Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Seriously, her life should be a soap opera

It was over; she knew it and embraced it and could feel the joy bubbling up from her very soul that she was So. Through. With. Him.
Still, like at the end of all relationships, there was leftover baggage to be dealt with – in this case literally. She had no reason to hold on to his shirt although a good friend had suggested she burn it while laughing maniacally and chanting a death hex. She nixed the Hocus Pocus scene early on.
No, she would be civil and see him face to face one last time. She wanted it, anyway, that thing called “closure” that so many women claim to need after the demise of any relationship. Well, at least meeting him at the airport this way she would be forced to employ the KISS method – Keep It Short and Sweet.
And so, she called him. He agreed to meet her on the jetbridge minutes before her flight was to depart. His voice was syrupy sweet when he gently intoned, “Yeah, I really wanna see you.” She bit her tongue against a sharp remark, merely saying, see you soon, as she hung up.
She waited anxiously, her hands shaking and her pulse pounding in her throat. She hadn’t seen him since his plethora of lies she had been unknowingly wallowing in became frighteningly apparent and she had cut him off cold turkey a week ago. And then, there he was, his face freshly shaven for which she allowed herself a moment’s lust. No more. He pulled her into a hug and lowered his nose to her neck, softly inhaling her skin.
“You smell good,” he murmured.
“Yeah, and you smell like sweat and fuel,” she quickly dissed him. She hoped he hadn’t seen the flush rise on her neck when he purposely leaned in to tease her. Damn her hormones!
“Sorry,” he said, looking pained at her flippant reaction. “So, what did you bring me?”
He sifted through the contents of the bag trying to joke with her as she stoically stood by.
“So, when are we hanging out?” he said with a slight grin.
“We’re not.”
His face fell.
“Why not?”
She balked at his audacity. Oh, I don’t know, she wanted to scream at him, maybe just the fact that I have NO idea who are you because you have lied to me for the past three months about everything, including the fact that you’ve been sleeping with a girl who you swore was a mere friend. If it weren’t for a good friend who let me in on your deception with a warning to RUN far away, I may still be believing your bullshit!
Instead, she merely looked him dead in the eye and said, "You know why."
He kept her gaze a moment more before conceding.
"I know," he said quietly, as his gaze moved to stare at his shuffling feet.
"Well, but we can still be friends, right?" he queried hopefully, lifting his woeful eyes to hers.
She smiled inside, so proud of her strength - a week earlier and that puppy dog act might have leashed her, no pun intended.
"No...no, we can't."
He studied her one last time. "Give me a call sometime, okay?"
She almost felt bad for him. Almost.
"Nope," she said sweetly, lifting her hand into a wave as she turned her back on him and didn't once glance over her shoulder as she reboarded the plane to California.

Soon she came to find out that quite a different version of what happened was being perpetuated to many a soul. Wong called, the same friend who had warned her of Julian's compulsive lying in the first place, to tell her he'd heard something interesting.
When Julian had returned to the break room at work sporting the bag she'd returned his junk in, Wong questioned its contents.
"Ah, Ali was just giving me my stuff back...man, I just had to tell her to stop calling me and shit. I told her I was banging Ambretta now, so she just needs to move on. I said she could give me a call sometime but if she does I'm just gonna ignore her. She just needs to get over me."
As Wong related this treacherous account, Ali could hardly breathe.
"H-he said that? But it isn't true!" she sputtered, hurriedly telling Wong what really happened.
"I know, Ali, because I know you and I know him and I knew the entire time that it was just another of his lies. See, it's amazing the stuff he makes up."
She hung up the phone and stared blankly at the wall wondering if there were any cure for a disease such as his. She couldn't fathom his behavior. Of course she had lied in her lifetime but never to the extent of creating bogus stories which even the most gullible find hard to believe.

Later in the night she was gathering her things to switch from one plane to another in Atlanta before she finished her day with a flight to New York. Since finding out he had been with another flight attendant she'd had a sinking feeling that she would see them together in the airport...she just didn't bet on it being so soon. As she walked across the floor to the adjacent gate where she would be awaiting the arrival of her flight, she glimpsed the back of someone's head, a set of familiar raven locks, eerily similar to the first day she'd ever seen him. She turned her gaze more fully toward where he sat facing away from her, her eyes widening as she saw it was indeed him. With HER.
She felt hot and cold at the same time, the edges of her vision tunneling so that she had to grab the handle of her suitcase to steady herself. She turned around to block them from her sight, clutching her stomach as she mentally studied her options.
1) Charge at them both in Mel Gibson "Braveheart" fashion, declaring them traitors to love and demanding their heads in reparation.
2) The death hex she'd earlier decided against seemed a good idea at the moment, but unfortunately she'd left her spell book at home
3) She DID have connections to higher places in the company and dirt on both parties so why not just have both their jobs this very moment?

But no, she couldn't stand there pretending she could do anything but go over there, it was her gate and her crew and dammit, she would NOT run away. She was the stronger woman, the better person here and she would not stoop to his level. Lifting her chin and clenching her jaw against the molten anger that raced through her blood, and walked past where they sat, passing right in front of them both, vaguely registering through the haze of her emotions that they were basically canoodling, right there, in uniform, in front of countless passengers.
Brazen hussy. Pathetically, she expected as much from him.
She watched in guilty pleasure as his jaw hit the floor upon seeing her.
"Hi Julian!" she waved.
"Uh hey! Uh, what- what are you doing here?"
Hmmm...flight attendant, suitcase, planes, airport. She felt like saying, "Oh, I'm preparing for the synchronized swimming competition at the Olympics."
Ugh, he was such an incompetent fink.
"My flight leaves from this gate." DUH.
And she kept walking. Afterwards she realized she'd never even made eye contact with Ambretta. As she sat far away from the soap opera right in front her eyes, she reached with shaking hands to call her friend. She noticed with a sigh that he was doing his best to turn completely in his seat so that his back was to her and conveniently blocking her view of Ambretta and vice versa.

Two days later she finally had to send him the "it's over, we aren't friends anymore" cliche text because he was determined to have his cake and eat it too by sweet "texting" his way back in. She would have none of it and stonily ignored his embellished adjectives, knowing that she couldn't really believe anything he ever said, then and now.
Well, at least it was over. The drama couldn't get much worse. Oh, of course there was a possibility that this girl might fly on a trip with her, but she reasoned the chances were slim with over 2,000 flight attendants in the company.
Still, one chance in a million is still a chance.
She isn't quite sure how she will react if she is unlucky enough to win such a lottery...but she can be sure it will create quite a magnificent story.
And like any decent writer, that gives her a smug satisfaction.
;-)

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