Margot, the elusive (part 5)

19May09

So Margot didn’t or couldn’t want me and I knew I had to get over her. But I couldn’t help but submerge myself in guilty feelings of unrequited love a little bit longer. A couple weeks after her final rejection I left a long message on her voicemail.

“Hey Margot; it’s me again. Sorry to bug you.  I know you’re probably freaked out by the calls and I want you to know I understand. It took me a while to understand. I didn’t show up to work a couple times because I was so torn up, which, I know, is crazy, because we don’t know each other that well.

“It’s weird. But I just feel like I need closure with you, which is unlike me.  Frankly, I haven’t really been myself since I met you. So anyways, I’ve been camping out on the coast for a couple days. Drinking a lot, but it’s given me a fair degree of clarity. I dunno, I guess I was just feeling trapped in my old relationship, and I met you, and you’re such a rare person. It just shook me.

“But listen.  I get that it’s not going to work. I know it was a mistake for you to go home with me. It bums me out, Margot, but it’s OK. And guess I just had to call and say that. It’s going to be OK. And—“

Right then, I was cut off by her answering machine. I thought about calling back to finish the sentence, but realized I’d said what I needed to.

A couple of minutes later, I received a text message which read, “It’s OK, Knox. Be well,” and it warmed my heart. I left my friend’s cabin outside of Depoe Bay the next morning, barely getting to work on time. After, I did what anyone with a violent case of heartbreak is supposed to do. I went about my life. And I drank.

One night, at the dive around the corner from my apartment, I bumped into an old co-worker named Lisa. We commiserated about our respective woes in terms of relationships, careers, and chronic wanderlust. I took her home that night, and it was nice. Nothing earth-shaking, but it’d been six months since I’d slept with anyone (that ‘anyone’ being Margot) and Lisa was exactly what I needed.

Lisa didn’t turn into a steady relationship but we called each other every couple of weeks for drinks, which would inevitably wind up with us sleeping together. I was on my way over to meet Lisa at a night club when I received a call from number I didn’t recognize.

“Knox, it’s Margot.”

After a moment of stunned silence, I said, “Margot…. I didn’t expect to hear from you.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t expect to call you,” she said.  “But I’ve been having a rough patch with my boyfriend. We are actually in the process of breaking up, and I don’t know. I was thinking about you. I wondered if you might like to get a drink with me. Tonight.”

Her voice cracked a bit as she said “Tonight.”

“You always were impulsive,” I said.  I thought about it for a moment – this woman whose ghost had hung over the last six months of my life like a raincloud was calling me, asking me for a drink. And I realized, while I was still torn up over Margot, my feelings for her were better when they were unrequited. I could feed off her rejection, still, and I didn’t want to change that. It wasn’t even a question. “But tonight’s no good for me, Margot. Maybe we can grab coffee sometime.”

“Really? I thought this would sort of be – like a big deal, me calling out of the blue.”

“It probably should be, but you know what they say: timing is everything. Be well, Margot.” And with that, I hung up the phone and headed out into the night.

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