mug. "Mind if I ask about your fiancée?"
Okay, I guess we were officially moving out of brand new friend territory, and toward the infield of privileged information. I couldn't decide if he was being nosy, presumptuous or merely concerned. I suppose, in all fairness, I had brought it up at one point, a very inopportune point, at that, and had just left it to loom.
"Ex-fiancée," I cleared up, shrugging as though it was water off my back. "Left, like I said, on our wedding day. Hasn't come back."
She had returned the engagement ring -- my Grandma Violet's -- before taking off to parts unknown with GoodLooking Bastard, pressing it into my hand with promises that someday there would come along someone better suited to wear it, which pretty much sealed the ex part.
Nate made a small, sympathetic noise.
I frowned. "I can see that you're about to tilt your head at me and say something uplifting, so if we could not go there, that would be excellent."
"Sorry," he said, nodding his agreement. "I'm sure you've heard all the empty platitudes in existence by now."
"And more," I said, doing a half-hearted impression of a TV announcer.
"Do you miss her?" he asked. His mouth pulled downward suddenly, and he hastened to add, "Sorry, that was a really dumb question, and very much not my business."
It really wasn't, but there's something to be said about telling your business to someone with no stake in it. It's why occasionally it's easier to open up to a stranger than to someone who knows you. There's less judgment, less useless, if well-meaning, advice, less expectation.
Nate wasn't exactly a stranger, but he didn't exactly know me either, here in my natural habitat.
"I'm getting better at not missing her, if that counts," I said.
His eyebrows rose, surprised that I had picked up his question. "It does," he said.
Though he asked nothing more of me, I apparently had more to say that I hadn't been able to say to anyone else. My problems had long since ceased to be disclosable to my parents; released into the wilds of college and beyond since eighteen, smart enough to vote but still too dumb to be allowed alcohol, the difficulties encountered thereafter were officially mine alone. Hal and I, bound by the inexplicable rules of manhood, communicated in ways that occasionally suggested that post-Paleolithic evolution had never happened, and Linnea had always made it clear that she thought I could do better.
With the people closest to me out of the running, what I had left was the man sitting opposite me, someone who didn't really know me and knew even less of Michelle, and that in itself made it easier somehow to loose my thoughts on him.
"She was really easy to like, you know?" I mused. "She's just one of those people."
Nate nodded. "How did you meet?"
"I did my clinical fellowship at this nursing and rehab center over on the West Side, and she was-- still is-- Well, I don't know anymore, maybe she isn't," I said.
Who knew what she and Good-Looking Bastard were up to in their wild, unfathomable existences? He was from New York, that much I knew, as most Good-Looking Bastards seem to be; maybe she was scattering the ashes of our relationship into the Hudson River as I spoke, while he looked on from the prow of his massive bastard yacht.
"At some point, she was a nurse there," I said. "I met her on my first day on the job, and we shared a couple of patients, and she was always so bright and kind and... Not especially good at forward planning, though, considering what happened."
"What did happen?" Hurriedly, Nate added, "If it's okay to ask."
My mouth screwed to one side, my bottom lip catching in between my teeth. I suppose it was my own fault for not cutting off his line of questioning earlier, and now I could add another name to the laundry list of people who would see me for what I was -- deficient.
"Her ex-boyfriend crashed our wedding, which apparently in some cultures is a socially acceptable romantic gesture," I said.
"Bastard," Nate
Okay, I guess we were officially moving out of brand new friend territory, and toward the infield of privileged information. I couldn't decide if he was being nosy, presumptuous or merely concerned. I suppose, in all fairness, I had brought it up at one point, a very inopportune point, at that, and had just left it to loom.
"Ex-fiancée," I cleared up, shrugging as though it was water off my back. "Left, like I said, on our wedding day. Hasn't come back."
She had returned the engagement ring -- my Grandma Violet's -- before taking off to parts unknown with GoodLooking Bastard, pressing it into my hand with promises that someday there would come along someone better suited to wear it, which pretty much sealed the ex part.
Nate made a small, sympathetic noise.
I frowned. "I can see that you're about to tilt your head at me and say something uplifting, so if we could not go there, that would be excellent."
"Sorry," he said, nodding his agreement. "I'm sure you've heard all the empty platitudes in existence by now."
"And more," I said, doing a half-hearted impression of a TV announcer.
"Do you miss her?" he asked. His mouth pulled downward suddenly, and he hastened to add, "Sorry, that was a really dumb question, and very much not my business."
It really wasn't, but there's something to be said about telling your business to someone with no stake in it. It's why occasionally it's easier to open up to a stranger than to someone who knows you. There's less judgment, less useless, if well-meaning, advice, less expectation.
Nate wasn't exactly a stranger, but he didn't exactly know me either, here in my natural habitat.
"I'm getting better at not missing her, if that counts," I said.
His eyebrows rose, surprised that I had picked up his question. "It does," he said.
Though he asked nothing more of me, I apparently had more to say that I hadn't been able to say to anyone else. My problems had long since ceased to be disclosable to my parents; released into the wilds of college and beyond since eighteen, smart enough to vote but still too dumb to be allowed alcohol, the difficulties encountered thereafter were officially mine alone. Hal and I, bound by the inexplicable rules of manhood, communicated in ways that occasionally suggested that post-Paleolithic evolution had never happened, and Linnea had always made it clear that she thought I could do better.
With the people closest to me out of the running, what I had left was the man sitting opposite me, someone who didn't really know me and knew even less of Michelle, and that in itself made it easier somehow to loose my thoughts on him.
"She was really easy to like, you know?" I mused. "She's just one of those people."
Nate nodded. "How did you meet?"
"I did my clinical fellowship at this nursing and rehab center over on the West Side, and she was-- still is-- Well, I don't know anymore, maybe she isn't," I said.
Who knew what she and Good-Looking Bastard were up to in their wild, unfathomable existences? He was from New York, that much I knew, as most Good-Looking Bastards seem to be; maybe she was scattering the ashes of our relationship into the Hudson River as I spoke, while he looked on from the prow of his massive bastard yacht.
"At some point, she was a nurse there," I said. "I met her on my first day on the job, and we shared a couple of patients, and she was always so bright and kind and... Not especially good at forward planning, though, considering what happened."
"What did happen?" Hurriedly, Nate added, "If it's okay to ask."
My mouth screwed to one side, my bottom lip catching in between my teeth. I suppose it was my own fault for not cutting off his line of questioning earlier, and now I could add another name to the laundry list of people who would see me for what I was -- deficient.
"Her ex-boyfriend crashed our wedding, which apparently in some cultures is a socially acceptable romantic gesture," I said.
"Bastard," Nate
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