First Date
With My Ex-Boyfriend’s New Girlfriend
I sighed as I sat waiting at ‘The King’s Arms’. I had found myself a table by the window and I was confident that I looked visibly upset that the person I was due to meet hadn’t arrived on time. I was doing her a favour and yet here I was, waiting for her. If she really wanted my help, surely she would have turned up on time. Still, I could give her the benefit of the doubt. It had only been two minutes and she could turn up any second.
Almost as if she was listening to my inner monologue of how some people don’t value others’ time at all and therefore deserve to be barred from society, she rushed in through the door. I immediately recognised her. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t stalked her online profile about twenty-five times in the lead up to this day. What I had found hadn’t particularly made me like her but it had given me no solid grounds not to like her and so I was forced to sit in that room with no opinion of her, one that I was sure would be coloured in the shade of disapproval as the evening progressed.
‘Hi, Alia’, she said, panting, with a broad smile on her face. ‘It’s so nice to finally meet you, I’m Mona!’
‘Hello’, I said, with the pout I could gather on my face in the name of a smile, and then paused. ‘I would say it’s nice to meet you too but I’m not sure I’m there yet.’
She chuckled.
‘Yes’, Mona chuckled. ‘I imagine you must be surprised.’
‘When the current flame of my ex-boyfriend finds me on Instagram, asking to meet me, I don’t suppose it leaves room for many happy emotions, do you?’
‘No, I don’t’, she said, turning a visible shade of crimson.
I sighed. I was embarrassing her. Why not? Why could I not be mean? There were no solid grounds to dislike her but there was no rule that stated that I should in fact like her. Social convention would even dictate that I dislike this woman thoroughly and through no fault of her own.
‘So, how may I help you?’ I finally said.
‘Well’, she sighed, leaning back on her seat. ‘This might come as a surprise to you but…Neil proposed to me a few days ago.’
It was as if the room had turned silent. Or maybe my sense of hearing was failing me. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my own beating heart- just as fast as it had done the day Neil had told me he was done with me. When the initial shock subsided, I smiled.
‘And am I to congratulate you?’, I said, looking at her hand to find a ring. There was none.
‘That’s the issue…I haven’t said yes because I wanted to meet you first.’
I paused.
‘Neil and I only dated for seven months. He was married before he dated me and that was a far more dramatic breakup than this one, so I’m not sure why I’m the one you want to meet and not his ex-wife.’
‘Well, he told me the story of why he and his ex-wife broke up, and given how ugly that was, I didn’t want to get involved.’
‘That, and the fact that she blocked him on every social platform and is currently living in Sydney with her new husband.’
‘Yes’, she said with a small smile. ‘Well, the fact that she had moved on to someone told me she was happy. So clearly any feelings for Neil had subsided.’
I leaned back with a smile. Not a happy smile, but a smile that said that I knew what she was going to imply and that my dislike towards Mona would not be without cause for too long. My prejudice would become rational. I love when I’m right.
‘And you think I still have feelings for Neil?’ I said, amused.
‘Well, if I’m honest’, Mona sighed. ‘He described your break-up so vaguely, I just can’t tell if you’re okay.’
‘Does Neil know you’re here?’
‘No, he doesn’t.’
‘Why are you here, Mona? Are you seeking my blessing to marry Neil?’
‘I want to know why you broke up’, she said slowly.
‘Surely asking your potential future husband that question might have been easier than coming down to meet me?’
She shook her head. ‘I did ask him but… it didn’t make sense. He said you were better as best friends than as partners and yet…it doesn’t seem like you are friends anymore. Almost as if what he had set out to preserve got lost in the process.’
‘So you’re trying to fix my friendship with him?’
‘I’m not, I just want to know what happened. If I say yes to marrying him, is he going to wake up one day thinking we’re better as friends than as partners?’
I looked at her for a few seconds.
‘He was telling you the truth. The reason we broke up was that he thought we’d be better as best friends than as partners. One day his feelings changed. Sadly, mine didn’t.’
‘Do you still have the same feelings for Neil?’
‘Christ, no!’ I said with a chuckle. ‘When someone tells you their feelings have changed, it doesn’t take long for your feelings to change as well.’
‘He told me you didn’t get over him for a long time, though’, she said.
‘Listen, I’m not sure if you and Neil are in on this together to make me feel worse than I do already but what has this got to do with Neil’s proposal for you? If you love him, just say yes and be done with it. I don’t follow him on social media, I don’t follow you, and I unfollowed all his friends, so realistically I could have gone years without ever finding out that you two got married. What I wouldn’t have known couldn’t have hurt me. So, why are you doing this?’
‘I just…have doubts about him. Why didn’t you get over him? Would the same thing happen to me?’
I smiled.
‘I’m going to tell you what I think. Just because I am not married or in a relationship or constantly sharing pictures of myself on date nights, I look like some sort of saddo to you and that’s why you have come to me, to see his last failure of a conquest to map your future. What a potential worst-case scenario could look like.’
She looked at me without moving.
‘Contrary to what you believe I got over him pretty quickly. I got over him within the week of him breaking up with me, actually. It started off with me hating what he said. Then I hated what he did. Then I hated everything he ever said to me that he was now denying by saying that he didn’t see me as his partner. What I didn’t get over was how quickly he moved on to you. I never missed him, I only ever missed what he was to me. I thought about every time he would drunk-dial me to tell me he loved me and how he never said it sober. I thought about the evening he broke up with me. The entire day I knew that the end of our relationship was coming. Do you want to know how I knew that?’
‘How did you know that?’
‘Because he spent the entire day texting you. We were all at the beach. Him, his friends, and me. I didn’t know his friends that well and he left me all alone with them while he went into the spare bedroom to text you. When I confronted him about it, he told me that I was crazy. I started believing that I was going crazy. I thought, why can’t he text a female friend? I text male friends all the time.’
‘I had no idea’, she whispered.
‘Of course, you didn’t. You hadn’t started dating him yet. You were still in the chatting phase. That evening he told me we should just be best friends and that he couldn’t commit to anyone yet. But look how far he seems to have come since then, only a year on’, I added with a smile.
‘Alia…I am so sorry.’
‘Don’t be, it wasn’t your fault. I just wish your chatting phase and my breakup hadn’t coincided. I wish he had given me a proper breakup instead of doing it while we were both drunk and out with his friends.’
‘I can’t marry him’, Mona suddenly said hysterically.
I chuckled.
‘Don’t let what he did to me alter how you feel about him.’
‘How can you say that? He told me you guys were in love and then one day his feelings changed. How can I be sure that won’t happen with me?’
‘If it had to happen with you, it would have happened a long time ago. He was never going to commit to me. In my heart, I knew that but I kept waiting for him to change his mind. We should have broken up sooner, honestly. If it helps, I unfollowed Neil because he looked ridiculously happy with you in his pictures.’
‘He did?’ she smiled slowly.
‘Yes’, I said. ‘You’re a nice person for caring. But we’re all unique individuals and have unique experiences. So, go on and say yes to him if you love him.’
‘I will’, she smiled even brighter. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Now, I’m going to head out.’
As I walked across the street, I couldn’t help but turn around to look at the pub again. A quaint little pub just across from Holborn Station. It was where Neil and I had had our first date.
