It wasn’t only Bryan’s life
that seemed charmed. Julia, still in the throes of love with her first
appropriate man, got promoted at Marquette. Melissa announced she was pregnant
again (her first baby, a girl, couldn’t have been cuter), and Bob still seemed utterly
smitten with Shelly. It seemed to me that some formal engagement between Bob
and Shelly couldn’t be far behind.
Yet when I mentioned this to Bryan,
he replied, “I don’t think so. She was never as serious as Bob was, and
Ted said she rarely goes out with all of them anymore. I’m not sure that
relationship is going to have a happy ending.”
“You just don’t like her.”
Bryan grimaced. "No, I don't, but this isn't about that. I just have a feeling it will all be over soon.”
I hoped he was
wrong. The last thing Bob needed was another broken heart.
I hoped in vain. The weekend
after exams Bryan joined me in the kitchen, where I was peeling an apple. “I
have some bad news,” he said. “I just got off the phone with Bob. He and Shelly
broke up.”
The apple landed with a thud on
the cutting board. “Why?” I demanded.
“You know how Shelly started
that new job a few months ago?”
“What about it?”
“She met someone there.”
“You mean another guy?”
When Bryan nodded, I protested,
“Is Bob sure about that? Maybe he’s just being paranoid, because of
Cathy.”
“Well, considering the fact
that Shelly was the one to tell him, he’s pretty damn certain.”
“She told him?”
“She had to. She and this other
guy are moving in together.”
I sank against the counter. First
Cathy, and now Shelly. The nightmare never ended. “Is he okay?”
“Not at all, so I invited him to
spend a few days with us—I didn’t think you would mind. He could use some
cheering up.”
“Of course that’s okay,” I
answered, but it was going to take a lot more than a few days with sympathetic
friends to right what Shelly had wronged. Bob was a disaster. Not even Cathy
dumping him for a stinky old college professor had hurt him this much, I guess
because he’d blamed it on his drinking. Now that he was sober, and working his
program with such earnestness, maybe his world view had changed. Maybe he had
thought to himself, This time
things will be different.
And yet here we were again.
As Bob slumped in the dining
room chair, looking aged and defeated, I told him, “There will be someone else—someone
who will treasure all of the wonderful things about you.”
Bob smiled a little. He clearly
did not believe me.
“It’s true,” I insisted, but when his puppy dog eyes brimmed with tears I could have sworn I heard his heart
breaking. “I appreciate what you’re trying to say,” he answered. “I
really do. But my whole life I’ve been taken advantage of by the people I most
want to trust. And the scariest thing is, I don’t know what to do about it. I
don’t know how to change.”
*From The Happy Ending, a manuscript I'm currently editing
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