Playing Dirty(3)

A real smile, the first in days, crept onto my lips. “I think a break is probably just what I need right now,” I said honestly. “Besides, I have a ton of leave saved up. And the show doesn’t start again until the end of the summer.”

“I’m glad,” Lizzy said. She yawned again and I felt a little twinge of guilt.

“I’ll let you go,” I said. “I’m going to book a ticket now and I’ll forward the reservation to you. Can you pick me up from the airport?”

“Of course,” Lizzy promised. “It’ll be just like old times.”

I knew she was talking about when I first moved to NYC, after college. Lizzy and I had grown up in the country, about as far away from chic New York as we could get. I’d always wanted to get out and do something, but sometimes I couldn’t deny that the big city made me feel claustrophobic.

Lizzy now sounded much happier than she had when she’d first picked up the phone, and as we said our goodbyes and hung up, I reflected that even though she was the more outgoing of the two of us, she still must have been feeling lonely. After all, she’d only been in Manchester for a few weeks.

The darkening sky outside no longer looked so intimidating to me, and I smiled and stood by the window of my bedroom, watching the people mill about on the streets. From the twenty-first floor, they looked like little ants.

Waltzing over to my bed, I sat down and pulled my laptop close to me. I hadn’t checked my email in a few hours, and as it loaded, I felt the familiar twinge of anxiety creeping up my throat. After Josh and I had split up, he’d taken to emailing me almost compulsively. It was something he’d done while we were together, too, but after the split his emails were primarily sent in the middle of the night, rife with spelling mistakes.

I frowned when the page loaded and I saw I had two emails from Josh. With a touch of hesitation, I clicked on the first one.

‘Kate the Great,

I’m at happy hour, u want to join? I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself. That is, unless u beg me to touch u. ;) PS did u change ur number? I haven’t heard from u in days and I know u must be missing the biggest part of me….

Josh’

Groaning, I hit delete and sent the offending message to the recycling bin. I didn’t know how someone could be so obnoxious all the time. It wasn’t that I was prudish, but drunkenly emailing an ex from happy hour just seemed like such a bad, childish move. The kind of thing I would have (maybe) done in college, if I’d had less self-respect.

The second message was time-stamped an hour ago.

‘Katie,

Can I come over? I really need 2 talk 2 u. We need to work things out, ok? U understand that? Rite?

Your Josh’

I rolled my eyes. I knew it was stupid, but he was really getting on my nerves. I wanted to block his email, but he always sent the emails from the television studio-issued iPhone. I briefly wondered if I could report him for harassment, but thinking about that put a whole new knot in my stomach. For a while now, I’d had an odd feeling that the head producer didn’t particularly like me, and I didn’t want to give him another reason to bother me. I could just imagine how that conversation would go, me trying to explain that I’d broken up with Josh and that he was harassing me. I could picture exactly how it would end: we’d both get a lecture on behaving unprofessionally by dating work colleagues, and then Josh would just go on badgering me because he’d know he could get away with it.

Starting a new message to my boss, I told him that I was going out of the country for a few weeks and that I would be able to stay in touch via email while I was gone. After I hit send, there was a ping of a new message. I was incredulous; I couldn’t believe he’d responded already. My boss was always glued to his BlackBerry but this was unusual, even for him.

‘Katie,

I’m going to come over so we can talk, and don’t shut me out this time. I miss u and we really need to talk about how we’re gonna work things out. I can’t live without u, Kate, I need u in my life. Why don’t u understand that? I---‘

I clicked ‘delete’ and slammed my laptop shut before I could read any more of Josh’s poisonous words. My head was swimming; I couldn’t believe I’d gotten in such a mess. The whole time, I didn’t exactly think that dating a colleague was a good idea, but I’d had no idea it was going to turn out like this.

The startling thing about all of it was that for most of the time we’d dated, it hadn’t been like that. Josh had been perfectly content to get some takeout, snuggle on the couch, and sometimes sleep together—as in literally sleep together in the same bed, keeping each other warm. And then as soon as I started pulling away because I thought we were spending too much time together, he got really clingy and intense. The final straw had been when I’d broken a date because I had a splitting headache, and he’d shown up drunk at three in the morning. I’d told him in no uncertain terms to piss off and then slammed the door in his face.