Break-Update
I'm sitting in a cafe near Soho with Andy. It's December and I haven't seen Andy since my birthday dinner with Rocket and a few friends back in September. I'm telling him about an article I just wrote about the rapper Nas that's coming out in a new magazine in March. (Yay me!)
"Mind you, I knew nothing about Nas before I wrote this," I'm saying. "It's about Nas as post-break up music."
"Which you wouldn't know anything about because you haven't been through a break up lately..." he trails off when he sees the look on my face. "...Right? You and Rocket are still together...?"
"No. We broke up." And then comes the next question:
"Who broke up with whom?" He asks. "Rocket certainly didn't break up withyou," he says.
"He did," I say. I explain as best I can though it's still such a strange and complicated thing to try to explain to someone, anyone, and Andy's not even just anyone and though I've tried to explain it a thousand times, and while I know exactly what happened between us, the words come out all weird and none of it sounds like much sense in my ears. And besides, you never want to have to tell a friend that you lost love that they either have or can't seem to find.
By the end Andy is saying, "Jesus, it just sounds... I mean it's all just so cliche, so typical. Well, maybe this will all just, you know, blow up in his face or, whatever."
I drop the fork into my salad plate, clutch the fabric of my sweater (new and expensive, a total broken-hearted purchase) at my heart, look straight into Andy's eyes half laughing and say, "God, I hope so."
Merry Christmas!
