Attach ments(88)

“I’m not doing this,” I said. “You are.” And then I decided I would be damned to hell if I took one step toward him. So I told him to throw me my keys. He wouldn’t, he said he was going to drive me home. And I was like, “Don’t come near me. Throw me my keys.”

“I knew you wouldn’t get this,” he said. “I knew you’d take it wrong.”

How was I supposed to take it?

He said I was supposed to see the truth. “That I love you enough to be honest with you.”

“But not enough to marry me,” I said.

“Too much to marry you.”

Even in the state I was in, I managed to roll my eyes at that.

“I wasn’t built for this,” he yelled. “Look at me. You know it’s true.” And for the first time, maybe ever, he didn’t sound cool. He sounded a little panicked. And a little angry. “I don’t want to love someone so much that they take up all my head, all my space. If I knew I was going to feel this way about you, I would have left a long time ago, while I still could.”

I kept yelling at him to throw me my keys. I think I called him “a great horrible bastard.” Like I was swearing in a second language. He threw me the keys, and they hit the car behind me like a baseball.

“Don’t come home,” I said. “I don’t want to see you.”

“I have to come home,” he said. “I need my guitar.”

Have you ever seen The Goodbye Girl? Don’t watch it if you still want to enjoy romantic comedies.

It makes every movie ever made starring Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock lash itself in shame. Also, don’t watch The Goodbye Girl if it would trouble you to find Richard Dreyfuss wildly attractive for the rest of your life, even when you see him in What About Bob? or Mr. Holland’s Opus.

I n The Goodbye Girl, at the very wonderful end, this character (Marsha Mason, looking like a bruised pixie) who has given up on true love after being abandoned by a string of loser actors, realizes that the Richard Dreyfuss character really is going to come back to her like he promised he would because he left his guitar in their apartment. That’s how she knows that he really, truly loves her.

When Chris brought up his guitar, that’s when I knew he really, truly didn’t love me. That’s when I lived that Marsha Mason scene in reverse.

I got in my car and drove until I thought he couldn’t catch up with me on foot, even though I didn’t really expect him to try. Then I pulled into an Arby’s parking lot and attempted to cry, but I was still too dumbfounded. I was still stuck in that split second after you get punched in the gut, when you don’t have enough breath to say, “Holy crap, that hurt.” I felt tired, overwhelmingly tired, and like I couldn’t go home; I was pretty sure Chris would be there. And everyone who would let me spend the night was still at the wedding. So, I checked into the Holiday Inn across from the Arby’s and watched free HBO until I fell asleep.

I slept until checkout time and left that Satanic dress in the room. (I had gym clothes in the car.)

Then I went back to my apartment.

Chris was there, of course, making tea. He’d just taken a shower. His hair was still damp and curly, and his T-shirt was lying over a chair. I swear he’s three miles long from the bottom of his throat to the top button of his jeans. He said he’d been worried about me.

“I didn’t want to see you,” I said.

“Didn’t?” he said, pouring hot water into two mugs.

“Don’t.”

“Beth …” His cool was back. He looked at me like he thought looking at me would be enough. “You can’t walk away from what’s between us. I’ve tried …We’re a spell,” he said. “We’re magic.”

I told him that I didn’t want magic, that I wanted someone who wouldn’t leave me if he could. Who wouldn’t feel like being committed to me was such a burden.

“I’m committed,” Chris said. “I’ve never cheated on you.”

Which wasn’t even what I meant. “You said you get tired when you look at me,” I said.

“I said that sometimes it’s too much.”

“Well, I want someone who doesn’t think so. I want someone whose heart is big enough to hold me.”

“You want someone whose love will fit around your finger.”

“You should write that down,” I said. “It sounds like a song lyric.”

It was a cold thing to say, but I was losing my nerve. I was looking around the kitchen, looking at him, thinking that it was a nice life, really. Thinking that it was absurd for me to break up with him for saying something out loud that, deep down, I already knew. Thinking how warm and loving he would be, what a wonderful day we could still have, if I could just let this go.