Day 8 - 1675 Words

[Warning: Things get a little steamy! Not really, though. Actually not at all, much to our main character's dismay.]

Elaine took me to the hotel, where I did indeed shower and change clothes while she read a book. Things were going far from my original plan, but I told myself that this always happened. I always had a world of imagination wherein I was the hero of a story and dramatic things happened exactly the way I wanted them to. This was no different than usual, so I shouldn’t be discouraged. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to hop into the shower with someone who had just gotten off a transatlantic flight, and really – I couldn’t expect Elaine to read my mind. If I’d wanted her to shower with me, I should have just said so.

When I was cleaned up Elaine asked, “Where to?”

“I’m actually really tired,” I said. “I could use a nap.” You would think with thirteen hours on an airplane I would have had time to sleep, but you would be wrong.

“Sure,” she said, and went back to her book.

After I woke up, I asked Elaine what time it was. “Middle of the afternoon,” she said.

“Do you want to go to Chartres?” I asked.

“I’d love to take you to Chartres,” she said. So off we went. Elaine’s research fellowship included a six-month lease on a car, which made travel so easy. It was nice not to have to worry about catching trains on time. After we parked and started walking toward the cathedral, I caught Elaine’s left hand in my right. I reached into my pocket and checked for the ring box. I had snuck it there as I was changing, when Elaine wasn’t looking.

“Miles,” Elaine began, “we need to talk.”

I stopped walking.

“We what?” I felt my heart clench in my chest. I tried to tell myself to breathe, but my lungs weren’t listening. I felt as though I were going to pass out.

“Let’s keep walking,” she said. She squeezed my hand. It’s okay, I told myself. Everything is going to be fine. “Miles, I love you very much – “

“I love you, too,” I said.

“ – but... God, this is so hard to say.” Spit it out already, I thought. “Miles, I’ve...”

“You’ve...?”

“I’ve met someone else, here in Paris.” Sure, she had met a lot of people. She didn’t mean what I thought she meant. No way. It was impossible.

“Really?” I swallowed. I swore I could feel a goiter the size of a cantaloupe in my throat.

“I... I love you, Miles, but I’m not in love with you. Not anymore.”

“Well, you know, after you’re with a person for a while, infatuation fades –“ I said, grasping at straws.

“Miles, I’m not coming back to Tallahassee.” At that moment, the world ended. The sky fell; a meteor landed on me. At the same time, the ground opened up and swallowed me into the bowels of the earth.

Or at least, that’s what I thought would happen. Instead, other people kept walking by us, ignoring us or glancing at the crazy American tourists. “You – what? Why?”

“Miles. I met a man here, in Paris, while I was doing my research. I didn’t want to fall in love with him, I tried not to, but you just can’t control your feelings. I am really sorry.”

“You couldn’t have told me this before I spent thousands of dollars to fly out here, booked the finest hotels in France, and bought you a ring that cost more than all the cars I’ve ever had put together?” I shouted.

Actually, that’s not what happened. Instead, I blinked, and said, “Oh.”

“His name is Alexis,” she told me. “He’s not French, actually. He’s from Montana.”

There were people in Montana? Attractive male people who went around stealing poor Floridians’ women away from them? I had thought Montana was a wasteland.

“I... see,” I said. I flipped the ring box open in my left pants pocket and snapped it shut. “Well, do you want me to – I mean, I guess I’ll change my flight – it will probably be a day before I can leave.”

“No, Miles,” Elaine said. “You don’t understand. I don’t want you to leave. I’m so happy to see you.”

I was so confused.

“I really have missed you,” she told me. “You’re my best friend in the world, and I don’t want to lose that.”

“I...” I had to clamp my mouth shut, or I would have thrown up on her.

“I want to go on the tour of Europe with you, the one you planned. I think we’ll have fun.”

I gulped. “Yeah. Fun,” I sighed.

