It’s over.
There wasn’t rain or thunder when we ended. We just ended like we began. There were no flashes of illumination that told me I would fall in love, that I would meet the one man who would challenge me, drive me crazy. Now it’s ended, my project done. Completed.
My mornings have returned to normal. I still have brunch with my friends on the weekends. I still visit Mom on Sundays. My world is back to ordinary, almost the same as it was before I wrote the exposé. I hadn’t realized how bleak it was. I’m afraid I will pick up the paper and there he will be . . . with someone. Or with three.
The crying spells are bad. You go out and accidentally smell wine and oops, snivel. And don’t talk to me about elephants, that takes me to a whole new level of despair. But the fear is gone. You were afraid of going out and suddenly you’re right there, daring the universe to take that from you or pleading with it to give you an excuse to feel like shit today. Gina passes me the Kleenex.
Some of my coworkers . . . some of them envy me.
“I wish I’d been asked to go after Malcolm Saint,” Sandy, my coworker, tells me because of the positions I’m being offered, but most importantly because “being paraded around in a yacht and being pursued like that . . .” she says dreamily.
“Fess up, was the sex phenomenal?” Valentine asks.
I think they’re trying to cheer me up . . . but I’m uncheerable.
I still stalk his Twitter feed. I can’t help stalking him, wanting to know how he is. Though the social media around him has been more active than ever, Saint himself has been . . . quiet.
He’s been asked about me—by reporters on live TV, and online. He says “no comment” or ignores the online jabs. Just like he’s ignoring me.
“It wasn’t going to last,” Gina assures me when she notices I’m mopey. “It was a hookup. He’s a womanizer to the next level.”
But it kills me that I’ll never know. I’ll never know if all the times he said I was his girl, he meant to keep me.
I have all these unsent emails addressed to Saint, and very little courage to do anything with them when I know that I don’t deserve for him to give me the time of day.
To: Malcolm Saint (Drafts)
Status: unsent
I have a thousand and one emails just like this that I won’t send either. I just needed to write to you.
Please forgive me
Do you think about me at all?
Dibs on your mouth and dibs on your eyes and dibs on your hands and dibs on your heart. Even your stubbornness cause I deserve it. Even your anger. I want it all. Dibs on my man. See #Iamsogreedytoo !!!!
Gina tells me that if she could survive heartbreak, I can survive breaking my own heart.
“Baby, I know it hurts. When I found out about Paul, I wanted a meteor to fall on my head so I could go numb inside a coffin.”
“God, Gina, I know. I just want a chance.”
I stare out the window this morning at the street. No more shiny Rolls-Royce waiting outside on Saturday mornings to take me “anywhere.”
Is it funny, though? That I keep waiting to see it? That I wake up with hope every day? For a text, a message, a call, the car, a glimmer of a chance?
Stop being so hopeful, Rachel . . . he would have read it by now.
Maybe he did and he just doesn’t care to let you know what he thought of it.
I found out so many things about him during all the time we spent together, but I didn’t really find out if he could come to love me. If he’ll be too proud to ever forgive me. If he’ll seek to ease the pain of my betrayal with other women, or if he’ll shut himself off, like I’m doing. I found out dozens of things about him, but not the dozen ones that could give me any kind of comfort right now.
We saved an elephant together, he took up my fight for a safer city, but all I physically have to remind me of my time with him is his shirt.
His shirt, which sits like a priceless trophy folded away in plastic, inside a box, in the deepest part of my closet, because I can hardly bear to see it now. I can’t bear to wear it now. But sometimes when the melancholy hits, I go into my closet and pull it out, stark white and large, completely male against my frilly items, and still with his scent clinging to its collar. Self-pity washes over me on those days, and it takes one second, two, three, and then I think of him, and so I take four. Four seconds before I let myself breathe again.
EXPOSING MALCOLM SAINT
By R. Livingston
I’m going to tell you a story. A story that managed to pull me apart completely. A story that brought me back to life. A story that has made me cry, laugh, scream, smile, and then cry again. A story I keep telling to myself over and over and over until I have memorized every smile, every word, every thought. A story that I hope to keep with me forever.
The story begins with this very article. It was a regular morning at Edge. A morning that would bring me a big opportunity: to write an exposé on Malcolm Kyle Preston Logan Saint. He’s a man who needs no introduction. Billionaire playboy, beloved womanizer, a source of many speculations. This article would open doors for me, gain a young hungry reporter a voice.
I dove in, managing to get an interview with Malcolm Saint to discuss Interface (his incredible new Facebook-killer) and its immediate rise to popularity. As obsessed as the city has been with his persona for years, I considered myself lucky to be in this position.
I was so focused on revealing Malcolm Saint that I let my guard down, unaware that every time he opened up, he was actually revealing me to me. Things I had never wanted were suddenly all I wanted. I was determined to find out more about this man. This mystery. Why was he so closed off? Why was nothing ever enough for him? I soon discovered he was not a man of many words, but rather a man of the right words. A man of action. I told myself that every inch of information I hunted was for this article, but the knowledge I craved was actually about myself.
I wanted to know everything. I wanted to breathe him. Live him.
But most unexpectedly of all, Saint began to pursue me. Genuinely. Wholeheartedly. And relentlessly. I could not believe that he would be truly interested in me. I had never been pursued like this, intrigued like this. I had never felt so connected to something—someone.
I never expected my story to change, but it did. Stories tend to do that; you go out searching for something and come back with something different. I wasn’t looking to fall in love, I wasn’t looking to lose my mind and common sense over the most beautiful green eyes I have ever seen, I wasn’t looking to drive myself crazy with lust. But I ended up finding a little piece of my soul, a little piece that isn’t really that small at all: it’s over six feet tall, with shoulders about a yard wide, hands more than twice the size of mine, green eyes, dark hair, and it is smart, ambitious, kind, generous, powerful, sexy, and has consumed me completely.
I regret lying, both to myself and to him; I regret not having the experience to recognize what I was feeling the moment I felt it. I regret not savoring each second I had with him more, because I value those seconds more than anything.
However, I don’t regret this story. His story. My story. Our story.
I’d do it all again for another moment with him. I’d do it all again with him. I’d leap blindly into the air if only there were even a 0.01 percent chance that he’d still be there, waiting to catch me.
