To Love A Friend

by Jana David

Darcy

  I stayed in my room all evening. After I left Allie to get settled, I tried to lose myself in the huge pile of work that had been accumulating over the last few weeks, but I just couldn't concentrate.

  I knew I was in trouble when I saw her sitting there on that bench in the train station.

  She was beautiful, just like she always had been. It was the kind of beautiful that came from mother nature. The one that makeup and hair-styling only destroyed. Her dark-brown hair fell loosely around her shoulders And her eyes...

  They were the perfect Bambi eyes, huge and a rich golden colour. My grandmother always used to say Allie could sell invisible robes to the Emperor, just by batting her pretty eyes. And I believed she was right about that.

  These eyes looked at me, first with shock, and then something I couldn't quite name. I drank it all in, the sight of her, all the unspoken words that hovered between us, and in that moment, I felt like everything just fell into place. After all these years, my feelings for her hadn't changed a bit. The thought both thrilled me and left me scared shitless.

  Now I sat here, pretending to work, but actually trying my best not to get out my phone and stare at that picture of her.

  I wondered if she would be taking a shower. The thought of her naked just a few feet away from me was one I tried very hard not to imagine in too much detail.

  I'd been in situations like this before—or so I tried to tell myself. It was technically true, I had been. There had been loads of occasions when I fancied a woman who was already taken. You mourn your losses, and then you move on. She wasn't the only bird in the sky. There were plenty more.

  But I already knew that it wouldn't be that easy. She was Allie, after all.

  I thought about her coming over, hanging out with us, us having sleepovers...

  I really needed to get a grip.

  Seriously, who was I? Some love-hungry teenager? But it wasn't that and I knew it. These feelings weren't just brought on by a bout of hormones. They had been there, just beneath the surface, for years.

  At around eight p.m., Ian knocked on my door and asked if I wanted some pizza. She was still out there. I could hear her angel-like laugh coming from the living room, so I politely declined. I'd just eat later. Right now, I couldn't face her. Especially not with Ian in the room.

  Close to midnight, I finally heard the door to Ian's room shut. I waited another ten minutes before I sneaked out to the kitchen to get something to eat. I felt like a burglar raiding my own home. I found some food in the fridge, my hungry stomach loudly thanking me, and then I headed back upstairs.

  “Going somewhere?”

  I almost dropped the plate of leftover pizza I'd taken from the carton in the fridge. Sam was leaning against the bathroom door, arms crossed in front of his chest.

  I looked at him, he looked at me, and I had the terrifying feeling that he understood. That he understood exactly why I was sneaking around in the middle of the night when I could have joined them for dinner hours earlier.

  “That's my pizza, by the way”, Sam said.

  “It is?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Can I have some?” It was almost comical, and I would have laughed had Sam not looked at me with those steely eyes.

  “Please, help yourself”, he said dryly. “Oh wait, you already did.”

  “I'll buy you a beer next time we go out”, I said.

  He just nodded. “Whatever. We'll both forget about it anyway.”

  He was probably right.

  “So, Allie...you knew her, too, right?” Sam asked, obviously not willing to let me off the hook just yet.

  “Yeah.”

  “You were friends with her as well?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you haven't seen each other in years?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it weird for you to have her here?” Sometimes, Sam just didn't know when to let it be.

  “Not really”, I lied.

  “You sure? Because you seem to go to great length to avoid being around her. And Ian said...”

  I shot him a dark look, hoping he'd get the message. “Are we done here now?” I sounded rude. I was hungry, it had been a long day, and I was feeling pretty shitty.

  “Yes, we are.” Sam seemed to pick up on my foul mood. “Next time, though, you should join us for dinner. Eating late at night supposedly makes you fat. My mother learned that at this diet and exercise course she is taking”, Sam said.

  “I'll keep that in mind”, I grumbled.

  I could have sworn I saw a smirk on Sam's face as he turned and walked towards his room.

  Back in my room, I turned his words over in my head again and again.

  It was weird having her back. And the worst part was that I didn't really have her back. Ian did. He was the one in whose bed she was sleeping—a thought I unsuccessfully tried to ban from my mind. He was the one who got to talk with her, laugh with her, share pizza with her.

  I dug my headphones out of my bag, and turned up the music while I was eating. I didn't want to overhear something happening on the other side of the wall I didn't care to hear. Ever.

  The pizza tasted like cardboard. I finished it anyway, because the motion of eating kept me somewhat occupied, at least.

  My thoughts were so jumbled up, there was no way I was going to be able to sleep. I lay down on my bed, facing the ceiling, and closed my eyes. In my mind, I went back to that day five years ago.

  It was summer, the best time of the year, and Ian and I were at his house, trying out the new swimming pool his parents had just gotten him for his birthday. It was one of those big inflatable ones. Not an Olympic-size pool, but good enough for the two of us.

  We were working on building a diving board for it, but that project wasn't going too well.

  That was when Ian suddenly turned to me and said, “You know, I think we need to talk about Allie.”

  At first I didn't know what he meant.

  “Why, is something wrong with her?” I asked, thinking there was something going on with her mother again.

  But Ian shook his head. “No, it's not about her, really. More about us.”

  I still had no clue what he was talking about. And he was avoiding making eye-contact with me, giving me the impression he was hiding something.

  “What are you on about?” I asked him, splashing some cold water from the pool in his direction. He didn't even flinch when it hit him in the chest.

  “Alright, so I overheard my mum and your mum talking the other day. They were talking about us. You, me, and Allie, and then my mum said something like, 'our friendship wouldn't survive if we both started taking an interest in Allie'.” His expression was so serious, one might've thought he was standing by someone's deathbed.

  I gestured between the two of us. “You mean our friendship?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And our mums were talking, like, fancy her, want to date her, that kind of interest?”

