Gold for Plastic Ch. 02

I actually laughed at that point. "As far as I'm concerned, there's no marriage to fight for. Understand this, Theresa, the marriage is over and there are no choices or negotiations anymore. Please be sure to make that clear to Megan, because, frankly, I don't really want to talk to her any more than I have to."

Theresa looked stunned as I slowly closed the door in her face.

I found that ending a marriage isn't as easy as closing a door. Sure, I'd made my decision and I knew that it was the right one since I knew I couldn't possibly live with the arrangement Megan had wanted. But, even though I'd smugly declared the marriage over to myself to Megan and to Theresa, I was having a lot of trouble adjusting to the situation. All the time and all the emotion and all the effort I'd put into a 5 year marriage seemed wasted and I couldn't shake the feeling that every moment of happiness I'd had with Megan was either a lie or had been tainted by what she had done.

It seemed that everything I did and everywhere I went reminded me of Megan and happier times. I found myself walking out of a restaurant without finishing because my meal was the same thing I'd ordered the night I asked her to marry me. The tulips blooming around the neighborhood were a painful reminder that they'd been her favorite flower. Labradors were her favorite dog, rock her favorite music, vanilla her favorite smell. Sunny days reminded me of days outside, camping or gardening or simply taking a walk. If it rained, I was reminded of lazy days by the fire, snuggled together in a comforter, slowly succumbing to the urge to make love. It became impossible for me to sleep in 'our' bed or eat at 'our' table or even live in 'our' house and I eventually had to move out of the duplex altogether.

Honestly, I was absolutely miserable and I wanted to believe that she was feeling the same loneliness and sense of loss that I was suffering from and that she'd at least voice some sort of regret. The marriage was over, I knew that and I knew that it had been my decision, but I desperately wanted some sign, some signal she had valued our relationship and that, on some level, she deeply regretted her choices. Sadly though, other than a few halfhearted attempts to get me to change my mind, she essentially gave up and it was clear that she was more than willing to let our marriage go quietly.

I knew it was probably easier for her, because she had a lover, someone she could be with that would blunt the pain and make it easier for her to move on. It seemed unfair to me, somehow, that Megan got to continue with half of what her life had become and I was left without any of mine, particularly since the half she had included some new and apparently exciting things. Although I didn't and couldn't know everything she did that summer before the divorce was finalized, I was aware that she spent most of her free time with Palmer and Theresa and their group. I also knew that she took at least two vacations with him, one a weekend to San Francisco and another week long trip to Europe. If she was missing me in any way, her new lifestyle was surely mitigating the pain.

The divorce was finalized a few months after my doorstep conversation with Theresa and without much acrimony. The financial stuff was fairly straight forward. Since I had originally stayed in the duplex I had to give her some cash for the furniture we owned, but otherwise, things sorted out pretty uneventfully. We each took half of our savings, our own clothes and our other personal stuff. She took her car, I took mine.

Even though I was the one that initiated the action, I couldn't shake the depressing feeling that it was maddeningly easy to end a marriage that we'd each promised would last until the day we died. And, even though I was already having a tough time adjusting, I was surprised with how empty I felt when we finally signed off and I watched Megan walk out of the lawyer's office, no longer my wife. I was staring off into space, thinking about how strange and sadly surreal and clinical the divorce proceeding had been when I heard Taylor clear his throat. I glanced over at him and saw a look of concern.

"You ok?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, why?'

"Well, you don't look fine."

"It's been a tough day, you know? End of something that I thought was good and that I thought was going to last forever. Hard to swallow." I was shaking my head slowly, trying to keep my emotions in check.

"Are you having second thoughts about whether splitting up was the right thing to do?" Taylor asked.

"I don't think so, no. I mean, she completely betrayed me when she started shacking up with Palmer, so I wanted out, I wanted a divorce, even though I knew it would hurt." I thought for a minute. "But, I guess I wanted her to pay some sort of a price. I mean, she's the one that trashed our marriage. She's the one that should be in pain. But here I am, I can barely function I'm so upset and she walks out of here to her boyfriend and will just go on. I guess I want her to feel some regret too. I want to hear her say she screwed up and that....that I'm the better man or something. I want her as unhappy as I am now."

