The New York Project

12. When all you got is hurt

He was the teenager, yet she only was acting as one.

Every day after their break-up, she would send him texts and check her phone every other minute or so, waiting for his answer. Waiting for an answer that will never come.

She would inspect his social media several times a day to see what he was up to – sadly, he was too cool for this, his social media presence having always been scarce at best, and mostly nonexistent.

She was missing him so much.

She felt worse than after their last break up.

She couldn't explain what was happening to her.

Why was she so drawn to him?

Like a bloody magnet.

Last summer, she could blame the heat and the loneliness. But now, in the dead of her first New York winter, what could she blame? Or who?

She didn't need to flounder, blaming everything or everyone else.

She could only blame herself.

***

After three weeks or so, she still had no news of him.

Besides sending him a lot of texts, she did another stupid thing: drowning her woes in alcohol. She didn't even do this after her mother's death. Now, only because of a sweet, sexy and confident teenager, she began to increase her cocktail intake on the evenings she went out with Cecilia – who, incidentally, wasn't fooled at all by this behaviour.

She also drank a fair share of champagne at her company's Christmas party, which led her to a not-so-clever decision: leaving at the end of the event with Vincent, a colleague from their San Francisco office. A few years older than her, blond with blue eyes, just out of a long relationship – so he said – and seemingly attracted to her. They went to his hotel and she stayed until morning, then they hooked up again the next evening.

Maybe this was the perfect rebound. No consequences, no strings attached, as he was only in New York for a couple of days.

The sex was bland, though, it was terrible. He kept on asking her if she liked this or that, and if she was fine. The answer to these questions was always "no": she wasn't fine, she wanted someone else, she couldn't think about anything else.

Besides, Robbie never questioned her. It wasn't because he wasn't attentive, it simply was because he didn't have to: he knew exactly what she liked, how she liked it, where and when she liked it. When they were together, it was as if he knew before herself what she craved at the exact right moment.

Her short affair with her colleague reminded her of one undeniable thing: there was something truly special with Robbie. No one else had made her feel what he had made her feel. Not even close.

The worst thing was that she wasn't really missing the sex.

She was mostly missing him.

***

Christmas Eve

It wouldn't stop snowing.

She was almost hoping that she would get snowed in and that she couldn't reach her father's house to celebrate. But the subway wasn't out of order and the main roads were clear.

It was the second Christmas without her mother – needless to say that it was difficult.

She used to love this time of the year. They had some little rituals, like going to see the tree in Covent Garden, the Christmas lights in Carnaby Street, or the window displays and the decorations inside Selfridges and Liberty. They would skate at the ice rink of the Natural History Museum and, every year, find it too bloody crowded – and go back nonetheless the next year. They would stroll around the Christmas market on Southbank and joyfully cringe at all the useless things sold there.