“Donna Ashby.” Mickie and I had had this discussion about me selling myself short when it came to relationships more than once. Okay, maybe fifty times. I had a modest history of failed relationships with women who could look past my eyes, but only far enough to see a successful doctor who made a decent living. None of them could see far enough to see a life with me.
“You pick women who aren’t good enough, and then you rationalize how they treat you rather than just telling them they aren’t good enough for you.”
“Thanks. That improved my self-esteem immeasurably. Do you have Kim Basinger’s phone number? I’m feeling much more confident.”
“Would you rather I lie?”
“Sometimes.”
“Fine. Next time I’ll lie, and you can continue making the same mistake.”
“Wait a minute. How is this any different from the guys you date?”
Mickie’s eyes blazed, and I regretted my question. “How? I’ll tell you how. Because I’m not living with any of them or thinking of marrying any of them.” Mickie checked her wristwatch and retrieved her purse, moving across the room toward the front door. “You don’t want my advice? I don’t give a shit. But don’t compare my relationships to your relationship with your roommate. And I don’t have to apologize to you or anyone else for who I date or who I sleep with, though I don’t sleep with nearly the number you apparently seem to think I do, like those idiots in high school used to speculate.”
“I didn’t—” I started, but Mickie was on a roll.
“And yes, I like getting laid. I like the feeling when I watch their faces contort in sheer, unadulterated joy, when they gasp with pleasure and look at me completely and totally disarmed. And do you know why?”
I didn’t dare answer.
“Because at that moment, they would do anything, anything that I asked of them to experience that feeling again. But I don’t ask anything of them. Not one goddamned thing. I’m not in a committed relationship, Sam. I haven’t moved in with anyone. I also haven’t told anyone I love them and they’re the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, because when I do, that will be the last person I ever sleep with.” She opened the door and wheeled on me. “You deserve better. You use your eyes as an excuse for not believing you could do better and for not standing up for yourself and telling women they’re not good enough for you. You want to settle for someone like Eva, someone who cheats on you, who mistreats you, go right ahead. But for God’s sake, at least get a prenup, because I am not ever giving her any part of our damn business just because you’re blind.”
As the door closed, I was uncertain what had just happened or what exactly had set Mickie off, at least to that level of intensity. Then I thought of what she’d just said to me and I realized something else, something I had never really considered before.
Eva had never told me she loved me.
3
Just before three in the afternoon, Eva had still not called. She had a built-in excuse; her flight from Boston left at six in the morning East Coast time, which was three in the morning my time. Maybe she’d say, “I didn’t want to wake you,” and I could reply, “I didn’t want to wake you two, either.”
She had a six-hour flight to concoct a story. Maybe she’d play dumb, deny receiving the phone call at all and make me think that I had called the wrong room . . . and what type of person did I think she was, anyway? Or maybe she wouldn’t even bother with the charade; maybe she’d do us both a favor and just admit she’d been cheating on me from the start. Maybe she’d get it over with and say she didn’t love me, we had no future together, and she’d move out. I’m a coward, I know, but it would have been so much easier that way. Easier because, as angry and hurt and bitter as I was, there was still a part of me, the part that had been willing to go back to Donna Ashby in high school even though I knew she had used me, the part so afraid that I could never find anyone else and that I would spend my life lonely and alone.