Taylor listened to me carefully, nodding sympathetically with what I was relating. He seemed to want to say something, but I got the feeling he was debating whether he should or not. Finally, he cleared his throat and carefully started talking.

"Look, I've seen a lot of marriages dissolve and I've seen a lot of ex-husbands and ex-wives wish for just what you said. They want their ex to suffer for what they've done. They want them to have some sort of an epiphany that they've made a mess of their lives and they want the satisfaction of having them come on bended knee and cry about how unhappy they've become and how sorry they are and how much they wish they could change what they did." He looked at me closely, a look that said he wanted my full attention.

"But here's the deal. That almost never happens. And, even when it does, even when the tearful ex admits in exquisite detail everything that they've done wrong and all that they're sorry for, the admission doesn't do all that much for the smart people, because they're the ones that adjusted well after the divorce, that have moved on. They've got a new wife and new kids and a new house and a new life and they've stopped caring all that much about their old life and their old wife and their old hurts. Look, I don't know for sure, but my guess is that, someday, Megan is going to regret what she's done in a big way. But you can't wait for that day. You have to start living your life in a way that you really don't care all that much how she feels. It's the only way to stay happy. Hell, it's the only way to stay sane."

I didn't take Taylor's advice at first, although I thought a lot about it over the coming weeks while I stumbled through life, trying to adjust to the great gaping emotional wound that Megan had left me. The wound demanded my attention, reminding me of my loneliness, of her betrayal and of my apparent failure as a husband and as a man. In my best moments it was like a tethered wolf, snarling to get my attention and threatening to overwhelm me if I let it unleash itself. At my worst, it felt like some sort of mortal injury that would inflict an unbearable and relentless pain until it utterly consumed me. At work I was essentially unapproachable, writing code in silence, never talking or smiling with my associates. When I was with my friends, I moped, almost aggressively, and brought a dark miserable cloud of uncomfortable gloom into their homes. When I was alone, I'd stare at the TV or the words in a book or at the ceiling, waiting for the hour hand on the clock to magically move me closer to something resembling happiness. When I slept, it was only after I had cried.

This kept up for weeks, maybe months. I wanted to take Taylor's advice. I wanted to stop thinking about Megan and just be happy. I wanted to have a new wife and a house and a baby and a dog. I just couldn't see how I could get there from where I was at. I felt like some man without clothes or tools or even a map, sitting on an ice float in the middle of the ocean who just wanted to get home or at least get warm. How do you will yourself to become something that you aren't? To feel something that you don't?

Ultimately, I guess it was my friends that started to break the ice up for me. Over time, in their company, I slowly started to enjoy things that I used to do; playing games, watching sports, hiking, going to the movies. They were good enough to keep putting up with my moods and relentlessly tried any number of things to help lead me out of my melancholy. And so, with each passing week I'd talk a little more, smile a little more and, eventually, laugh a little more.

One night after we'd all had dinner and played a couple of video games, they all ganged up on me and insisted that it was high time I started dating again. In mock anguish, I accused them of trying to get rid of me and that they wanted to pawn me and my problems off on some poor, unsuspecting girl. They pressed on and presented me with an ultimatum, an offer that they thought, correctly, I couldn't refuse. They had 6 tickets to a concert that I was dying to go to. One of the tickets was mine, if and only if, I could get a girl to go with me. Of course they knew I might try to scam them just to get to the concert, so there were a couple of provisions. She had to be unmarried and unrelated. She had to be roughly my age so I couldn't invite one of the old widows from work. And she couldn't take money in exchange for a date, which pretty much ruled out my first plan of inviting one of the working gals from downtown.

