“Great. The blog is great. The dog is great. Life is great,” I say, pretending I am a robot, an unfeeling robot who can spit out platitudes. I have to. I have to protect my heart because it feels like it’s being filleted. “I see you like this place now?”
“I love it. Favorite diner in the whole city.”
My throat catches, and I grit my teeth. “That’s great. And such great news about the hard-boiled eggs too.”
He gives me a curious look.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” I affix a plastic smile when the waitress brings me my food. She turns to Todd and Amber. They order as I slide my laptop into my bag and consider ditching the place right now. Who needs food when there are ex-fiancés and their new wives to remind you of all that was stolen from you?
“And I’ll have a coffee too. No more soda in the morning for me,” he adds before the waitress leaves.
The burning behind my eyes intensifies. It’s just coffee, I tell myself. But he used to hate coffee. He detested it, and now he’s drinking it instead of Diet Coke.
He turns his attention back to Amber. “But no coffee for you still,” he says to her in a babyish voice. She smiles at Todd as he lays a hand gently on one of hers. I try my hardest to mask the all-too familiar feeling of my insides being shred by him. God, I loved this man. I was a fool, but I loved him like crazy, I fell for him the day I met him randomly at a bus stop several years ago. He was mine, and he was wonderful, and he was the only one I wanted.
“Well, it was great seeing you,” I say, and start to push my chair away.
“You’re leaving?”
“Yeah. I totally forgot that I ate a bagel already today. Stupid me.” I smack my forehead, as if I’m shocked at my own forgetfulness.
“I do that sometimes too,” Amber says. “Forget stuff. I think it’s because I have baby brain right now.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh,” she says, and there it is again. That long expression of surprise.
Todd nods several times. “We had a baby. Two weeks ago.”
My heart races into a very painful overdrive of disbelief as it pounds against my chest. This can’t be happening. Todd clasps his hand over Amber’s and she beams at him, and that smile, for her, just for her, threatens my precarious sense of I’m-totally-fine-with-being-ditched-the-day-before-our-wedding.
“We have a little sweet little baby girl. Her name is Charlotte.”
The diner starts spinning and I grab the edge of the table. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping, praying that’ll do the trick and hold in the tears that are threatening to splash all over my face. He changed everything for her, all the way from children to breakfast choices. And he took everything from me, including our name for a baby he wound up having a year after leaving me a voicemail that said he didn’t want to marry me because he couldn’t picture having kids with me.
I open my eyes. Take a deep breath. Try to keep it together. “That was our name.”
“It’s a beautiful name too,” Amber says. “She’s such a beautiful baby, and so smart too. She’s with my parents right now over in Marin. But I miss her and I’ve only been away from her for an hour.”
“We’re madly in love with being parents,” he adds.
That does it. He might have cut out my heart with an Exacto blade, but I won’t let him know it’s bleeding again. I have to get away from them.
“You should really get back to her then,” I somehow manage to choke out as I stand up and grab my bag, doing everything not to trip and fall as I leave my food on the table, and rush to the restroom, where I slam the stall door and let the tears rain down. My shoulders shake, my chests heaves, and I am sure I look like a wretched mess. After several minutes, I check the time. But I know they’re still out there, so I stay inside this stall as other patrons come and go. I camp out in the safety behind this door, registering each minute.
Until an hour passes.
Then I unlock the stall, splash water on my face, and touch up my mascara and blush.
I don’t feel human, but I can at least pass for one again. I open the door a crack, spotting the table where he delivered his latest crushing blow. I thought I was over him. I thought I couldn’t be more over him. But seeing him with her reopened everything I thought I’d gotten over by playing Call of Duty and shooting bad guys every night for the last several months.
I head for the counter, pay the hostess for the food I didn’t eat, and then I leave The Best Doughnut Shop in The City. Another wave of sadness smashes into me when I realize I’ll never be able to come to my favorite diner again. He’s ruined this place for me.
I’m so ready to go home and curl up with Ms. Pac-Man for a bit, so I hurry over to my car, where I see a white piece of paper tucked under the wiper, flapping in the wind. Now I have a parking ticket? Now my karma bites me in the back? No, this should be the day when I find a winning lottery ticket on my car, not a parking ticket.
I turn around to peer up at the sign. The white and red sign very clearly says Sunday mornings are free. I glance at the curb. It’s not red. There’s no hydrant nearby. I scan the block. Down near the corner of Hayes Street, I see the meter boy, wearing his uniform of blue shorts and a blue short-sleeved button-down shirt. I grab the parking ticket and march down the street to confront him.
He’s slipping another ticket under the windshield of a lime-green Prius. “What’s up with the ticket?”