Alone Again, Naturally

But since vanishing is not an option (because I would have vanished ages ago if it were) I cheerfully text on and on with no end in sight trying to restore normalcy to something I'd dragged way outside the outer limits of normal.

But Craig must be a patient man. He lets me prattle on and on, and responds dutifully (though far less wordily...) to my inane texts.

As I said, I should have put the phone or the wine down way earlier. Putting them both down would have been a good idea.

And then somewhere in all of this, while Hil texts me from where she has her first babysitting gig, and Pat texts me from the attic about watching a movie, I get a text from Scott.

He's out with a friend and the friend's date. The friend is someone we went to high school with. His sister was my lab partner in Chem and used to laugh with me about our pervy teacher. The friend himself graduated with Charlotte and became famous for slamming a pie in the face of the soccer coach his senior year. Some friends and I rented their mother's shore house for Senior Week. Ours is a small world.

I tell Scott to say hello if it isn't too weird. He says the whole thing is weird, meaning the 5th wheel thing. Though I think he might have said third wheel. A lot of people do. Like you're an extra on a bicycle. I don't know. I knew what he meant.

And then he adds that he himself has not been out with anyone. Not since me.

I am a little shocked at that.  I was pretty sure that that ship had left the harbor and made repeat trips quite a lot by now.

I say so in a text, and he repeats that he's not been with anyone else.

I can't say the same, so I don't, but I am wondering why he is telling me that.

I tell him that I was sure that another person was at least partially behind his reasons for leaving me with no explanation.

And then I quickly regret having said anything about his reasons for leaving, because that is a topic I desperately need to keep nailed shut and booby trapped.

He answers right away and I need to halfway cover my eyes to read it.

"No, not at all. No one." 

I feel the need to repeat that I do not want to know the reasons why he did what he did. And I say "did what he did" because it amounts to a lot more than just ending our relationship. The fact that he vanished without a trace and chose to destroy me rather than tell me he had to leave is still a sucking chest wound on my psyche.

I would have thought that the most plausible reason was two-fold. His enthusiasm for our relationship was cooling, and along came the overly-friendly reasonably cute waitress at the pub in town.  She certainly had made her intentions clear. And she had the geography thing covered.

But Scott says there was no one. Not at all.

And I am not sure how I feel about that.

Back in November, when the freshness of my wounds and the painful tearing away were so wrenching, the thought that he could be with someone else made me physically ill. It literally turned my stomach to think such thoughts.

To get this message then would have been such a relief.

But now it is less so.

Not because I have dated someone else.

But because another woman was an easy and understandable reason - even a partial reason. Maybe a catalyst. But an explanation I could comprehend.

In the absence of another woman, I have to wonder about other things.

I have to consider that the reasons Scott left had only to do with me.

Just me.