14 - Nerds

Not long after the thing with Rob fizzled out (not that it ever really fizzled in), along rolled the man everyone thinks I left my husband for.

He had it easy.

I was primed. It was like Rob had warmed me up: pre-heated to the right temperature.

Ready to cheat.

It turned out it was still too early for me and Rob: neither of us was ready to dive so catastrophically out of the safety of our relationships.

I’d have given it a damn good go.

But Rob was—remains—a void of unsatisfied longings.

I could show you the messages: messages of indescribable yearning.

Frustrated, inchoate yearning. “I want you so bad my dick hurts.” Etc.

Every time we missed secretly meeting up, or I missed a 1am call, or he couldn’t get out of bed with his girlfriend, I spun out all the alternate worlds in which he and I were naked, alone, going hell-for-leather.

If the main component of the universe is dark matter, it must be all those things that didn’t happen.

All the things we didn’t get—the job, the love, the family.

The shadow worlds of unactuated desires and successful loves we never get to touch are infinite.

They spin off and make the darkness. Build darkness and anger and dissatisfaction in us.

Embitter us.

So every non-happening with Rob spun off and made more dark matter: pushed my universe apart a little bit more.

There were so many non-events: dark, significant, non-events. So many missed opportunities.

We just never got it together in this dimension.

Because by the time he decided to come around (literally), it was too late. I was with someone else.

That someone else was the one everyone thinks I left my husband for.

But the truth is he found me like this: frustrated, lonely, ready to plummet.

Rob had already done all the legwork for him.

The thing was I didn’t fancy this other guy, the one everyone thinks I left my husband for. Not the way I fancied Rob.

Which was weird because objectively the new guy was more traditionally good-looking. Dark hair, dark eyes, heavily-built.

Bearded—but I don’t like beards.

Swarthy—but I prefer waifs.

He was the kind of guy girls on the street turned for. Eye-catchingly attractive from afar—because he worked hard to catch everyone’s eye.

I know he did it to other girls because he did it to me, in hallways and lifts at work.

There would be that nanosecond of pure raw eye contact as we passed: the exchange of eyeballs that said “up for it?”

Rob was never so blatant. Much harder to pin down. The real thrill of the chase.

If Rob was chess, this guy was that kids’ game with the cartoon buckets and the nets and catapults. Mousetrap.

But nothing was happening with Rob and I had never been so frustrated in my life. He was gone, away at another law firm now.

The messages we exchanged after his leaving drinks, at first so horny and yearning and ever-present (including that long weekend he was away in Rome with his girlfriend), decreased in frequency.

Every time I passed the tower where his new law firm was I imagined running into him. I’d be at the same bar, the same lunch spot, on the same road.

Oh hi, I’d say casually.

But it never happened. He was gone. We were gone. We missed our chance.

And my marriage? It was too late for that.

I told you: I had already fallen, irretrievably, out of it.

It happened in that moment, when Rob’s knee landed on mine under the table.

So what to do?

Well, now there’s this other guy at work: the one with the roving eyes that scream “I’m up for sex.”

There was no magic to him.

He wasn’t the one I wanted. I could see his teeth were terrible: British teeth, crooked and yellowing.

I didn’t really want him. But he got me anyway.

How?

He discovered I’m a nerd. I actually remember his triumphant chortle: “You’re a nerd!”

He started gifting me books. Patrick Leigh Fermor, Robert Macfarlane.

My kind of books.

And I fell, like deliquescent fruit.

It was that easy.

Cut to a year later, on a train to Oxford, heading to meet him. Probably reading a book he got me.

Halfway through the journey, I got a call from my sister and talked to her briefly.

My voice is distinctive, especially on a quiet train.

Moments after I hung up, a soft tap on the shoulder.

Someone behind me saying my name.

A voice I knew: mocking, gently ironic and soft as caramel.

I could hear the half-smile before I turned.

It was Rob, sitting behind me on the 10:27 to Cheltenham.

With his girlfriend.

—

Pair with Call your Girlfriend by Robyn.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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