There was a cute brunette with a nice figure at work I'd been a little friendly with that turned out to be available and willing to go. I felt awkward at first, but in the end, we had a reasonably good time. The concert was great and we stopped off for a late night snack and some drinks afterwards and I even got comfortable enough to ask her out again. We saw each other a couple of more times and had some fun, and, while we both knew that we were never going to be a couple, the time I spent with her gave me the courage and the ego boost to keep trying. Over the next few months I gradually started dating with some frequency and it wasn't long before I was going out pretty much every weekend. I found that there were a number of girls at work or at a gym I joined or from a couple of parties that I attended that were more than a little interested in me. Their attention and interest really helped me feel better about myself.

While I really enjoyed their company, I didn't, or maybe, couldn't get serious with any of these women. I got close enough with a couple of them to have sex, which, for the most part, was very good and sometimes even a little bit wild. But, it was all purely recreational, not the kind of sex that grew out of a desire to get really, really close, the kind you had with someone to tell them how you really felt about them. The kind you had with someone you wanted to marry.

All this time I still found time to hang out with my friends. We'd do all the usual stuff and they'd quiz me on all my latest dating adventures. Sally and Julie were especially interested to know which ones I really liked and who I thought I might get serious with and were invariably disappointed when I didn't develop a relationship. I figured that sooner or later they'd try and take a more active hand in getting me fixed up in a long term relationship, so I wasn't particularly surprised when I came over to watch the Super Bowl to find, in addition to the 2 other couples, a pretty gal about my age who just happened to be there to watch the game, but was, quite clearly, my date for the evening.

Her name was Leanne. She had strawberry blonde hair that she'd pulled back into a pony tail, accentuating a cute round face that featured a little upturned nose and was sprinkled with a few freckles. She was smallish, probably a full foot shorter than me, and she had a slim figure, but with exactly the right amount of curves in the important places. She had a lazy, toothy smile and was very easy to talk to. It didn't take long before I realized that she either really liked football a lot or she'd been coached very well by Bill and Greg because she said the right thing at the right times. That made it super easy to start a conversation and it didn't take long before we were talking, arguing and joking about what was happening on the field. But, by the end of the game, the conversation topics had drifted beyond football and we talked about work and ourselves and life in general. She was a nurse that had grown up in the area and was working at a local hospital where she met and become friends with Julie, who was also a nurse.

To my surprise, I also learned that she had a boyfriend, a guy named Danny, who was one of the number crunchers at the hospital and was out of town for the weekend. From what she said, I gathered that they'd been in a pretty serious relationship for some time and had been essentially engaged, but, for a variety of reasons they'd both decided it would a good idea to step back and reassess. She talked about him in a clinical, almost dispassionate way, as if she was trying to avoid saying anything that might make her emotional and embarrass her.

So, since her relationship was no longer strictly exclusive and she was feeling a little lonely on Super Bowl Sunday, Julie had invited her over. This news, of course, took me somewhat by surprise, because I figured Julie and Sally to try and set me up with highly available women. When she left after the game, the women started the inevitable questioning about what I thought and if I'd ask her out again and so I brought the fact that she had a boyfriend up.

Julie tried to explain. "Well, like Leanne said, they were pretty serious for a while, but they aren't now, and they are both seeing other people from time to time. "

"But, she still has a boyfriend and she made it pretty clear that they nearly got married."

"There's a very big difference from nearly married and married." Sally replied flatly.

"How about almost married and completely available? That's a pretty big difference too." I shot back.

Julie scoffed. "Come on, she isn't 'almost married' now. That was months ago. And, frankly, I think that ship has sailed."

"How can you know that? I mean if it was over, she would have said that. And, honestly, I really don't want to get super involved with a girl who is one step in or out of a committed relationship. It seems like a bad idea to me."

Julie raised an eyebrow. "You looked like you had a good time. It couldn't have been that bad of an idea."

"I had a great time, absolutely, but that's part of the problem." I thought for a moment and then continued, trying to be careful not to hurt their feelings too much with what I was going to say. "I just really don't want to get burned right now. Seriously, I really appreciate you trying to set me up like this, but I just don't get why you thought this would be a good idea for me. "

Julie had a thoughtful, somewhat surprised look about her. "We weren't setting you up."

