16. Wishful Thinking: I Gotta Snap Out of It

Today’s installment was to be about the fateful day I got the hell outta that apartment, and I will get there, but I was skipping a diary of entries and I wanna slow down a bit. There was a lot of back and forth in our nothing less than manic relationship and I was jumping the gun in leaving.

As foreign as this new life I’d found myself in felt, and though it was at my suggestion (really almost begging from the beginning), it was BD who was becoming comfortable with the idea of us being together. We’d lie in bed at night and he’d tell me how badly he’d always wanted a family and how he never thought he’d have one. How everyone always leaves him. He’d rub my belly and imagine with me what kind of person our baby would be. He’d even softened his feelings for me, actually seeming to be looking forward to a life together.

It’s easier for him to see a future now, since I’ve taken so well to his lifestyle rules, adapting without much protest. He smiles more, spends money around the house, fixing things and adding things and talks in “we” and “us.”

We’d mentioned Digital’s name sparingly in the past few months. I told BD very little of my conversation with him and BD had been equally vague about his face-to-face with his friend. He had come home that night with a busted lip and he didn’t answer me when I asked what happened. Aware of where he’d been though, I didn’t persist. And that was it.

Objectively, we were settling into a life. I, terribly unhappily, but determined just the same. And he reluctantly at first, and now purposefully. We were going to make this work for our child.

And then, the most awkward day of my life to date ...

It was bound to happen. The not-quite New York, but close-enough New Jersey town where we lived is not a large place. It only has one Target, after all ...

So BD and I were doing a little shopping. He's so indecisive and I hate shopping with him. He palmed the different toilet paper packages for about 10 minutes, comparing the prices per roll and talking aloud about whether it made sense to spend the extra money on 24 rolls as opposed to 12 ... I get sooo frustrated shopping with him. And we'd just left the freezer section where of course, i couldn’t buy anything I wanted, ie frozen pizzas, Stouffers meals, Doritos, lemonade and the like. It’s all riddled with preservatives and artificial colors ... I miss eating the food I used to eat.

I am schlepping up and down the aisles wearing a scowl as big as my face. I didn’t even wanna make this trip to the store. I wanted to go straight home from work, eat and go to bed, but BD insisted. And then we'd sat in the parking lot for 10 minutes while he took a call on his cell phone. One of his old guy friends, talking about this and that and how they have to get together soon ... yadda yadda yadda. So I am clearly unhappy and I have my back to him smelling some perfumes, when I hear --

"I must've been meant to come to Target tonight, what's up man?"

I am soooo not in the mood to smile and meet one of BD's friends, (probably the guy he just got off the phone with), so I stay rudely, back turned, facing the perpendicular aisle of cosmetics. Maybe I can casually slip away and avoid the whole presentation. I hate having to smile and chat when I'm feeling this way.

And then ....

"Hey Melyssa, how are you?"

Wow.

Now I recognize the voice, though I'm looking up now at the same time, so I'm not sure if it's the voice I recognize first or those eyes. I felt frozen, but I spoke smoothly.

"I'm well Digital, how are you?"

"Cool, cool ... "

"Yeah you see our little one?" BD interjects, gesturing toward my seven months pregnant belly, shamelessly pronounced in my baby tee. Any other day I'd be in a big empire cut cascading mumu.

I look down and up again to meet BD’s eyes. I know this look. I know what he was saying with that look.

"You know you fucked up, right? You look MISERABLE. You know that right?"

I know what he was thinking... and it was all over my face. I didn't even try to put on a glow for him. Maybe I wanted him to see my underlying unhappiness. I think I wanted him to want to save me. How nuts is that!?

"It's real, now." BD continues, happily.

"Yeah, it was real before. It was real when she first said it." BD responds. But he's looking at me. Why are you talking to Digital and looking at me? I break his gaze.

"So are you guys excited? Doing a little family shopping?" He continues casually and politely. Family shopping?

"Yeah, I'm excited," BD says beaming. It had only occurred to me before that perhaps I had been a pawn. It was now evident.

I just half smile, quiet.

"Do you know if it's a boy or a girl yet?"

"No, not yet," BD says.

The rest of the conversation is a bore and a blur as they yap for about 60 seconds of the Knicks game Digital is on his way to and other meaningless subjects. I'm just grateful their eyes aren't on my belly anymore.

"Alright man, I'll see you later."

They clasp hands.

Digital moves over to me and half leans in for a one-handed hug. I have my arms full of stuff, toilet paper, papertowels, but I move my face to the side, toward his, rather than into the armpit of his coat. Our faces touch and I'm thinking, I hope he doesn't think I did that on purpose.

And that's it.

So awkward, for me anyway. BD and Digital handled the chance run in like bonafide adults. And Digital had texted him a few days before, which made things smoother for them.

But I felt like CRAP. C-R-A-P.

If I ever had second thoughts about BD and making this family thing work up to this point, it was right then. I wanted to run after Digital... to plead with him ... to .. something. This thing that I've done, at that moment, it was unapologetically real. I mean just in my face, LOOK WHAT YOU DID, real. 

The next morning, we're lying in bed and BD asks me, "Did you want to leave me for Digital yesterday?" He has these big puppy dog eyes.

He and Digital have had a healthy competition I think as long as they've known each other. Both tall, handsome, both having dreams of making it in the entertainment world, same taste in women (and they’ve been around and around about that before)... Only, Digital’s realized his dreams. I think that eats at BD.

I just look at him, stomach sunken by the irony, but I try not to let on.

"Why would you ask me that?" I say.

Why couldn't I just lie and answer the question?

"He has money and he has a Benz and he goes to Nick's games."

"I don't care about that, BD." It wasn’t a complete lie. I was in love with Digital before all that. I hug him. I do want to reassure him. I mean, if I'm gonna be in this, there's no sense in him feeling insecure about it. What am I gonna do, really be with Digital? Probably not. This thought makes my stomach sink even lower. I'm mourning him. 

I gotta snap out of it. This is my life now.

Orignally posted on March 7, 2008