Prologue
“Look at them, North!” I cried at the T.V. as well as my dog, who was asleep on my lap before I yelled this. I was currently watching You Got Mail, eating Chinese food, and balling my eyes out, while my yellow lab puppy, North was fast asleep on the couch next to me. “This could have been Josh and me!” It was the end of the movie where Tom Hanks’ character’s dog comes running over to Meg Ryan’s character, and they finally confess their feelings for each other and fall madly in love and kiss. I was now never going to have that ever again! The movie credits roll, and I check my phone for the first time all day, tears slowly rolling down my face and going on to my phone.
Three missed calls from my parents, two from my grandmother, three from my brother, thirteen from my best friend, and seven from Josh. I close my eyes and chuck my phone across my apartment and onto the chair on the other side of the room. I was about to turn on Sleepless in Seattle and bawl my eyes out even more over the love that I will never have again when there was a knock on my door.
North jumped off the couch and ran to the door, wagging her tail, while I on the other hand wrapped the blanket that was laying across my legs, around my back, and walked over to the door as if I was sick. And I guess if you considered being broken-hearted being sick, then I was in fact sick.
“What?” I ask my best friend, and business partner, Alexis Aleef when I open the door. She was dressed like she usually is; jeans, a pair of flats, and a button-down shirt, with her long dark brown hair, pulled over into a ponytail that sat perfectly on her one shoulder and showing off her ear piercings on the one side. She looked way better than I did, even when I wasn’t “sick”. I was in the same pajamas that I had been in for the past couple of days, my hair was greasy and pulled into a bun, on the top of my head, strands of hair were falling out of it at every angle, and a blanket my grandmother gave me a couple of years ago that was covered in North’s dog hair.
“Bowie, no one has heard from you for the past three days!” Alexis says to me, as she walks into the apartment, and places whatever she brought down on the kitchen island, that it was in fact covered in fast food boxes. “I know that you are trying to heal, but we were worried that you had died.”
“I’m not dead, just…” I didn’t know what to call myself. A hopeless romantic? No, because that made me sound like I was still looking for love. A person who hadn’t showered in four days? Even though that was true, I didn’t want to admit that to Alexis. Someone who was left a week before her wedding by a man she had been with for three years, only to find out that he had been secretly in love with one of her bridesmaids and they had been having an affair behind her back for months and were now in Vegas getting married? That was all true, but the title was too long, and it made me sound crazy.
“Bowie, you are a strong woman, who just has a broken heart. Right now you just need someone to talk to and some gummy bears.”
“I’m okay,” I say to her, but she has known me for too long and she knows me too well, to just let me say no to gummy bears.
“Bowie, you are not okay!” Alexis says to me, pulling me over to the couch and sitting down next to me bringing the bag, of what I could only assume was a bunch of junk food with her. North jumped on to her, trying to get whatever food she could. “And by ignoring the people who love you and want to help, you are just making it worse. Not to mention not enjoying what you actually love! And I’m not saying that you don’t have the right to be upset about everything that happened between you and Josh, but by not helping yourself, and not talking about everything that happened, then you are just going to be miserable forever!” I just stare at Alexis for a minute, and before I know it, I have broken down crying, and Alexis is giving me a hug, telling me it’s going to be okay.
After what seems like an eternity of me doing that, when it was really just ten minutes, I look up at Alexis and ask her, “How could I have been so stupid? I invested three years of my life with him, and then he just ran off with one of my best friends! I am a wedding planner who can’t even get married.”
“Bowie, you are not the stupid one, Josh is. And you couldn’t have known! This is all Josh’s fault, and you are going to be better off without him. Just give it time. You are a strong person, who is tougher than you think. You can get through this.” She pulls me into another hug.
When we finish hugging, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and tell her, “Josh won’t stop calling me.”
“Why?” Alexis asks, horrified that he was still trying to contact me after what he did.
“I don’t know. I guess he wants to explain himself to me.”
“Are you going to call him back?” Alexis asks, still horrified.
“What else is there to know?” I sigh, “Besides I’m not ready to talk to him about everything. I mean I screamed at him when I found out, but other than that I haven’t spoken to anyone about it, and I don’t know if I want to.”
Alexis laughs and then tells me. “You don’t have to talk to anyone about what happened. But until you’re ready to talk, we can just eat gummy bears and watch movies until you feel better.” She paused before adding, “But can you please shower. You really stink.” I laugh, but agree and walk into my room, North following close on my heels, to grab a new change of clothes.
My room was a mess because I was going through everything that reminded me of Josh and throwing it away. After a while, I was just crying too much to even know what I was doing, so I stopped and left everything on the floor. I grab what I needed out of my closet, and see that North has found her place on my bed. I had gotten her a couple of weeks ago as a surprise gift for Josh and me. I should have suspected something was up when he said that we could keep her, but he never really liked dogs. I never knew this about him before, but now I realize it was because Mariah, the girl he ran off to Vegas with, is allergic to them. I gave her a couple of rubs before walking into the bathroom to take a shower.
Once I was done, it felt good to be clean, almost as if I was ready for a fresh start. I looked at myself in the mirror after I got dressed, and realized that I was still wearing the ring that Josh gave me for our first year anniversary. It was one of the only things I didn’t throw away from him because I forgot that I was wearing it. It was just a skinny silver band with an infinity heart in the middle of it, but I loved it. I looked down at my left pointer finger, where the ring was and decided that I didn’t want to take it off, not yet at least. I figured that it would just be a reminder to be careful with who I let into my life, and who I should trust or not. It seemed stupid to me, in a way, but at the same time, it seemed like something I needed; almost as if it was a personal barrier between myself and the people I don’t really know.
“Bowie!” Alexis called from the living room, pulling myself away from my thoughts. “Are you okay? Are you coming?”
“Yeah, I’ll be right there!” I call, and open my door, and go to sit down on the couch, watch movies, and eat gummy bears with my best friend and my dog, and forget about the man who broke my heart.
