Page 19 of The Frog Prince
“How did you?”
He laughs, really pleased. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
Maybe heshouldjust kill me. “I thought the plan was to do drinks.”
“We’ll still have drinks. I have a couple great places in mind. But when Aimee said you’re still new to the area, I thought I’d take you out, show you some of the hottest places around town.”
I suddenly know the kind of animal I’m dealing with. Trendy Tom’s his name. Being seen is his game. “That’s really nice of you to offer, Tom, but I don’t think—”
“Hey,” he cuts me short. “Holly.” His voice deepens. “I’ve been there.”
We’re two guys in the locker room, and he’s just given me the halftime pep talk.
“I’ve been through a big breakup, too,” he continues in the same confidential, you-can-trust-me tone that he must have learned when he started his cold-calling career. “I haven’t been married yet, so I can’t imagine what it feels like getting divorced, but it can’t be easy.”
I’ve told very few people about Jean-Marc. I’ve intentionally kept my marriage and divorce quiet. Yes, there’s shame in my silence, but more than that, there’s the heartbreak I can’t talk about, not with friends, not with family, not with anyone.
It’s not that I’m the silent, secretive type. Far from it. My mother used to call me Chatty Cathy, but what’s happened to me, what’s happened to what I hope, what I believe, is beyond words. Beyond language as I know it.
The divorce—the rejection, the confusion—it all just hurts too bad. Just makes me want to disappear forever, but that’s not an option, not when you’re only twenty-five and still-young-with-your-whole-life-ahead-of-you.
So I don’t talk about it. I haven’t talked about it, and no one knows what I went through last year, trying to keep it together, trying to figure out a way to make the marriage work. I changed my hair color four times—went wild with sunny blond highlights, then darkened it, going for sultry; when dark didn’t work, I tried red, and the red turned out brassy, overly chemical, and then I tried again and looked Persian with the odd henna purple rinse.
There were diets.
Trips to the shrink.
Agonized phone calls to college friends.
What’s wrong with me? How can I change? How can I make him fall in love with me again?
But this is none of Tom Lehman’s business; this is something I would never have told him. It’s too late now; he knows about my failure. With my pride gone, I give in. “What time are our reservations?”
“Eight. I’ll pick you up at six thirty.”
An hour and a half of drinks before at least two hours of dinner. Great. I think my first date in two years is going to kill me.
I hang up, head to the kitchen, and curse Jean-Marc yet again.
It’s his fault I’m here, back on the market. I didn’t want to be on the market. I’d thought I’d escaped all this.
Dating is nothing short of torture.
I know. Some women actually enjoy it, but I never have. I’m so not good at bullshitting. I struggle with having to be nice and make this polite, cordial conversation that sounds horrendous even at cocktail parties. It’s practically a miracle to have a good date. It’s an out-of-body experience when a man knows how to carry on an interesting conversation.
Jean-Marc was interesting. Talking to him was like playing a game of tennis on a summer morning: warm, flirty, light. Jean-Marc knew a great deal about literature and politics, and yet when he spoke he was dry, witty, self-deprecating. From the first night, I loved being with him.
I lovedhim.
It didn’t hurt that marrying him meant I was done with meeting men, done with the awkward conversations and even more awkward attempts at lovemaking. I wasn’t a virgin when I married Jean-Marc, but-I certainly wasn’t an expert, either, yet being with Jean-Marc, making love to him, felt right.
Since Jean-Marc and I spent all our time together, getting married seemed like the natural progression. Marriage meant safety. Security. Acceptance.
In case you’re wondering, the sound you hear, that’s me laughing hysterically.
Once I’ve stopped laughing (or crying, depending on how you categorize the sound), I examine the cabinets, looking for something that could pass for dinner, but all I see is my stuff.
Even now, three months after moving in, my kitchen shelves kill me. I have eight Waterford wineglasses but no regular drinking glasses. One set of inexpensive everyday dishes and twelve place settings of Rosenthal china, rich cobalt blue on white, edged with gold. The Rosenthal was four hundred a place setting—so expensive that the lady at the Visalia department store said to my mother (not knowing it was my mother), “Who does this girl think she is, picking out china that’s fit for a princess?”