When Love Goes Bad Read online

  He said that he was so sorry and couldn’t believe that I was in England. He had been stationed in Germany for six months. I was so miserable that I cried in my room for three hours. I was trying to figure out what kind of game Fate was playing with us. How could our timing be so off?

  Shortly after I had received Gavin’s letter, Gillian and I decided to quit our jobs in London two weeks early, so we could have one last rendezvous with our friend, Danny. Danny was an American guy from Tennessee, whom we had become good friends with while we were in London.

  We all booked train tickets up to Edinburgh, and we hung out for four days around the city—playing on the carousel in the park, dancing down the streets, singing in the pubs—basically just drawing attention to the fact that we were loud, obnoxious Americans. Even though I was having a great time with Danny and my sister, memories of my first trip to Britain and the time I had spent in Edinburgh with Gavin flooded my mind. I was secretly hoping he was stationed at the castle once again, and that I would be able to pop in and surprise him at the front desk, or that he would at least be in one of the pubs we walked into.

  However, I never saw him, and Gillian, Danny and I finally managed to make ourselves board a train back to London.

  During this ride back to London, we pulled into a station, and I noticed a sign that read MIDDLESBROUGH. When it finally clicked that this was where Gavin was from, I instantly jumped up, grabbed my pack, and told my sister and Danny that I was getting off of the train. It was a reaction, an instinct, my gut was telling me that this was what I had to do.

  “Where are you going?” My sister stood up out of shock. “We have to be in London for our flight home!”

  I told her I would be there, but that I had to stop here to see Gavin first. She hesitated but seemed to understand, for she had really known all along that the whole reason I wanted to work abroad in England was so I could be together with Gavin.

  However, I was also her little sister, and it was difficult for her to let me just get off of a train on my own and actually trust that I was making the right decision. But I think she realized that I needed to be the one to figure that out, and I definitely wasn’t going to miss my chance to see him once again.

  I stepped off the train and looked around. As I wandered around the station, an old man with a concerned look on his face walked up to me and asked if I knew where I wanted to go. When he realized that I didn’t have a clue, he finally guided me down to the taxi lanes, and told the taxi driver to take me to a bed and breakfast.

  As soon as I got to the bed and breakfast, I sat down, took in a deep breath, and dialed the number that Gavin had written on the letter I had received only a few days before.

  “Hello?” It was his voice! My whole body tingled.

  “Hi, Gavin? This is Adrienne.”

  “Oh, my God! How are you? Where are you, for that matter?”

  “I’m here. I’m here in Middlesbrough.” My voice was shaking. I had actually never spoken to him on the phone before. We had only talked in person and in letters.

  “Seriously? Well, tell me where you are, I’ll come pick you up.” I could hear the genuine excitement in his voice.

  I was now eighteen, a few weeks away from nineteen, the age he thought I had been three years ago. I was nervous to tell him that part, but I was hoping he would understand and that it wouldn’t matter.

  I waited outside for his car to pull up. When it finally did and he got out, I could hardly move once again. He ran up and hugged me, saying, “You are just as beautiful as the first time I met you.” It was so surreal to actually have him standing next to me, holding me.

  The whole time we were out that evening, we could not stop smiling. It was like we were high on drugs rather than our own endorphins. We talked about everything, our entire lives, from our upbringing to what we wanted in the future. We talked about the past three years in particular, and how our relationship had grown so much just through our letters.

  When he brought me back to the bed and breakfast, he told me that he would be back to pick me up the next day, after he finished work. I couldn’t let him leave my sight that soon, though. I was afraid he would disappear once again, so I asked him to come inside instead.

  He did, and we kissed just like the first time we met. We were the perfect kissing partners. I always think that it’s not that people do or don’t know how to kiss, it’s that people have different styles. We had the same exact style. We had known each other through letters for three years, and we were finally able to touch each other again. He moved my straight, blonde hair out of my face. “I’ve told all my mates about your eyes.”

  The room of the bed and breakfast quickly faded around me.

  “Are you on the pill?”

  I laughed. “I’ve never even had sex before.”

  He stopped kissing my neck, and looked up at me. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I’m positive. I’ve never been more sure in my life.” I had lost boyfriends in high school and through my first year in college because I wouldn’t sleep with them. I had been saving myself for Gavin.

  I floated through the next three days, constantly reminding myself that I really was in Middlesbrough with Gavin. I had dreamt about this meeting for so long, coming up with every word and every gesture in my mind, that it seemed like another one of those moments I had created. Even after I left, I would wonder if it all really happened. Did he really introduce me to his family and a few of his mates? Did I really sit with his mum and have tea? Did we really get our “night on the tiles?”

  The morning before I left, he gave me a gold ring that his mother had given him, and we cried and told each other that we were in love. (Exactly one year after he placed this ring on my hand, I let a girlfriend of mine try it on while we were standing on a pier overlooking the San Francisco Bay. It so happens that it accidentally slipped out of her fingers and slowly rolled off the pier and into the water. I always wondered if this was a sign of some sort. Perhaps looking back, I can now figure it out.)

