by Flatman, NJ
“No,” I smiled at him. “I’d rather be here anyway. Besides, we’ve already started the movie and the beer. Colby understands, right Colb?”
“Sure,” she answered, her face tight and mouth barely moving. “I understand.”
As I saw her walk toward the kitchen I motioned to Spencer to give me just a minute and I followed her.
“Hey,” I called to her just before she turned to open the apartment door. “You’re cool with this right?”
“Do I have a choice Avery?” she snapped.
“Are you really mad?”
“Should I be? Because my best friend bailed on me? She finally agreed to go and he shows up with beer and a love story and she just forgets about it.”
“Colby come on,” I urged. “I spend every day with you.”
“Never doing what I want,” she snapped again. “Never doing anything that I want to do.”
“So what? Because I don’t like the bar I’m a horrible friend?” I asked.
“No Ave,” she replied. “Because the minute he walked in you forgot you’d even promised me makes you a horrible friend.”
“It wasn’t a promise,” I reminded her. “You were pushing me.”
“Well, I wont push anymore.”
“Colby stop,” I reached out for her and she pulled away from me. “Are you really going to make me choose?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t have to Avery. You already did. You always do.”
“You wanted me to find a man,” I was getting frustrated. “You pushed me to be with him.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I did. I just didn’t realize that he’d also take my place.”
With that she opened the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Out Avery,” she turned and walked through the doorway, pausing before she pulled it closed behind her. “Like I planned.”
Sliding back into my spot beside Spencer, I felt a blend of guilt and anger with Colby. How could she be that way? Did she not see that he made me happy?
“Everything okay babe?” he asked, placing his arm around my shoulders.
My heart filled with delight at the term of endearment.
“Yes,” I lied. “It’s fine.”
“You could have went,” he told me, picking up the remote to start the movie. “I would have understood.”
“I’m where I want to be,” I said honestly, curling up into his armpit and leaning my head on him. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
Chapter 5
“Of course I can’t!” Colby shrieked at the mere mention of the possibility. “It’s next fucking week and we’ve already paid for the damned thing!”
“Okay,” anything to stop her. The panic would head into full blown meltdown and I wasn’t sure I could handle it. Not at that moment. Not the way I felt. As if she cared how I felt. “I just thought maybe we could reschedule.”
“How the hell do we reschedule Avery? When do you propose we do this? How can we plan it?” her eyes glazed over as she glared at me. “He’ll come back. Then he will leave again. Rinse and repeat.”
“Colby,” I pleaded, not wanting to have that argument. “Don’t.”
“It’s true,” reaching for a slice of pizza, she refused to look at me. “Always happens. How many times has he done it now?”
I felt the edge of the knife sinking into my gut. She was stabbing me with my own pain. I wanted to collapse. I felt my abdomen clench to fight off the pain and my knees tremble as I attempted not to break down in my own apartment.
“Stop,” begging wasn’t normally in my nature, but it seemed like she couldn’t see what this conversation was doing to me. “I can’t….”
I went back and forth with how I felt about Colby. She was my best friend and she was reacting out of hurt. Slinging words at me that would hurt me just as badly. But at the same time, as my best friend she should have cared about what she was doing to me.
Why would a friend say something like that? It was as if she took my own despair, carved it into a weapon and drove it into the depths of my aching soul. It was still new. Tender. Raw. And she was digging it open, not caring about what would pour out.
“Can’t what Ave?” The tone of her voice matched the look on her face. Irritated. Condescending. Vindictive. “ Eat? Sleep? Function?” Colby began to tick off the things that were causing me problems. “Keep your promises? Answer your friends’ calls and texts?” She also named the ways in which I’d failed. Myself. Her. Everyone.
We had always had a friendship made of utter honesty even when it hurt and this was one of those nights that it burned, leaving me bruised and bleeding on the inside . My delicate mind, however, was trying to block it out. I grabbed the bottle of rum she’d brought and poured myself a glass, chugging it down as if it were no more than a wine cooler.
I wanted to make the sharp jabs of reality stop. I’d managed to get through several days by living inside of a fog. A self-induced haze that had kept life automated, but not painful. Yet she sat on my sofa and twisted the dagger that Spencer had already drove into me.
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” it was the first time I’d uttered the words out loud and I felt the tears well up in my eyes. Gazing at the floor, I tried to thwart them from dripping across my cheeks and taking mascara with them. I knew it was true. But knowing and admitting are immeasurably different.
“He always does,” there was no hiding the infuriation of her voice. “Over and over Ave,” she continued. “He hurts you.” Again she dug the blade inside. “As if you are nothing and your feelings just do not matter.”
Her final comment was a blow to my self-image that I didn’t want. There was still a part of me that assumed that underneath everything, Spencer had cherished me. I had been significant to him. I was somebody worthy of his love.
Colby stole that from me with her words. She had told me, without saying it directly, that the man I’d adored had viewed me as disposable. He’d never treasured my heart or my feelings. She’d told me that, in his eyes, I had in no way been essential enough to love.
“It’s different,” a fact I’d still not wanted to confess even to myself. “I can sense it.”
“Enough with the special bond shit,” she snapped, reaching out and shoving a slice of pizza into my face. “Eat.”
I detested the way she blew me off. I despised when she laughed at me. I wanted to scream when she spoke as if the connection I’d shared with Spencer was all in my head.
I shook my head, refusing to take the food.
“Fucking eat,” she ordered. “And let’s plan this trip. Because the very last thing you need to do is park yourself in this shithole and cry.” Her arm waved around the apartment.
