I turn away and stare numbly at the ceiling for several eternal minutes before reaching for my phone. I check the time: 10:17 a.m. How can that be? I fell asleep last night sometime before ten, which means I’ve slept for more than twelve hours. Still, when I begin trying to move my leaden limbs, I feel like I’ve been hit by a ten-ton truck, my insides smeared along the Kennedy.
My phone rings, breaking the silence with Beyoncé’s latest, which forces me into action by answering to shut it up.
“Good morning, birthday girl,” my friend Jordan enthuses while I inwardly groan.
Oh, right. I’m thirty-five today. Somehow I forgot all that with the news of losing my job and my fiancé in the span of a few hours.
“Good morning,” I reply groggily.
“You sound awful,” says Jordan, and I can feel her frowning over the phone. “Did you already start celebrating last night?”
“No, nothing like that.” Though this morning resembles a bad hangover. “I’m just waking up.”
“Well, I won’t keep you. Just confirming that we’re still on for Adobo Grill at eight tonight?”
Oh my god—my birthday dinner tonight. After yesterday, there is nothing to celebrate and the absolute last thing I feel like doing is going out. But begging off would require an explanation and since my grief-filled brain can’t form an excuse fast enough, I dully respond, “Uh-huh.”
“Can’t wait to see you and celebrate!” Her cheerfulness sharpens my heartbreak.
“Same here,” I say, not meaning it.
“Ugh. You sound terrible. You better get some coffee in you, girl.”
“Yes, I’ll get on that.”
“Love ya! See you tonight.” Jordan hangs up taking her cheerfulness with her.
Yes. Coffee. It can’t cure all my problems, but it can cure at least one. I’m so drained I’d probably go back to sleep if I didn’t have to figure out the next chapter of my life. Of course, this realization makes me want to pull the covers over my head, which I do, and never come out.
Argh.
But that’s not who I am and it’s not who I plan to become, so I give myself a sad pep talk. Okay, these are just some setbacks. Some major setbacks, true, but I’ve never been one to give up. I can’t let Neil get the best of me. I realize though that once I get out of bed there are painful steps to take. There is a wedding to cancel. There is job hunting to do. There is a birthday dinner to attend.
There is the fact that I am thirty-five years old and my life has crumbled around me.
What do I do first?
It’s Saturday, my long run morning. Normally, I hate skipping a workout since I used to always be training for something—the Chicago marathon or the occasional sprint triathlon—although the last few months, it’s all been for seamlessly fitting into my wedding dress. So though it’s the last thing I feel like doing, considering the uncontrollable downward trajectory my life took yesterday, I also feel that I should stick to whatever constants I still have in my life. Mustering all my strength, I push the covers off me and roll out of bed. I pull my meticulously highlighted blond hair into a ponytail, throw on the requisite running gear, lace up my shoes, and am out the door before I can second-guess myself.
THE LATE MORNING May sun does little to lift my mood as I head toward Lincoln Park, promising myself that for an hour, I’ll try to forget that I’m Allison James—the thirty-five-year-old, unemployed, former fiancée.
As I make my way to the end of Dearborn nearing the Lincoln Memorial, there’s a group of people that on closer inspection turns out to be a bridal party getting their photos taken. I look to where the smiling maid of honor is standing next to the smiling bride and fixing something in the bride’s hair. Tears sting my eyes and my chest threatens to explode and I want to shout at the universe, Oh, come on! as I veer toward the lake-front to avoid them.
It was my maid of honor who inadvertently introduced me to Neil. Stacey had invited me to a Cubs game when one of her friends secured a box (even though, in my opinion, it’s usually more fun in the bleachers), and Neil was a friend of the friend who had the box. Neil was the type of guy Wrigleyville attracts. He was good-looking in a clean-cut way with closely cropped light brown hair and warm brown eyes that crinkled slightly when he smiled. He was fit, but not obsessively so. He golfed and occasionally played volleyball at the lakefront in the summer, though he admitted he preferred watching sports to actually doing them. We ended up sitting next to each other and spent the entire game talking about everything—movies, music, The Amazing Race, favorite Chicago spots, our jobs (he worked in sales for a sports marketing company; I was a PR account manager), our friends, our families, and even childhood pets (his was a female turtle named Steve). I was completely taken in by his friendly demeanor, lopsided grin, and honest face (how ironic, all things considered). When I accidentally swallowed my beer too quickly and got a terrible case of hiccups, he tried helping me with all the tricks in the book. “Hold your breath. Here, we’ll have a contest.” Yet, he kept making such ridiculous faces while he held his breath that I would end up laughing and hiccupping even more. Then he tried to scare me, but trying to do so at a rowdy baseball game was near impossible. The only thing that seemed to cure them was when he asked for my phone number.
Our relationship progressed easily and quickly, and within a year we were living together in my condo and planning our future. From the first date until yesterday, everything about our relationship had felt so simple and right—so how could it have all gone wrong?
And, Stacey, of all people? I could understand it if maybe he went for someone completely different, but Stacey also works in PR and is physically another version of me—five foot seven, blond (although even more bottled than I am), and a gym-honed size four.
And he couldn’t have possibly chosen her because of her personality. The woman is insanely demanding. Whenever we go out, she wants to pick the restaurant or bar and usually picks one with no consideration for others’ finances. God forbid if any service is less than stellar because she’s a stingy tipper (when she tips) and always wants to complain to the manager. She was one of those customers I feared when I worked in retail during high school. Though it was exactly for these reasons that I asked her to be my maid of honor, hoping her forceful personality would help keep the wedding day schedule on course. Sure, she’s funny and fine in conversation, but aren’t all PR people? That’s our job.
So the only thing I can think of, and the thought makes me ill, is that she must be really, really good in bed. I would give her that. Not that I don’t have my own tricks, but Neil and I were together for a long time. Things got comfortable. The sexy chemises I always wore to bed at some point turned into flannel pajamas (but in my defense, Chicago winters are brutal!). The stress of wedding planning took up a lot of our free time, and our most in-depth discussions became centered around issues such as which font looked best on the save-the-date cards. But everyone knows that’s just wedding planning and every couple goes through it. So why didn’t we survive? What was wrong with us? Or more to the point—what is wrong with me?
This last thought sucks the air right out of me, and I stop running. Spying a nearby bench, I collapse onto it, rest my forehead on my hands, and let the tears silently spill.