Nerd Girl(16)

“Really?” I couldn’t hide my disappointment. “Then I guess I’ll just have to go to Christine’s dinner party by myself. I’ll miss you.”

He was silent. I could tell something was wrong.

“Jules, are you happy with you and me right now?” His voice sounded sad. The red flags immediately went up.

“Andrew, what’s wrong. What’s going on?” The familiar feeling of dread came over me. There was only silence on his end. Oddly, I didn’t panic. I think a part of me always knew we weren’t going to make it. Before he could answer my question, I whispered, “Do you want out?” There was more silence. He wasn’t saying anything. Damn him. “If you do this now, Andrew, know that you can’t take it back,” I whispered sadly, “The door will be shut for good this time. I can’t and I won’t do this again. Is this what you really want to do?”

There was a long pause and a deep sigh. He finally whispered, “Yes. “

“Goodbye, Andrew.” Then I hung up.

After three years together, we broke up over the phone. I didn’t even bother waiting for an explanation. I was numb. His desire to want out of the relationship was enough. I didn’t need to hear anymore. Every project had a beginning and an end. This was definitely the end of this one. We had been through it together before and we both knew that this was the final time. It was the lesson I had never learned with him, until now. Third time’s a charm, right?

Two weeks later, we finally spoke in person to arrange to get our things back from one another’s apartments. That’s when I learned he had been seeing someone he met in San Diego. Recently (very recently), I learned from a shared friend that Andrew was engaged to be married. They’d been together for six months. He’d lied. He’d been cheating on me for three months even before we broke up. He proposed to her after only six months. We’d been together for over three years and he never once broached the subject. I was devastated.

When Andrew had confessed soon after our breakup that he’d been cheating on me, I felt betrayed and angry. After learning about his engagement, though, I felt inadequate. We had been together for three freaking years! I’d always thought that he didn’t want to get married just yet, that he just wasn’t ready. Oh no! The fact of the matter was that he just didn’t want to marry me. I was his security blanket. I never caused any fluttering butterflies. I was merely the safe bet, a warm bed, until something better came along. I was to him what Melissa was to Jake. The only difference was that Andrew didn’t want to play it safe; he took a risk to find the love of his life and it wasn’t me.

It’s never me.





“It was fate!” Anna exclaimed. “I mean, seriously. He hits you with his car. Then you just happen to bump into him at Betty’s. He works at MS—you work at MS. He lives in Queen Anne—you live in Queen Anne. Why the hell didn’t you get his last name?” She’s yelling at me now and people started to look over at us.

It was Sunday morning and Anna and I were having brunch at a local bakery in my neighborhood. I filled her in on the details of the week which included my getting hit by a car, my job interview, and my unexpected dinner with Ryan.

“I don’t know!” My voice pitched as I wailed pathetically. “The whole evening took me by surprise. I just wasn’t thinking.” I took another bite of my scrambled eggs and noticed the room was getting busy. A long line of people were waiting behind the cash register and more continued to enter into the small café for their daily dose of caffeine.

“Oh, come on, Jules. You’re so full of shit right now. How often does someone get hit by a car driven by a hottie and then randomly meet again to then have dinner together? You end up having this amazing connection, and then you guys both just leave? No phone number, no name, nothing? What the fuck?” Anna arched both eyebrows and looked exasperated. “And you said he kissed you!” she continued to rant.

“Well, no, not exactly. I said he kissed me on the forehead, not the lips,” I clarified.

She ignored that detail. “But you wanted to kiss him, right? Do you think he wanted to kiss you? On the lips, that is?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said, uncertain. “It was sort of like he was having an argument in his head. I’m sure he had his reasons for doing what he did,” I said in his defense.

“Do you think he has a girlfriend … or a wife?” Anna pressed her lips together as if waiting for me to deny her claim.

“Well, he didn’t have a ring on his finger. I noticed that at least.” I rolled my eyes in an effort to show Anna that I wasn’t completely clueless. “He might have a girlfriend, but we didn’t talk about any relationships.”