“Please, Miles. I really care about you.” I found this very hard to believe. She obviously didn’t care about my financial wellbeing, at the very least.

“Oh... okay,” I agreed. I’d spent all that money, and I wasn’t going to get it back. I might as well get what I could out of the experience. Besides, after a week traveling Europe with me, maybe Elaine would realize how wrong she was and declare her undying love for me and leave that Alexis shmuck behind. “Can we, though, um, go back to the hotel?” I asked. “I really need to sit down.”

“Sure,” Elaine said. “Anything you want.”

What I want is you, I thought.

The week that was supposed to be heaven turned out to be a very placid hell. We spent every night in some ritzy hotel or another. I always let Elaine have the bed, and I slept on the couch. I wouldn’t tell her, but I was very resentful. If I had known we wouldn’t be sharing a bed I would have booked hostels. Hell, if I’d known we wouldn’t be sharing a bed I probably wouldn’t have come to Europe at all.

There were times during the week when I could pretend things weren’t any different than before Elaine left. She would put her arm through mine, and we would walk through plazas or marketplaces filled with people hawking their wares in languages I didn’t understand, and I would pretend everything was fine. The weather was gorgeous the whole time we were there. I decided it had done this just to spite me. We ate at the finest restaurants. We drank the most exquisite wines. Everything was perfect except for the fact that everything was wrong. I tried all week to balance my desire to get Elaine back with my understanding that if I pushed her too far, all was lost.

At the end of the week, nothing had changed. Elaine was still with Alexis, whoever that might be. I began to think she had invented him just to get away with me. Telling me she didn’t want me anymore wouldn’t be good enough, she had decided; she needed to have someone else to blame. The drive to the airport was silent. When we got to the terminal, Elaine got out and helped me with my bags. Then she hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to grab her and kiss her or punch her so hard she fell over. It didn’t matter much. I did neither.
What I did do was look into her eyes and whisper, very quietly, “Why?”

“It’s not you,” she said. She seemed to be all about cliches recently. “It’s me.”

“But why?” I asked again.

“I’ve changed since I’ve been here, Miles. You couldn’t expect me to go away for six months, to France no less, and come back exactly the same.” Actually, I could, I thought. That was kind of one of the conditions of me letting you go in the first place, I wanted to say. Then I realized she would have gone no matter what I said. Letting her go without a fight was just delaying the inevitable. Elaine had to choose between Paris and me, and Paris had won. “You’re a sweetheart, Miles. You are wonderful and I spent the happiest three and a half years of my life with you. But I am not that person anymore. Alexis knows me as I am now, and he loves me, as I am now. Not a memory he’s held in his mind for four months, but me.”

Whose fault is that? I refrained from shouting. I didn’t tell you to go away! But I did. I had. I told her I wanted her to go. I encouraged her. Because I wanted her to be happy. Well, here she stood before me – and she seemed pretty happy. Pitying me, but happy, in general. Hadn’t I got what I wanted? I looked away, then down at my watch. “I have to go or I’ll miss my flight,” I said.

“Miles, I want... I want to be friends. With you. Please?”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, and then turned to go to my gate. I steeled my will. I did not look back. I wanted to beg her, but I would not do it.

I didn’t sleep at all on the flight home. I hadn’t really slept all week. I mostly had just laid on the couch of each hotel suite, wondering what I could have done differently. Thinking there must be something. I had done something wrong, and if I could find a way to fix it, Elaine would come back to me. On the flight, I kept replaying the whole week in my head, looking for signs Elaine was changing her mind. She had held my hand. She kissed me on the cheek. She hugged me. She wouldn’t have done those things if she wanted nothing to do with me.

But she wants to be friends, I told myself. That’s why she did all those things. She wouldn’t share a bed with you.

I offered her the bed. I didn’t bother asking if I could join her.

She went into the bathroom to change clothes. Every single day.

This is the dialogue I had with myself on the flight from Paris back to Tallahassee.