I was just back in L.A. after a stint in Vancouver that saw my soon-to-be-ex-husband realizing his dreams of becoming a successful actor and hooking up with a movie star who was not me. I was hurt, but it had always been a terrible relationship with more heartache than happiness. And now, though still licking my wounds and feeling adrift, I was relishing my newfound freedom.
I bought a cute yoga outfit, burned innumerable overpriced scented candles, began a morning ritual of walking to the local bakery for a bagel and coffee, redecorated my apartment to my taste and took a French lover.
I met him on a night that can only be described as enchanted. Spontaneously, I’d joined a group of old friends on their way to a house party in Hollywood. Crammed into a rideshare, someone passed out little yellow pills debossed with an E. I’d done ecstasy once before, and the high I felt then hadn’t come anywhere close to making the low that followed worth it. I had sworn never again. But this was a new day — and a new me who wasn’t deterred by anything so inconsequential as soul-crushing despair. I tucked the little yellow pill in my pocket for later.
The party was in a chic work-live space: four stories of industrial design thumping with music and packed with hipsters. My crew grabbed beers and dispersed. Walking on a balcony, I turned a corner, and there he was, tall and slender, with soulful brown eyes and a longish mop of brown hair threatening to hide them. On his lapel, he wore a little button, a heart over crossbones. “Are you a heart pirate?” I asked.
His response didn’t matter. The moment he opened his mouth and a French accent came out, I didn’t care what he said as long as he kept talking. It wasn’t long before we were kissing. The pill in my pocket forgotten, I had found all the ecstasy I needed.
The next day, he texted me a time and date with a drawing of what looked like giant floating lava-lamp blobs with two pairs of little feet sticking out from underneath. I knew at once that the place was a public art exhibit in Silver Lake and that nothing could keep me from filling one pair of those shoes.
An electric first date led quickly to another and another, and we slid easily into a coupledom of cute texts, dinners out and exploring Los Angeles together. He was an animator in the country on a work visa and he invited me into his group of friends, also young men from around the world on a grand adventure. They often went out to explore interesting new bars, restaurants and attractions. Or they just gathered at someone’s apartment to make dinner together. When wives and girlfriends were included, I came along too. They were fun and lively, and I enjoyed them almost as much as I enjoyed him.
He had opened his world to me, and showing him the sights of mine made it feel fresh and new to me as well. We took a trip up the coast to Big Sur, passing the elephant seals and San Simeon, staying at the Madonna Inn and driving on to the restaurant Nepenthe, where we ate a fancy dinner and camped across the road. We also took a trip to Baja, staying in La Fonda and visiting Ensenada. Walking on the beach, I was almost too smitten to feel embarrassed by his very European Speedo. Later, a woman at a restaurant commented how sweet it was to see two people so in love.
This was so different from the tortured courtship with my ex. This was so effortless and light and so much of what I had been hoping for that when any cracks appeared in the perfect facade, I reasoned them away before they got big enough to threaten the dream.
On Valentine’s Day, he told me that he didn’t believe in Valentine’s Day because it was commercial. Instead, he said he’d make me dinner in his apartment. I would have been happy with the offer of dinner in minus the anti-consumerism explanation. But something about the fact he felt obliged to make it and that he hadn’t bothered to ask me how I felt about Valentine’s Day felt off — as if he was clarifying that what I thought or wanted did not figure into his choices.
When we first met, he had just returned from a trip home to France. While there, he had taken up with another woman who was now sending him long, angry texts. When I asked about the situation, he shrugged and said, “She thought it was more than a fun thing.”
Surely what we had was different, I told myself, despite the telling pit in my stomach.
When we were alone, his focus was all on me. But when we were with his friends, I often felt as though I’d come solo, just another member of the gang. Badly wanting this to be different from my codependent and stifling marriage, I told myself his aloofness was a good thing. It meant we both had our own lives, that we weren’t getting so lost in each other that we lost ourselves.
But he wasn’t the one in danger of getting lost. Despite my best efforts, it was getting harder and harder to ignore that what I wanted to believe was a blossoming relationship was actually two people in very different places with very different ideas.
I had come into this promising myself honesty, but I’d been working overtime to avoid the truth. Even when it was banging me over the head, like when he told me he loved me and then quickly quipped, “Unless you get pregnant. Then bye-bye!” I laughed, pretending the comment hadn’t stung. He was 28 to my 32. I wanted a baby badly, and the realities of biology were telling me I didn’t have much time to waste.
In the end, I was the one who broke it off. We went to a big studio launch party and, as usual, when offered the possibility of something newer and more interesting than me, he peaced out. The party was in a meandering warehouse converted to an intergalactic space station.
As I explored the party, feeling abandoned and alone, the pieces began to form a complete picture I could no longer ignore. By the time we met up hours later to leave, I understood that I could linger in this half place for as long as I chose, but that it would never be the partnership I wanted. I was seeking a destination, while he was in love with the journey. He wasn’t a pirate; he was a tourist to my heart.
Just like the first time I took ecstasy, coming down from our romance sent me into a pit of despair. But like a stomachache from too much candy, the pain was short-lived. It wasn’t long before I met someone who did want to share his life with me — all of it. For years, I kept the little yellow pill in my jewelry box. I never did take it.
The author helps brands tell their stories; sometimes she tells one of her own. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. You can find her at linkedin.com/in/ksmayfield.
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This story originally appeared on LA Times
