going to have to say it out loud. “What is that supposed to mean?”
She backed down. “Look, I honestly don’t know what it is that you’re going through. I’ve heard rumors and whispers around the office, things that otherwise I wouldn’t give a second thought… but then you move down to night shift on a moment’s notice, and you drop out of life entirely as far as I know, since no one ever hears from you at all anymore. And now you show up all this time later, pulling me away from my job with zero warning so you can tell me I look nice and that you’re angry because we never got past flirting with each other. What am I supposed to think? All you’ve done is make the rumors look even more like they might be true.” Of everything she said, what I picked up on the most is that she’d noticed I wasn’t around.
That was nice to know.
But now she was looking at the hoodie, mostly in the region of my forearms, no doubt wondering what it might be covering up. Sleeves, so long ago a trusted confederate, had gone turncoat and were now the enemy. So, in the relative protection of the blinds in