“Well, I’m a crime reporter right now but I’m up for a columnist position so I’m really hoping that I get that.”
The waitress appears at our table before he can say anything else, and we both order and hand her back our menus before she bustles off again.
“What do you want to write your column about?” he asks when she leaves, and I smile. I love talking about my work, and I could probably do it all through dinner if he let me, so this part is easy for me.
“I’m not sure yet. I’d love to find a way to help people, though. It’d be a nice change of pace from what I’m doing now.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, as a crime reporter, I kind of only show up when something bad has happened to someone. It’s awful to dig into someone’s pain like that, especially when it’s still so raw.”
He nods, looking thoughtfully off in the distance for a second. “Yeah, I guess I can see how that would be draining.”
“It is,” I tell him, nodding because he kind of hit the nail on the head. The stories I write do take a lot out of me. Listening to a father break down and sob in front of me after his daughter has been killed or watching a shop owner walk through the store that he spent his life building after someone broke in and robbed him sometimes takes every ounce of strength I can muster.
We chat casually, and I like that it’s easy to talk to him. The waitress stops by the table and drops off the appetizer that Zach ordered, and I realize that it’s one of my favorites. When she leaves, he slides the plate between us.
“They seriously have the best fried mozzarella I’ve ever had,” he says, taking a piece at the same time that I do.
“I know. This is one of my favorite restaurants.”
“Wow. Lucky guess.”
I nod and take another bite of the food. “Did you grow up around here?” I ask, finding myself genuinely interested. We may not be right for each other romantically but there’s no reason that we can’t be friends. In fact, I think Zach and I could be good friends.
“Naw, I grew up in South Carolina near Charleston.”
“Oh, what brought you over this way?” I ask, and he tenses up.
“A girl.”
It’s the only answer I get, and he’s quiet for a few awkward moments. Glancing out at the river, I try to think of something to say but I’m not even sure what upset him. The waitress comes back with our dinners, and he seems to shake off whatever it was that was bothering him as we dig into the food.
“Are you going to LSU?” I ask, and he nods.
“Yeah, I have a life here now, and it seemed silly to go anywhere else.”
I watch him for a moment, unsure if he’s completely recovered from earlier. “Can I ask you something?”
He looks up and seems to think it over for a moment before nodding. “Yeah.”
“Why did you wait so long to go to school?”
His gaze hardens right in front of me, and he clenches his teeth as I lean away from him, surprised by his reaction. “Because I was with this girl, my high school sweetheart, actually. And she wanted to go to school so I needed to work to support us. We had a whole plan, you know? She would go to school and then after she graduated, I would start classes, but instead, she started spreading her legs for one of the guys in her art class.”
“Oh my god, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.” I know exactly how he feels, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
“We had a plan, you know? She was going to design jewelry, and I was gonna run the business but that wasn’t good enough for her. Four years just flushed down the fucking drain.” He’s off on a tangent now, and I don’t think I could get a word in if I tried.
“There was so much bullshit. I put up with it ‘cause I loved her, and we were gonna have a life together but the little bitch only ever thought about herself. She was only concerned with what she wanted, and it didn’t matter who she trampled in the goddamn process. Why couldn’t she just break up with me if she wanted someone else?”
I try to say something but he just keeps talking, and I’m not even sure that he knows I’m here anymore. I tune out his ongoing rant as I start eating faster, trying to finish this up so I can leave. I’m sure that I look very lady-like right now as I shovel baked ziti into my mouth, but desperate times and all that. He was nice at first but this is really uncomfortable.
“It was like being with a child! She never did anything to help out around the house so on top of working my ass off to support us, I was also doing all the cleaning and cooking. Really, I was like a butler, except she occasionally had sex with me when she wasn’t screwing the model from her class.”
I try to keep my face neutral as he goes on ranting but each thing he says only adds to the awkwardness blanketing us right now. I believe that a relationship can survive after cheating but both people have to want it and work really hard at it. Listening to him, I have to wonder why he’s still so hung up on her if their relationship was really as bad as he’s describing. When Adam cheated on me, I was shattered, but in a way, I was thankful for it. His infidelity allowed me to see how lopsided our relationship had been and how much the way he treated me had taken out of me.
Adam wasn’t intentionally cruel to me. He was just young and selfish. Adam only did what he wanted, and I was never a priority in his mind. It’s amazing how much that can take out of a person, and it’s taken me so long to find my way back to a version of myself that I was before he came into my life. Sometimes, I have to wonder if it’s really worth it, and it’s one of the reasons that I don’t date. What’s the point?
I would like to say that I’m too young to be so jaded but I fear that I am that jaded. My days are spent around all different kinds of people, and not a single one of them has caught my eye since our break-up. I haven’t even spared a guy a second glance in over two years, and it might be that I’m just not cut out for relationships.
“How can a person be that selfish, you know? How can you spend that many years with a person, claim to love them but then treat them like that? I’ve never understood. If she wanted to be with someone else, she could have just broken up with me but no, she wanted to have her cake and eat it, too,” he says, and I nod as I take a sip of wine and shove more food in my mouth.
Finally, I finish my meal and sit back, finishing off my wine and discreetly checking my phone, ready to call in Izzy again if I need to. Zach looks up from his meal and notices that I’m done and mercifully stops talking.
“You ready to get out of here?” he asks, looking sad at the possibility but I don’t understand why. He just spent the last fifteen minutes complaining about his ex – in excruciating detail.
“I’m sorry. I’ve just got an early morning tomorrow so I should probably be going soon.”
He smiles and nods. “Sure. No problem. Let me just go pay the check.”
He sets his napkin down next to his plate and gets up. As I watch him walk back inside the restaurant, my phone buzzes in my hand with a text from Izzy.
Izzy:
How’s the date?
Me:
Epic fail.