and won’t be back for at least three months, if she comes back at all, and I can’t afford to maintain what you can see is a very expensive shoe habit unless I find a new roommate. I figure you can’t afford to stay at The Union for ever, and I don’t think you want to go home yet. You want to be my roomie?’
‘Wow, Jenny, really?’ Moving in to an apartment would be huge. It would mean I was staying. ‘I don’t know …’
‘But you’ve already proved that you can get me home safely when I’m wasted. Would you want me wandering around alone on your conscience?’ Jenny said. ‘And I’m really sorry about the whole freak out thing last night. Promise that won’t happen again. I so need to get over Jeff.’
‘Have you thought about taking some of his pictures down?’ I suggested. They really did make a gorgeous couple. Jenny’s big dark eyes and wild curly hair contrasting against Jeff’s close blond crop and crinkly blue Robert Redford eyes. ‘I hear that helps.’
‘Yeah, not gonna happen just yet,’ she shook her head. ‘Unless I had a new roomie to take pictures of? So, you in?’
‘If you take the pictures down,’ I nodded and held out my hand.
‘Well, OK,’ she sighed, ‘but only because I already gave your room away at The Union from tomorrow, so if you don’t move in here you’re pretty much screwed.’
The pain of moving out of The Union was cushioned slightly by the fact that Jenny’s apartment was practically a two-bed mini version of the hotel. Every single thing that wasn’t screwed down had been ‘borrowed’ by Jenny and Gina.
‘Welcome home!’ Jenny said, waving her arms around the place. The whole apartment worked out to be the size of my room at The Union, but it was nice. Hardwood floors, creamy walls, a kitchenette in the living room and a hallway that led off to three doors.
‘OK, so this is the bathroom, only one person will actually fit in, so you take a quick look,’ Jenny opened the door closest to the living room. I peeped in, toilet, basin, shower cubicle, Rapture towels, robes and product everywhere. ‘And here’s your room. You’re lucky, Gina was the one with the view.’
Jenny opened the door on my new room. It was perfect. A huge double bed took up most of the floor space, leaving a tiny desk-cum-dressing table nestled in next to a hanging rail for clothes. Gina had more or less stripped the room bare, but the bed was made (Union bedding, I noticed) and a little TV was perched on the desk. I placed my bags carefully on the bed and manoeuvred past it to the window. We were seven floors up on Lexington Avenue, just by 39th Street and when I craned my neck, I could see the Chrysler Building, pushing up into the early evening sky. So beautiful. Below, people wandered around, the hustle and bustle of their working day left behind as they meandered, enjoying their lunch hour in the sunshine.
Inside I was grilling Jenny on the sexual preferences of my favourite celebrities who had stayed at her hotel.
‘Vince Vaughn?’
‘Straight.’
‘Owen Wilson?’
‘Super straight.’
‘That really cute boy off that TV show I like?’
‘Flaming.’
‘Does flaming mean straight?’
‘Nu-uh.’
‘Oh.’
‘So, what do you think?’ Jenny asked, leaning against my doorframe. ‘Not bad, huh? Gina’s cousin sublet to us, we got so lucky.’
‘Jenny, it’s gorgeous,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe how lovely. You only ever hear horror stories about New York apartments on TV.’
‘Yeah, well, I won’t deny that you might see a roach before you leave,’ Jenny admitted. ‘But they’re few and far between. It’s a good building. But now,’ she held out a hand and pulled me up off the bed as the buzzer went. ‘We celebrate!’
Since Jenny’s idea of a celebration was an afternoon of pepperoni pizza and some beers sitting on her living-room floor watching America’s Next Top Model, I knew we were going to get along just fine. We ate, we bitched and she filled me in on her New York apartment history, rat-infested flat share on the Lower East Side before it got trendy, studio in a Harlem building that was converted into luxury apartments, a one-bed in Chelsea with her ex, and then this place with Gina. Not too bad, she assured me.
‘I’ve only ever lived with Mark, how tragic is that?’ I said, chewing a slice thoughtfully. ‘Apart from at college but even then, we were together all the time. God, that’s so pathetic.’ I felt the gloom settling around me.
‘You know I think you’re amazing, right?’ Jenny started, flipping the tops off two more beers and passing one my way. ‘And that coming here to work out what you want out of life is great. Really great.’
‘I feel like there’s a but coming,’ I said, taking a precautionary swig.
‘Well, not exactly, but I think the best way to get over your Mark, is to talk about it,’ Jenny said cautiously. ‘Not just push it away. Otherwise it pops up when you’re not expecting it and makes you feel crappy.’
‘I suppose,’ I mumbled through my pizza. That was exactly what I’d been trying not to do. My Mark issues were happily between me and my computer at that exact moment in time. ‘But whenever I think about him, no matter how great I feel, I just come crashing down. I was going to ask you about that actually. I’m normally a very stable person.’
‘Stable, or just not feeling one thing or the other? Sometimes we get so used to not really feeling anything, just going with the flow, that we forget how it feels to be really happy or really sad. And if Mark is the only guy you’ve ever gone out with, I’m guessing heartbreak is a new one to you too.’
‘I don’t think I’m heartbroken,’ I shook my head. ‘He was cheating on me, I’m best off out of it. Besides, I think you’re right. We hadn’t really been happy together for the longest time, I’d just shut myself off to it and convinced myself it was normal. I’m probably just still jetlagged if anything.’
I reached out for more pizza and looked up at Jenny. She was staring at me intently with the same sympathetic look she’d given me the morning I threw up.
‘Angela, you’re totally brave and a genuine hero,’ she began, ‘but it’s OK to be upset about this. You put all your trust and ten years of your life into that relationship, even if they weren’t all great, and he cheated on you, no one gets over something like that in three days.’
‘I’m OK,’ I said. Here came those crashing lows again. ‘I’ve never had a break-up to get over before. Maybe I’m just really really good at it?’
‘I’m just saying, it’s OK not to be OK,’ Jenny scooted across the floor. ‘You might even feel better if you let yourself get upset. Might even out some of those crazy emotions.’
‘I just think, I would never have cheated on him,’ I said slowly. ‘Even if I’d met someone else, I would never have cheated on him.’
The tears started to come, slowly at first.
‘I know, honey,’ Jenny said, taking the beer out of my hand. ‘You’re a good person and you’re right, you are better off out of the relationship.’
‘But why did he do it?’ I wailed. ‘Why did he cheat on me? And why doesn’t he love me any more?’
I turned to Jenny’s shoulder and saturated her T-shirt.
That was what I’d been avoiding. The hair, the makeup, the clothes, they didn’t cover up the real me, the me that Mark had spent ten years with and then decided