Day 36: Tales Of Quiet Days And Demanding Emails From Exes

Day 36 Of How To Move On From A Man — 1LD

Mar 13

Today is a public holiday. For some reason in Australia, most of our public holidays seem to happen in the first few months of the year. When you back that onto Christmas, New Year’s, and general January lethargy, you find the start of the year very unproductive.

Despite this, James decided he didn’t want to work today.

I tried to find out why, but he wouldn’t tell me. I think he has a date. No, wait, I swear he has a date.

He spent all of Saturday’s winery tour messaging someone. Maybe this might be the date where he breaks his dating cone of silence and actually tells me about this guy.

Or I will just ask him. Yeah, I will do that tomorrow.

Waking up on a Monday morning and not having James already at the desk before me felt weird. But I couldn’t ignore the fact I liked it. Quite a lot.

With all the chaos going on in my life, a little silence would help it. Silence. Peace. No dramas. It would be nice and this time could be all mine.

But then I got an email.

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A cold, unrelenting email, made stark against the public holiday lack of junk email marketing. I recognised the email address despite thinking I had flagged it as automatic trash.

It was from the offices of “Douglas Gallo”. I remembered these emails, the ones that were actually from his secretary Angela. They used to come to me as a reminder for lunch bookings or flights Douglas had put under his name.

They were formal considering they were technically coming from my boyfriend. But he had his system and I respected it.

Right now, though, it sucked.

I opened the email and read the content.

“Dear Andie, I was wondering if I could organise a time to attend your premise to retrieve my possessions. If you could place them in a bag or a box and keep them safe, I would be sincerely grateful. Kind regards, Douglas.”

I re-read the sign-off again. No, it wasn’t from his assistant. It sounded like it was written by her, though. It was from him.

And he wanted his things back, huh?

Scanning around my home, I couldn’t think of anything I had of his.

At one point he lent me his Mercedes but that was when my car was in the shop. Yet, as I started to wander around I noticed one of his watches on top of my dresser, next to a collection of cufflinks and a tie with a mustard stain on it.

And then there was my Chanel bag, the only designer piece I owned that he gave me. It was actually for his sister but she rejected it, so he regifted it to me.

I scanned the email again and deleted it. It was easier to pretend this request didn’t exist.

Wiser? No. But at this stage of my life, I was taking ‘easier’ over being wise.