one last thing

oh yeah...before, i go, here's today's dirty laundry. i think i know who'll never be speaking to me again....

Like We’re Strangers
By Robert

Evan leaned over the railing and caught my eye, motioning to me with one hand and holding a vodka and cranberry in the other. I made my way across the dance floor and looked up at him, feeling the monotonous thud of the speaker against my legs. It was the two-year anniversary of our breakup, a messy, teary ordeal that happened over the phone while I was at my parents’ house in Oklahoma; I’d walked halfway down the block, unable to stop pacing, snot and tears freezing on my face. In the two years that followed, though, we’d formed a kind of rocky friendship, one charged with blame and hurt and sexual tension. He was fiery, unpredictable, Latin to the core. And of course this made him irresistible to me.

He leaned over and shouted into my ear. “You and Adam are going to be great together,” he told me. “But I never want to talk to you again.” I was shocked: I barely even knew Adam; I’d met him when he and Evan dated but hadn’t hung out with him since they broke up. We’d been talking that night but I had no intention of taking him home, much less giving up Evan’s friendship for him. I tried to stammer a response, but he was already walking away with the studied, self-assured swagger that had drawn me to him in the first place.

I’d never been faced with a situation like this: my ex-boyfriend was blessing, backhandedly, a relationship that I wasn’t even in. The seed had been planted, though, and I took Adam home with me that night, the chemicals in my bloodstream making my decision easier. I left for Connecticut early the next morning and Adam walked me to the train station. I was surprised when he told me I should call him when I got home. This man I hardly knew, this New Years’ Eve trick, one in a string of men I was sure I’d never talk to again, was asking me out on a proper date. I told him I’d call.

Was it worth losing Evan’s friendship to see what happened with Adam? Even if I never saw him again, was my friendship with Evan over? If, in the cold light of day and without the aide of six stout drinks, Adam and I found out that we had nothing in common, was it worth the risk? I decided to call Adam when I got home from Connecticut; we moved in together the next August. Even now that we’ve broken up and he’s moved away, I’ve always said the same thing: I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for the time we spent together. Not money, not power. And not Evan.

Why, then, can’t I shake the feeling that I betrayed him? Why do I still get butterflies when I see him on the street or at the bar? And why does it still shock me when he walks past me like we’re strangers? Even though I get so mad, I can’t help but feel like he’s the one that’s right; that I’m the bad guy after all.

I was sitting at lunch today with Adam, who’s visiting this week, and he said that he’d run into an ex of mine in Chicago. “Just tell me you didn’t sleep with him,” I said. “Even if you did. I just couldn’t deal with it.” I’d feel so jealous of both of them, so left out, like I wasn’t good enough for either of them but they were good enough for each other.

“Of course we didn’t,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Ok, good,” I said.

Then I thought of Evan. That sick feeling in the pit of my stomach I got thinking about Adam and my ex, that jealousy mixed with hurt and anger, is what I inflicted on him for a year and a half. I held Adam’s hand at the bar, threw housewarming parties with him to celebrate the life we’d started together. And somehow I expected him to just get over it, to be the bigger person.

Now I see, though, there are some things for which I can’t be forgiven, some decisions I’ve made in my life that can’t be taken back. Would I trade the time I had with Adam, any of the memories of quiet content, the jokes that only the two of us knew? I wouldn’t; nor can I have it both ways. When I’m faced with something like this, something that seems completely unfixable, I like to think to myself, Will this matter in ten years? With the small betrayals, the words spoken in haste, the answer is always no. But something tells me that this is different.

I don’t expect Evan to ever talk to me again, nor do I blame him for ignoring me. Sometimes people hurt each other, sometimes they make mistakes. And sometimes they’re forgiven. And so I move forward, having lost one friend to gain another.

But maybe one day I’ll have both.