Dumped

“He just dumped me.”

I choked on the piece of bread I was eating and looked up at my friend. 

“What?” I asked.

She burst into tears and starting wailing loudly. People in the restaurant turned to stare at us. I automatically shifted into the sympathy mode, patting her shoulder and silently passing her a tissue, while wishing the old man at the next table would stop peering at us through his thick glasses and mind his own business. I signaled the waiter for a large scoop of chocolate ice cream. 

She blew her nose and looked at me through red eyes. 

“But why? I thought you guys had stopped fighting?” I enquired, infusing enough concern and anger in my voice as was expected of me. 

“He says he wants someone who is more practical and less emotional. What the hell does he mean by that? Am I the kind of person who makes a scene?” she screamed.

I declined to point out that the whole restaurant was now staring at us avidly, more Interested in her drama than the menu. Choosing the lesser of the two evils, I hid my embarrassment and nodded my head in agreement; assuring her that she wasn’t emotional and that he was a jerk and that he didn’t deserve her. Fifteen minutes of who-needs-men and men-are-bastards and five hundred calories later, she calmed down enough to bring her voice down a notch. I mentally added another to her list of failed relationships, which was now at a staggering seven. 

I’ve known her since my school days and despite our many differences, we’ve always remained good friends. We tended to balance each other-she was dumb, I was smart (which is another way of saying I was a nerd); she was the ‘hot chick’ while I was the kind who is usually invisible to guys till exam time. Still we managed to remain friends through our school and college lives.

“Remember when I had my first break-up?” she asked. We were only fourteen then, at a time when we were just discovering new body parts, and the idea of having a boyfriend was nothing more than owning a shiny new doll, and something inspired by chick flicks we watched on weekends. The word ‘dumping’ meant nothing more than a few tears and was soon forgotten over a large tub of icecream. As we grew older, the size of the tub grew proportionally smaller and was accompanied by increasingly expensive shopping sprees.

“Why do these things happen to me?” she said, looking up at the ceiling, as if all the Gods had specifically chosen to trouble her alone. I could have told her that she’d brought it onto herself but then she’d never listened to me. She could never stay single longer than a few months. I could not understand what she saw in the men she went out with, when it was plain to everyone else that they didn’t care for her more than they cared for their cars, and that they wanted only one thing from her.

“That’s not true. It’s not just about sex. I care about them and they care about me too,” she said, when I told her quite bluntly. I rolled my eyes. 

“This is men we are talking about. Words like ‘care’, ‘PMS’ and ‘commitment’ don’t figure in their dictionary,” I said. She looked at me and burst into tears again. I threw up my hands and fell back in my chair in frustration. 

Ok, I admit I didn’t have the guts to tell her to her face that she was being silly and immature and that she needed to get a grip. That was just me. If I had a house of my own, the name plate would probably read D-O-O-R-M-A-T. 

It took me another half an hour of male-bashing and another large scoop of ice cream to make her stop crying. By the time the bill arrived, she was calm enough to stop blowing her nose and even offered to pay the bill, which I gladly let her do, taking it as my fee for being her sounding board and counselor. For the seventh time. In my own foolish way, I felt nice for having helped her by being such a good friend and being so sympathetic.

We had just walked out of the restaurant when I remembered I’d left my car keys inside. I went back to get them. When I came out, she was standing there, talking to a guy. There was no trace of tears in her eyes and she was giving an ‘I’m-available’ pose- with one hand on her hip, her head slightly tilted and a sly smile on her face. He murmured something to her to which she gave a well-practiced husky laugh, and said, “Don’t be silly. I’m not that pretty!”

She turned to look at me and beamed as if the past one hour hadn’t happened at all. “He’s so cute, isn’t he?” she came up and whispered to me. Ignoring my stare, she said, “He’s just asked me if I could join him for a drive along the beach and I’ve said yes. What do you think?”

I looked from him to her and slapped myself three times. I walked to my car, shut the door and drove away, without looking back.