My Invisible Ex-Boyfriend
by Jill Williams

 

 

My first big girl job opportunity after college was in pharmaceutical sales, and I was flitting around an outdoor mailbox, preparing to send my list of personal references to the sales manager. I smiled. The job was as good as mine, and this was just a formality. I had three names: James Martin - pastor; Dr. Wesley Stevens - English professor; and Scott Webster - ex-boyfriend.

I dangled the envelope in the slot and then yanked it out like the box was brimming with molten lava. Wait. I tried again, but the thought of trusting Scott with my future slammed into me. My hand accidentally released the letter into the abyss. A spider web of anxiety spun its way through my body. Oh my God, what did I just do?

I plunged my hand into the box, my fingers swirling frantically for the letter. It was gone.

Dejected, I slammed a pair of Walkman headphones over my ears, turning the volume up on Alanis Morissette’s album, Jagged Little Pill. With every step I took, the memory of that regretful day nearly five years prior, August 9th, 1990, crashed into my brain like a fiery car accident you couldn’t unsee. It was the day I met Scott, my life forever altered by that one encounter.

We met at college orientation, the weather so drenched with humidity I could wring out my shirt. I bumped into him accidentally and before I could say sorry, he flashed a crooked, cocky grin. “You sweat prettier than any girl I’ve ever seen. I wonder what you’d look like dry.”

I looked him up and down. The guy was wearing two polos: one red, one blue; both collars popped. The deliberately backward baseball cap reminded me of a glittery Christmas star atop a fake tree. His eyes were criminals hiding out behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. He smelled of old money and smugness. I made a concerted effort to register no emotion. “Gee, too bad you’ll never find out.” I turned and walked away.

He shouted, “Hey, what’s your number? I’d like to take you out for dinner. Maybe Donatello’s?”

I stopped suddenly, a backed-up sink without an escape route. A dinner for two at Donatello’s would cost at least a hundred duckets. Gross. I hated people who displayed their wealth like a flashing highway billboard. Did he think I’d throw my underwear at him in slavish devotion like one of those crazed rock star groupies? In response, I crossed my arms and squinted into the sun. “No. I’ve got a boyfriend.”

But he was like the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction. He refused to go away. My disdain didn’t faze him a bit.

“Duh. No surprise there. I figured the prettiest girl on campus would already be taken. But that doesn’t stop me; I’ve always loved a challenge.”

I glared at him, pretending to stick a finger down my throat. But within two weeks, I would dump my kind, sweet, predictable boyfriend of three years for this guy; someone who left me feeling like I was balancing on a sliver of wood in a turbulent ocean.

My steps quickened. The afternoon sun still blazed down on me. I owed it a debt, one that could never be repaid after the wasted, moth-eaten years with Scott. The guilt was a suffocating blanket, fanning the flames of my regret. Had I really used him as a reference just to prove to both of us that I wasn’t as dumb as he said I was?

I pictured my parents' small-town country club restaurant: the red vinyl tufted chairs, goblets of water gleaming with condensation droplets, and medium-rare prime rib sizzling on plates. My father stood and raised a glass in celebration.

“Congratulations to Kim and Scott for making the Dean's List their first year of college.” Everyone clanked their glasses in unison and patted us on the back. Scott’s hand was icy in mine, his eyes positively glacial as he whispered in my ear, “A 4.0 in English is just a tad easier than a 4.0 in biology and chemistry. But, hey everyone deserves a participation trophy as long as it makes you feel good about yourself.”

I shifted uncomfortably in the vinyl seat. My eyes bored into the melting ice in my glass, the cubes becoming smaller and smaller, slowly disappearing until they were engulfed in water. No longer recognizable.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips and I said way too loudly, “You suck!” A woman walking by clutched her daughter's hand and scurried off like a startled rat. I shouted an apology, “Sorry ma’am, I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to my invisible ex-boyfriend.”

I passed by a well-known lingerie store. Its advertising models - poufy-lipped skeletons with breast augmentation - sparked another memory. At least fifty people were crammed together at McPherson’s Pub, a surprise birthday party for me. Scott encouraged everyone to speak into the microphone and “give the birthday girl some well wishes.”

Scott went last. “Sorry Baby, I can’t give you anything nicer than this party. But someday when I’m a plastic surgeon, I’m going to build you a bigger and better set of tits.”

A chorus of drunken laughter surrounded me. Me? I stared at the bar clock overhead, mesmerized by the little hand and how quickly it moved. I choked back a thankful sob. Even though pain was real, time was mercifully short.