  He called me the next day in London and told me he had a pit in his stomach and he hadn’t been able to eat all day. I confessed to him that I was sick with love as well, and that I didn’t know how I would survive another three years without him while I finished college. I promised him that as soon as I finished, I would head straight back to England to be with him.

  Once again, there was a card waiting for me when I returned home. He wished me a happy birthday and he confessed to me that his life would never be the same. And then, for five months after I received this card, I ran to my mailbox at the university everyday, hoping and praying that there would be another blue letter in it. All of his letters came in light blue envelopes with dark red and blue striped borders, and sometimes with a hint of cologne that would float off of the page and tease me with his presence.

  I had told all my girlfriends about this Englishman that I was in love with. I spoke to them about the first time I had met Gavin, about the three years of writing letters, and about meeting up with him again over the summer. I wanted to read each love letter to them, and debate what each sentence meant. I wanted them to be envious of my relationship that was reminiscent of a romance novel.

  But as each week went by, and then each month, I started mentioning him less and less, and I began to feel like the foolish schoolgirl that I was. No matter how many times I wrote to him, I never saw any letters in return; nothing ever came.

  That is, until one year later, when tears streamed down my face at my university mailbox, right there in the bare, tiled hallway, where hundreds of students were like an army heading toward the lunch lines. As I pulled my mail out, I saw a light green envelope with a card in it. I turned the card over, and there was his name neatly printed on the back. He had even used a heart sticker to seal it.

  As the excitement built up inside of me, I could barely pull out the rest of my mail, but as I did, there was a second letter. This one was in the typical light bl
ue envelope that I was used to, and his name appeared on the back once again. He had sent these to me for Valentine’s Day. One card said, Will you be mine, Valentine? and had a fuzzy, white teddy bear on the front holding a bundle of red roses. He wrote in this card that I completely owned his heart.

  In the second letter, he tried to explain his sudden absence by saying that he had been stationed in Gibraltar. The letter contained a picture of himself with “the lads” on a military base. He had signed off with Hugs and kisses, and then the usual, All my love, always and forever.

  All was forgiven. I ran off to show my friends. The letters, the pictures, the professions of love, the search for meaning where there was none, it had all started once again.

  When I finally graduated from the university, I decided to make good on my promise. I wrote Gavin a letter to let him know that I was on my way. I bought a ticket, packed a backpack, and headed off to England once again.

  As my train pulled up to the station in Middlesbrough, England, my body was full of excitement and my stomach full of butterflies. I jumped up before the train even stopped so that I could be the first one off.

  Most people never follow through on these types of promises. They just say or write the words, but don’t really mean them. I was there to show that I was different.

  As the doors opened, I saw Gavin standing there. My heart started pounding. I stepped off the train, dropped my backpack and jumped into his arms. This was it, we were together. I didn’t have to go back to the States to finish school; I didn’t have to leave because I had committed myself to someone else; and I didn’t have to return to Arizona, since I had already broken away from that life years ago to attend school. I was all his and this new way of life was all mine.

  I reveled in these thoughts for about twenty seconds, before I realized that something was wrong. He hugged me, but it wasn’t the same hug that I had been greeted with before. Even though my body was against his, and I could feel his breath on my neck, there was distance in the way he was touching me. I stepped back to look into his eyes, and he was looking at me with confusion, like he had something to tell me.

  I slowly slid my hands down his arms, feeling each one of his tense muscles, and stepped back even further to give him space. I wanted him to feel like he could talk if he needed to. I let my hands sit in his for a moment, and then asked, “What is it?”

  He swallowed hard, took in a deep breath, and squeezed my hands as if he was telling me how difficult it was to let them go, but he did let them go. He turned to look over his shoulder. It was then that I finally noticed the woman who was standing behind him. I remember turning my head toward her and setting my eyes on her, but I can’t even recall what she looked like.

  He didn’t need to say anything. I just started shaking my head, no. “This is—” he started. No, it couldn’t be. The tears started coming before I could even think about the strength that I had always meant to portray in moments like these, but I had never had a moment like this, and I knew that I never would in the future, either—I wouldn’t allow it. I started backing up before he could finish his sentence, “—my wife.”

  I was tripping over people as they continued to come off the train. They were bumping into me, pushing me forward, forward to what was supposed to have been my destiny.

  He took a step toward me but realized it was no use, there was nothing he could do, so he stopped and just stared at me with those eyes. Those eyes that used to linger over my body as if they were a hand running along my skin, lightly touching and tracing my knee up to my inner thigh. I used to look into those eyes and try to read the soul behind the blue-green windows. I tried, even now. I thought I could read grief, torment, hurt, and surprisingly, the same love that had always shown there. It was a love that had kept me enraptured, I now know, for too long.

  The people stopped coming off of the train, so I returned to it. Gavin’s wife had never stepped forward to join him by his side. It was like she was just a piece of the background, a part of a different life for him, and the train that had led me to the slaughter would now be my savior and lead me away to my own new life. I clutched onto the handrails as I tried to rescue myself from the whirlpool of thoughts swirling around me, tugging on me, drowning me, making me dizzy.