  Ian shrugged. “I guess so. I mean, she is pretty. I certainly have noticed that.” He laughed, but it came out a little unsure.

  Allie was pretty. I wasn't blind to it either. But I also wasn't stupid. We were fourteen. I was happy if I scored a kiss. I wasn't thinking about love and the happily ever after. But Ian wasn't going to change the topic any time soon. He always had to talk everything through, have a specific plan, while I tended to just...wing it most of the time.

  “We need to have a plan, though”, Ian said as if reading my thoughts. “Just in case.” I could just about stop myself from rolling my eyes at him. “Can we say for certain that we won't let anything get in the way of our friendship?” he asked. “And I mean literally anything. Natural disasters, zombie apocalypse or girls.”

  “Yes”, I immediately answered. “Are you crazy? No girl is ever going to come between us. We're brothers. Although, when it comes to a zombie apocalypse, should you get infected, I reserve the right to end your suffering and shoot you. There is no c
ure anyway. I'll make it quick and painless.”

  Ian nodded, seemingly relieved. “Right. We're brothers.” But the worried expression was still there on his face.

  So I said, “Let's just make a pact, make it official, like they always do in movies. No woman is ever going to come between us. We won't let it happen. And if there is a girl we're both interested in, she's off limits. There are plenty of other girls to choose from. And where Allie is concerned, she's off limits anyway, because she's our friend.”

  He contemplated that for a second.

  “Deal.” Ian extended a hand to me, and I took it. “Deal”, I echoed.

  “But, wait a minute, who says I'd be the one to get infected by zombies first? I'm way better at planning things than you are. It's probably a hundred times more likely that you'd end up a zombie before me. So, can I shoot you if that happens?” Ian asked, the subject of Allie already forgotten.

  “Sure”, I said, “if you could bear living without me.”

  “Better alone than with a brain-eating lunatic who doesn't even know the meaning of the word 'friend'”, Ian countered.

  “True”, I conceded, and we went back to figuring out a way to built that stupid diving board.

  As it turned out, I would be the first one to break the pact when I kissed Allie five month later.

  But that was another story, and it didn't matter anyway, because only weeks after our kiss, she was gone.

  Just like that. Disappeared without a word. Her family just packed their things in the middle of the night and left. It made for some very juicy gossip around the neighbourhood, but I didn't care.

  All I cared about was Allie and why the hell she would just leave us without a word. Us, her two best friends. Did we mean so little to her?

  Not a word for four years. And then, one day, Ian told me how he'd seen her again. It was a week before we were supposed to start uni. Ian had just come home from two month of doing his good deed for mother nature.

  We had one week of freedom and no responsibilities before adult life caught up with us. And we were going to make the most of it.

  I had convinced Ian to come to Ibiza with me. We were going to have as much fun as possible, meet tan, bikini-clad women, get drunk before noon, go bungee jumping and other crazy things.

  I could tell straight away that Ian's heart wasn't in it, though. Lying on the beach on our first day, I was checking out the ladies, while Ian was checking his phone.

  When I asked him if something was wrong, he denied it, but that night, after a few beers, he finally confided in me and told me why he had no interest in the bartenders massive tits.

  When he told me, I went through several emotions all at once. I was shocked to hear her name again after all these years, hurt that he hadn't told me sooner, but most of all I felt betrayed.

  I wasn't sure Ian even remembered that pact we made, but I did. It was a stupid pact made between two friends who didn't really know what they were talking about yet. So why did it hurt so much to hear they were together?

  I told him I was happy for him, and I totally understood why he couldn't be my partner in crime on this trip, but that sinking feeling inside stayed with me for the remainder of our holiday.

  Ian hadn't really done anything wrong. And if anything, I had been the one to break the pact in the first place. Allie had been our friend back then, but time can let even the best of friends become strangers. So did the pact even still apply? We'd all changed and moved on, hadn't we?

  Except, Allie still remained a sore subject between the two of us. Whenever Ian went to visit her, he never really told me about it afterwards. I never saw any pictures, she never came here. It was almost as if he was hiding her from me. It wasn't just Ian, though. Sometimes, I also wondered why Al hadn't been in contact with me yet. She talked to Ian every day, but couldn't even ask him for my number, or just for him to put me on the phone with her for five minutes? Had I done something wrong?

  Fat forward to today, when I'd met her at the train station. Yes there had been a little bit of initial awkwardness, but she hadn't acted angry towards me. She'd been friendly and nice, and generally the Allie I remembered. So where did we stand?

  I didn't know, but I figured I wasn't going to find any answers by staring at the ceiling. So I switched off the lights, praying I would get some sleep that night.

  The next day, Ian caught up with me as I was grabbing a quick breakfast before heading out. I didn't really have anywhere specific to go, but I needed to get out of the house, whatever the cost.

  “Darce, wait up a minute.” Ian was blocking the doorway with his tall frame, looking at me as if I was about to make a run for it. Maybe I was. Damn, he could read me so well.

  “Look”, he said. “I know you're still mad at Allie for leaving without a word all these years ago.” No, that was definitely not the case. Was that what he thought?

  “But you don't have to hide in your room all the time. Allie is going to be around, and I don't want the two most important people in my life to hate each other.” Again, he was totally missing the point. Maybe he wasn't that good at reading me after all. It wasn't that I didn't want Allie around that was a problem. I wanted her around more than I should. And that was my problem.

  But I didn't tell Ian this. I couldn't tell him. Instead I simply said, “I'll try.”

  Ian visibly relaxed. “Great, mate. So we'll see you tonight for dinner?”

  “Dinner?”

  “Yeah, I thought it would be a good opportunity for the tree of us to get together and talk. I'll buy the food.”

  “Sure”, I agreed.

  I couldn't wait, and at the same time I wished I didn't have to go.