not so super model pt.5
Pt.4 When he arrived home from Amsterdam-by-way-of-Paris he was in for a shock. So was I….
It was the day after my birthday and two whole months since we last saw one another. Since I last said ‘I love you’ and he last laughed ‘You’re only human’.
I never felt comfortable in cleavage, but I donned it that night. Determined to prove I had just as many desirable assets as the girl who got paid to look pretty. When I met him at the door he looked no more or no less excited than he ever did.
We left for his favourite restaurant. In the car I waited, excited, for the talk. The one he had promised. The one wherein he’d admit his folly and profess undying love for me and my girdled waist. It never came.
Three hours later I was on my third glass of Sancerre. He was going on about dirty Amsterdam and annoying French bureaucracy – the name Van Strudel noticeably absent from all conversation – when I asked “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He smiled and winked and then offered up my present. “I don’t know if you’ll like this,” he said, “it’s rather girly.”
When I was little and use to beat up Cousin Dusty my grandmother told me it wasn’t ladylike. I meditated upon her words as I fought an unmitigated urge to leap on the grinning European across from me.
“It’s not as if my name’s Chuck!” I snapped, and snatched the envelope from his hands.
Before I could open my Day at the Spa he said “Pardon?” and I growled these words:
“I paid three hundred dollars for hair I hate………. and ok, my legs may not actually be any longer, but in these heels, they look it …….. and I’ve spent the past eight weeks taking dieting tips from Parisians who eat cotton balls soaked in orange juice to stay thin JUST to look fabulous for YOU! And all I get is a ‘You Ain’t Girly’!”
His face said it all. A big ball of apathy, amusement and anger that couldn’t figure out whether to laugh or scream or just not care.
I crossed my legs and crossed my arms and waited. He drank his wine and finished his dessert. He smoothed the napkin in his lap and never looked up. His voice was low and slow when he spoke.
“Buffy…..I don’t feel that way about you. I never have. I never will.” He paused. Like he needed time to form his words. Like he hadn’t said enough already. “It’s never going to happen. You need to stop this.”
He didn’t look at me when I stood up and asked for my coat. Or when I walked out into the almost-autumn air to hail a black cab home.
That night I cried. I gave the dress to a homeless lady who lived in an alley two streets over, shoved the shoes under my bed and packed a suitcase for Dew on the Kudzu.
On the plane I wondered when I’d finally learn. When I’d stop trying to change me for someone else. I was resolute. Firm. For eight whole hours. But by the time I landed, I was already planning my return.
Continued……