  I finally managed to pull myself back onto the train. I stood on the steps and stared at him for a moment. But I had to sit down because I knew my legs would give way any second.

  I was finally able to turn away from him, and turn away from the life that I had always dreamed of having. It had been stolen from me.

  I collapsed into one of the seats by the window and wondered how this could have happened to me. I tried to think if there was some hint of it in any of his letters.

  Perhaps it was when he wrote to me that his mates thought he was living in a fantasy world. I had mistakenly thought this was just another one of his sweet statements about how fantastical our love was. I realized that I had indeed squeezed out all the meaning of this statement—and every other one, for that matter—but that I had only ever believed the parts that I wanted to. He obviously had had his doubts. He had doubted us. I guess I couldn’t blame him, though; I had my doubts as well. I had been enamored with a few other guys over the years, but it never led to this. I never married anybody else.

  The train started up and I tried to reach out to Gavin one last time. He looked at me once more before he turned, passed his wife, and walked out the door.

  As I sat on the train heading away from Middlesbrough feeling nauseous, dozens of emotions swept over me—anger, love, sadness, despair, and amazingly enough, peace. Yes, I finally came to peace with everything. I was finally able to grasp the fact that I had only spent a total of one week of my entire life with Gavin. Even though I had known him for years, I knew him mostly through his letters. In person, I knew his shyness, I knew his body, and I knew that I loved him. But I had created the image of a perfect man in my own mind. I had never known him to be upset or to complain about anything. We had never fought. He had never been mad at me.

  No man over the past six years could ever have matched up to all of this, and this is why those relationships had never lasted.

  I realized that he must have come to this realization a lot sooner than I had. I began to think my train was not only heading away from Middlesbrough, but heading away from Wonderland as well. It was time for my life to move on. It was time to look in a different box for another matching piece of the puzzle, and maybe it wouldn’t fit so perfectly. Perhaps now I could find someone and be thankful for the fact that he had faults. I felt free; I was carrying a backpack and I could move around the world the way I wanted to without anything holding me down. THE END

  ENGAGED TO MY FIANCÉ. . . AND HIS MOTHER!

  She’ll leave us alone eventually. . . right?

  I awoke to find Christian studying me with eyes full of mischief.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning, yourself,” I replied with a kiss.

  “Could I interest you in some breakfast?”

  I sat up, pulling the sheet up over my bare shoulders. “What’s cooking, good-looking?”

  A crooked grin spread over his stubbled face. “For starters, how about this?” He tossed the sheet aside and took me into his arms. Romantic music, which came from a CD player set on repeat, still played from the night before.

  We tumbled from one side of the bed to the other, lost in our own universe, until suddenly, the bedroom door burst open.

  My heart leapt into my throat as Christian and I fumbled frantically to cover ourselves. At the same instant, a woman screamed. Standing in the doorway was Christian’s mother, her hands over her mouth.

  “My gosh, Mother, couldn’t you have knocked?” Red-faced, Christian gave the sash of his robe a hard yank.

  Mrs. Thomlin, who looked like a deer caught in the headlights, slowly lowered her hands. “I. . .I’m so sorry. I had no idea—”

  As her eyes narrowed on
me, my cheeks burned. I tightened my grip on the sheet bunched in front of me.

  “I-I was just bringing your laundry over.” Shakily, she reached down to retrieve several shirts on hangers that she’d dropped on the floor. Christian stepped up quickly to help her.

  “Oh dear, look at them now,” she said, attempting to smooth out the wrinkles. “I just tried a new lavender spritz on them. It made them smell so nice. And I also fixed a loose button. A laundromat would never take the care that I do. You know that, don’t you dear?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Christian said awkwardly. “I appreciate it.”

  As he hung up the shirts, Mrs. Thomlin turned to me with an embarrassed look.

  “I’m accustomed to just letting myself in,” she explained, touching her stylishly cut silver hair. “I guess you must not have heard me.”

  Christian stepped over and silenced the CD player. “I’m afraid not.”

  “You know, I like the way manufacturers sew spare buttons onto shirttails these days,” she rattled on, looking at neither of us. “It’s so convenient. And I thought you’d like the lavender scent. It’s more masculine than—”

  “Mother,” Christian interrupted, “I know you’re shocked. It’s all right. We’ll all get over it.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Someday we might even be able to laugh about it.”

  “I do apologize,” she said, looking at me. “I never thought—”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Thomlin. We know it wasn’t intentional.”

  “Heavens, no,” she replied.

  “Mother, in case you’re worried,” Christian said, “this is not what it appears. This is no casual sleepover. The truth of the matter is that we have some exciting news for you. We’d planned to announce it a little more formally, but Megan and I are engaged. I proposed last night and she accepted.”

  Mrs. Thomlin’s face went slack. “Oh, my. My baby is getting married?”

  Christian winked at me. “Your baby is thirty-one years old. Don’t you think it’s time?”