I could still see his face, red, splotchy, and tear-stained. “But I love you! And even though you say you don’t love me - it doesn’t matter, my love is enough for both of us. I’ll do anything to make this work, absolutely anything.” Scott proved true to his word. He wrote me poetry (the worst ever penned in the history of mankind), bought me flowers, held my hand, and kissed me in public. (Previously, he eschewed all physical affection because he didn’t want to look “whipped.”) These were all the things I’d always dreamed he’d do. But his sudden kindness was a repulsive foreign language I no longer wanted to learn.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when he went three states away to medical school. The day he left I wrapped my arms around him, telling him how proud I was that he was fulfilling his dream of becoming a doctor. He chuckled, pulling away from my embrace. "Well, if you ever need a breast exam, look me up,” he said, the smarmy grin I remembered from college orientation flashing across his face.

I was strangely compelled to keep in touch with him, too afraid to break a bond that never existed. We had a friendship of sorts, a strange ritual of phone calls. Every couple of weeks, he'd launch into an X-rated play-by-play of his latest conquests. I’d place the receiver a foot away from my face, a silent protest against his vulgarity. One day, I finally had enough and exploded.

"Stop it, Scott! I don’t want to hear this anymore! It’s disgusting. That’s a human being you're talking about, not some plastic blow-up doll."

A familiar snide laugh came through the line. “Hmm. Sounds like the green-eyed monster has been let out of its cage. Just so you know, I’d never get back together with you. You’re not, nor have you ever been, my type. I like ‘em brainy and busty.”

Something broke and shattered inside me. I gazed at the shards before me: my tendency to massage fragile egos, my constant people-pleasing, my terror at confronting wrong. I felt a surge of rage so powerful it was a lion’s roar. I told Scott to do something to himself that was anatomically impossible and slammed the phone into the receiver.

For a while, the phone rang again and again, his calls coming in from a different number each time. At first, they were demanding, then they were slurred and pleading. "Please forgive me..." But after the lion's roar, a new strength had been born. I ignored every one of them. Eventually, the silence became a balm. I realized that a bond that never existed in the first place could finally be broken.

I knew that a normal person, a truly kind person, would never give a negative reference. And now that Scott had finally exhausted his attempts to control me, I thought, Maybe he was normal. He was a doctor now. He had to have matured. It would be fine. He wouldn’t be cruel. He wouldn’t dare.

The call came two weeks later. I got the job. Scott Webster - the man I had so viciously told off months ago - apparently hadn't sabotaged me after all. The relief was a warm bath I could finally sink into. I fell into the rhythm of my sales rep role, and one of my favorite doctors set me up on a blind date with Jeff, "an adorable dental student." We fell for each other very quickly.

I opened my mailbox one day and saw it: an envelope with Scott’s familiar, sprawling script running across the front. My heart slammed into my ribs, the sudden violent force rattling my teeth. It wasn’t a letter; it was a vicious, angry diatribe.

You are such a heartless bitch, you wouldn’t even care if the plane I’m flying on crashed into the ocean and I died. The only way I managed to cope with your mind games and cruelty was to drink. Well congratulations, you turned me into an alcoholic, might even lose my fellowship. Take a bow, skank. You even had the balls to use me as a personal reference for some job. Don’t worry, I lied and said you were a good person. I’d never stoop to your level because I’m a decent human being. You’ve ruined my life while all I ever wanted to do was love you and take care of you. Write to me sometime if it’s not too much trouble.

The nasty words on the page were a gut punch, and the tears came, hot and fast. But they weren't tears of sadness. They were tears of a deep, exhausted relief. He had finally revealed himself completely. He was not a wounded soul who needed saving; he was a petty, manipulative coward. I let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh, and felt the heavy weight dissipate from my chest.

Later that night, Jeff’s arm draped over me. The letter was on an end table, its menacing scrawl a dark stain in the lamplight.

"What's wrong?" he asked, his voice soft, perceptive.

I told him everything. I told him about the pathetic phone calls and the final, brutal letter. I told him how I had felt a foolish sense of pride for getting the job, thinking it was a sign of his forgiveness. I told him about the guilt. "I felt so horrible," I whispered, my voice breaking. "I have to write him back."

Jeff simply held me closer. He didn't tell me to forget about it, didn't tell me I was stupid for caring. Instead, he just kissed my forehead and said, "Here's a pen."

And in that moment, in the gentle darkness of a healthy love, I finally knew that I was free. I would write him back, not because he deserved it, but because I did. It would be my final, and most honest, conversation with a ghost.

 

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