I’m not the naive type. I don’t believe you can be everything to someone and I didn’t expect Joel to be everything to me either. The whole “perfect housewife at home, femme fatale outside and a real whore between the sheets” trifecta never was my style anyway. But there was one thing that made me incredibly proud of our relationship, and it was loyalty. Not blind loyalty, but rather a beautiful kind of loyalty, built on honesty and transparency. The kind of loyalty that would never have cast me in the role of the sad girl who’s been cheated on after two years together.
Her name is Valerie. With a name like that, she’s either the neighborhood tramp, or your chubby best friend. Unfortunately, I already have a best friend and her name is Vanessa.
Valerie, I imagine as a bleached blonde with bows in her hair, a fake Vuitton handbag and polka dot tights. She writes him letters. I’ve found several of them in his stuff, all filled with the cheesiest kind of poems, sent in lilac envelopes with a lavender smell that drives me up the wall.
After her last one, I decided to confront her. “My Joel”, that’s how it starts. Her Joel. MY Joel, you mean? “So close yet so far too, I already miss you”.
Well, hello, cliché!
She goes on with her poor man’s rhymes: “Written was our story, it was just destiny”. OF COURSE it was destiny. “Join me at the Aroma Cafe, 4pm everyday, I’ll be waiting for you bae”.
I wonder if she knows that’s almost alliteration. I just don’t understand what Joel could see in her, she seems as dumb as a bag of hammers. Or maybe he never saw anything in me. Maybe I’m too brainy. Not child-like enough, like starry-eyed Valerie. I don’t know. And I’d like to get to the bottom of it.
3.58 pm. I look through the window of the Aroma Cafe. There’s only one woman inside, in her fifties maybe. I’ll wait some more, Valerie must be late. Yet another one of her many qualities I suppose.
To pass the time, I scrutinize the older lady. She is sporting an impeccable short salt-and-pepper (well, mostly salt) bob, and she’s wearing… a lilac suit of all things! And she’s reading… a Harlequin romance? Is this her? Is my man banging a MILF?! I’m boiling inside. I go into the bar, stand up straight in front of her, and a smell of lavender comes tickling my nostrils.
“Valerie?”
She lifts her gaze to me and puts her book away immediately. “Ah, Catherine, lovely, I was waiting for you!” The brightest smile lit up her face as if she was being reunited with a child after years and years apart. “Sit, sit, we have so much to talk about!”
And like a lost little girl, I obediently sit facing her and wait.
“Catherine, honey, I have good news, bad news, and more good news for you, I’m gonna deliver them in that order, okay?”
She carefully takes off her jacket. “I’m so glad to see you, I was getting sick and tired of this scratchy suit, plus lilac is not my color at all, but you have to do what you have to do!”
I finally open my mouth in the hope of uttering an intelligible sentence. “I don’t get it, you were… expecting me?”
“Absolutely, darling! I’ll jump right into it: the good news is you’re not being two-timed! You happy?” Tiny wrinkles dance around her eyes, she looks like she’s just given me the Christmas present of my dreams.
“Uh… yeah? Yes. Yeah, okay, but…the letters, the dates, the my boo ?”
“Oh, that’s the beauty of our algorithm. Thanks to the data you leave everywhere on the web, combined with one of those precisely targeted personality tests on Facebook you like so much, we managed to pinpoint what would make you turn your nose up enough for you to come find me.”
“We? Who’s we?”
“Ah sweetie-pie that’s when I give you the bad news, let’s go ahead and rip it off like a bandaid shall we?” She seizes my left hand and cradles it in between hers. “I’m working for breakup.com and Joel has hired us to split up with you.”
Silence.
“You okay, Catherine-darling ?”
Nope. Of course I’m not okay. I pull my hand away “He can’t handle it himself?!” I can feel my anger rising.
“Ah that, my dear… If experience has taught me one thing, it’s that in matters of love, men are cowards. And when a man takes a lover, real or virtual, it’s that the initial relationship had reached full term long ago, even if no-one is acknowledging it yet.”
I’m staring down at my lap, I thought I felt tears welling up but… nothing’s coming.
“Oh, sweetie, honey” She reaches over with her long, bony hand and lifts my chin “Look into your heart and ask yourself if you really felt that things with him were going somewhere”.
I’m looking for evidence. If anything, I’m realizing that, had I confronted him directly, I would have let him deny it all and I probably would have stayed with him until he’d grown a pair big enough to eventually leave me.
“And the other good news? You said good news, bad news, and more good news?”
“Oh my dear Catherine, you’re not wasting any time, I like that about you ! The good news is that Breakup has a subsidiary called thegoodfella.com and thanks to Joel’s deal, you automatically benefit from 3 months free access to our platform to meet a new, bespoke partner! Shall I walk you through the power of our algorithm again or are you already sold on it?”