I laughed. "Oh come on. 3 couples. A big introduction. No place to sit except beside her. Don't try and BS me; that was a clear set up. "

"Again, Matt, we weren't setting you up." Julie paused and looked at me closely. "We were setting her up."

"Huh?" I answered as eloquently as possible.

Julie smiled. "Look Matt, for a couple of months now, you've been doing just fine getting dates and I'm pretty sure it won't be long until the right girl comes along for something more serious. You don't need our help. She, on the other hand, needs a really good guy."

She paused again, looking uncertain as to whether she should continue. "Matt, the truth is that her relationship with Danny has gotten more than a little toxic, but she just can't seem to let it go. She needs someone like you to help pry her out."

I was stunned by what Julie had just said. I still felt like a new colt trying to find its legs in the dating world, so the idea that Julie and Sally thought I was doing great caught me by surprise. Additionally, given my recent experiences, I didn't like the idea of playing 'the other man' to a woman who wasn't quite out of her relationship yet. Did I really want to help 'pry' any girl away from another guy? Did I want to be a watered-down version of that asshole Palmer?

It would have been an easy decision if I hadn't had a very good time with her, but, I did and I couldn't shake the thought that, other than the boyfriend thing, she seemed to have everything I wanted. So, I ended up bouncing the 'call her or not call her' ball back and forth in my mind the rest of the night and the whole next day at work. By Monday night, I figured it couldn't hurt if I'd cautiously reach out just to see what would happen. It took a little bit to build up the courage, but I eventually gave her a call to ask her out the following Friday night for dinner and maybe some dancing. She seemed happy to hear from me, but put on a disappointed tone when I asked about Friday, saying that she already had plans. I figured this was the brush off and started trying to back out of the conversation gracefully, but she quickly followed up by saying she was free on Saturday and hoped that would be ok. It was.

I wanted to get to know her and figured that it would be best if we had plenty of opportunity to talk, so I took her to a nice quiet Italian restaurant. It was great. She loved the food and we spent so much time talking we essentially closed out the place. I'd promised some dancing, but by then it was so late that we ended up getting some hot chocolate and took a chilly walk along the downtown lakeshore. We stopped for a minute under a streetlamp at one of the small parks, talking and looking out at the water. The snow was falling gently and settling on her hair, her cheeks looked rouged with the cold and her frozen breath came out from her pink lips in lazy little puffs as she talked. At that moment, I felt like I was in some sort of a fantastical snow globe, part of a winter paradise in the company of an angel.

Her breath and her voice and the atmosphere gradually led my eyes to lock onto her moving lips, and when I couldn't stop staring she smiled and cocked her head slightly in anticipation. Leaning over, I kissed her gently, and then more deeply and gradually wrapped my arms around her while she took hold of me. The cold and the public setting limited how long we kissed, but the effect was deep and dramatic. The kiss wasn't and couldn't be a prelude to some sort of sexual encounter, but it was powerful in what it seemed to say, a reflection of a growing emotion I felt for her and what she might be starting to feel for me. Holding hands we moved along the lakeshore for a while more, talking a little more shyly, walking a little more slowly and a little closer together. For me, the evening had been nearly perfect, but eventually it had to end, and I took her back to her apartment. I'd promised myself that with her situation with Danny, I wouldn't pressure her for anything more than a good night kiss, so, when she didn't invite me in I was maybe a little disappointed, but I didn't push. We left with a kiss and a promise to go out again when she was available. I knew I'd have to work around Danny, but I suddenly didn't mind having to share a girl, at least for a little while.

I texted her off and on during the week and even talked a couple of times on the phone. She had plans again for Friday but said she could clear her schedule for another Saturday date. It also turned out that the only thing that disappointed her about our first date was that we'd missed the chance to go dancing, so I made sure to arrange for that to happen. Our dancing date started more or less where we'd left off from the week before. We sat and talked through about half of the faster songs but almost never missed a slow one, dancing closely and so comfortably that it seemed like we'd been together for a long, long time.