Romance Impossible(77)

With every step, I felt more and more lightheaded. Giddy, almost. Thrilled with my own impertinence. I'd left Chef Maxwell Dylan stunned, almost speechless, and that was an accomplishment all on its own. I tried to imagine putting that as a line on my resume, and giggled.

My mother's voice echoed in my head, something she'd said to me a thousand times when I was a kid. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

But this wasn't just about my wounded pride. It wasn't. Sure, his reluctance to pursue anything romantic with me stung. Rejection always did. But I wasn't just being vindictive.

I was very nearly one hundred percent sure.

Whatever. My reasons didn't matter now. It was final. There was no way he'd ever offer me the job again, even if I asked - and I certainly wasn't going to ask. He needed to believe I was one hundred percent confident in my decision, even if I wasn't.

Whatever he thought this job offer was - a consolation prize, or an apology, or just something to prove I was wrapped around his finger - I wasn't interested. Not after the way he'd led me on.

Tears streamed down my face as I walked to the subway. I could feel people's eyes following me, curiously. In a lot of cities I could have walked the streets without notice with a battle-axe lodged in my head, but not here.

Don't look at me don't look at me don't look at me DON'T LOOK AT ME

"Hey, lady, you alright?"

I ignored the man, not even looking up, just shoving my hands deeper into my pockets and quickening my pace.

No matter how fast my feet travelled, I couldn't shake the feeling. I was being swallowed up. Slowly. Like quicksand. Or quicksand in the movies, anyway. Seeping up past my toes, my ankles, up my legs, and pretty soon it would smother me. But quicksand wasn't really like that, was it? I thought I remembered reading that somewhere. It didn't happen like they showed in movies.

Nothing ever did.

That thought made me laugh a little, and it came out as a bitter, broken sound. Luckily, by now, I was in an empty street with no one around to question what my crazy ass was doing. A movie about me and Max? Sure, that would be a blockbuster. A modern-day Pride and Prejudice. He could be played by Daniel Craig. No. Tom Hardy...

And we'd get a happy ending, of course. The one that could never happen in real life.





***



I sat alone in my apartment with the TV blaring, because that seemed to be the only way to quiet the voices in my head.

No, not those kinds of voices. I knew they weren't real. It wasn't my neighbor's dog ordering me to kill. It was just the usual, run-of-the-mill self-doubt and questioning that kept me up at night, every time I thought I'd made a horrible mistake.

Lately, I felt a lot less like a person, and a lot more like a collection of horrible mistakes, strung together with twist ties and chewing gum.

It was just hate-sex to him. That's all it was.

I kept coming back to that, to my insane assumption that we'd shared some kind of tender moment in that dark basement. Why had I thought, even for a moment, that someone like Max could ever fall for me? Why had I let myself confuse his patronizing attention for something I actually wanted in my life?#p#分页标题#e#

Why had I let myself believe that he cared?

Oh, sure, he cared about me, in the same way he cared about anyone. Wanted me to succeed, wanted the best for me, blah blah blah. I was tired of it. I was tired of people who only cared as long as it was convenient for them.

How could I have been so stupid?

A familiar voice filtered out of my TV, and I turned bleary eyes towards it. Naturally, this would be it. The night they decided to re-run an old episode of one of Max's shows, just to really grind salt into that wound.

For some reason, instead of changing the channel, I just sat there. I sat there and watched him - a few years younger, with the same unruly dirty-blond hair that I'd only just recently held clutched in my fingers - scream at some poor sap who owned a failing restaurant.

"Is this what you want? Does this make you happy?"

I remembered him saying almost those exact same words to me. The memory hit like a heavy punch, right in the pit of my stomach.

I forced myself to focus on the minute details across the screen. The color of the man's shirt, the absurd pattern of his tie. The words, now that it had cut to his confessional: JORDAN HARRIS, OWNER.

"I feel humiliated," he said. "He really cut me down."

With a sudden movement, I grabbed the remote and switched the TV off for good.





***



I was on my way to a job interview - seems like only yesterday I was going to meet Max - when I heard someone calling after me.

It wasn't a voice I recognized, but I hesitated nonetheless.

"Jillian!" A man was waving. Something heavy jostled against his torso as he ran towards me, and I realized too late that it was a camera. "Jillian, you used to work at the Trattoria with Chef Dylan, didn't you?"