“I like this shithole,” the words came out between sniffles and made her laugh, but it was as fake as my functioning at that moment was. She was trying to still the waters, probably a last ditch attempt on her part to reclaim a friendship with someone she could barely put up with. It wasn’t new to me. I’d lost a lot of acquaintances since I’d met Spencer. They didn’t identify with us. Maybe they just didn’t want to be bothered. “I can’t eat,” I whispered, hoping she’d refrain from shoving food into my face.
“Suit yourself,” her shoulders scrunched and her brow creased. “But we are going next week if I have to lug your ass there.”
I nodded agreement, not because I wanted to go but because I didn’t want to lose a friend right then and I assumed I would. It made me irate, but the throbbing ache inside of me was so physically powerful that I could scarcely feel the anger. She’d brought out every emotion I held deep and I needed them to go away.
Something that had never made sense to me was a lack of compassion. How could someone who vowed to love me want to utter things that would defeat my spirit? Did Colby not comprehend that this was how friendships dissolved? Did she care? Or was I supposed to allow that it was in my best interest and disregard what she’d just done.
The problem was that she’d never believed it. She’d never thought that what we had was real. His inability to honor a commitment seemed to her like he was just trying to control me and hurt me. I could almost understand her perspective.
She didn’t know him the way I did. He’d bared his heart to me. He’d told me his reasons. And every time he’d come back, he’d told me why he left and that he couldn’t live without me. A fact I had known for a long time.
Spencer wasn’t okay. There were things in his life that he’d shared with very few. Those things made it hard for him to believe in love. When he got too close to me, those moments when he realized he was getting in far enough to get truly hurt, he’d leave. Never quite realizing that he was already there. Or that he was only doing to me what had already been done to him.
Colby didn’t get that. So I’d always told myself that one day she would. That one day she’d be able to see what we had and know it was real. That everyone would understand the connection that I shared with him. They would see how he felt. They would know I wasn’t just clutching to something that wasn’t real. Someday I’d be right and everyone would feel stupid for laughing at me.
But now I thought maybe not. Reality set in once again.
Since I was pretty sure he wasn’t coming back, I was confident that no one would know. Which again drove that sharp edge into my core. Another reminder that my life wasn’t ever going to be the same.
I forced my way through the discussion, feigning enthusiasm in all the right places. Her plans were very comprehensive, a fact I’d expected months ago but could barely handle at that time. The preceding three days had basically been spent figuring out how to endure hour to hour and she had an itinerary for every waking second we spent at the resort.
When the outing had been scheduled, anticipation had ruled the choices. A popular resort on the coast. Activities for any mindset. People of all walks of life. The plan had been to have the benefit of it all.
I remembered the sparkle in both of our eyes. Finally, the trip of our lifetime. We’d wanted it since high school.
It seemed a remote memory now. I sat there, listening and smiling, knowing that I’d trade every bit of it for Spencer to come back. I’d give up the trip. I’d give up my dream. I’d probably even give up Colby. Just to have him come back to me. I’d most likely have traded it just to hear from him.
It was entirely too self-seeking. That’s what it was. I was a selfish, horrible friend. My brain knew that. Colby didn’t warrant that. She’d never have traded me for a man. Still, I knew it was right. If given one attempt at a split second with Spencer, I’d trade Colby and our trip and any value she had left for me.
The guilt of those feelings made me smile when she discussed the things we’d do. It made me ooh and ahh over the pictures she showed me. It even made me agree to go shopping for clothes the following day, which meant not only people, but pricey store kind of people. One of my least favorite things.
But it wasn’t remorse that made me endlessly chug drinks while she quibbled over whether to buy white pants or not. It wasn’t duty to my best friend to enjoy an evening with her.
It was that crack that was located somewhere below my ribcage. The one that was huge and empty and void of any sensation. The one that Colby had dug into first, and then poured salt across.
I drank to stop it from spreading. I drank to mask the memories and the overpowering need to crumple. I drank to deaden myself. To numb the pain. To make the remainder of the night endurable.
Every glass was an endeavor to make myself feel intact. To bring peace into my mind. To forget what I didn’t want to know. I pushed rum down my throat because somehow I believed it would make me okay.
But as I lie in my bed that night, my body quaking once again from irrepressible sobs, I wasn’t convinced that I was ever going to be able to fill that hole. I was positive that I couldn’t anesthetize anything. It would sit there, lingering and waiting for a calm moment. Hiding in the deep recesses of my mind, prepared to jump out at me without any forewarning and remind me that my existence no longer had optimism. It would let me know that I no longer had a purpose. That I was never going to be all right again.
Chapter 6
When I first heard the shouting from my room, I thought it was the TV. I had been sleeping when the raised voices woke me up, so it had taken me a few minutes to process that it was real and in my apartment.
It took me a few minutes more to understand that it was Colby and Spencer. I tried for a few minutes to make out what they were saying and why they were even arguing. For that matter, I wanted to know why Spencer was even there.
I hadn’t seen or heard from him in a couple of days. We’d went to his best friend’s house over the previous weekend and they’d spent most of the night playing cards. I’d just sat back and watched, having a few drinks and getting angrier by the second that he was ignoring me.
Sometimes I hated when we hung out with friends. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to have them or me to have them. I did. But when we were together and they were there; it was different. A lot. He was different. I was different.
I knew it was normal. Guys would be guys. Girls would be girls. But I didn’t like it. I loved the Spencer that I spent time with. The one that rubbed my back and held my hand and asked me about my day at work. I loved the Spencer that smiled at me and talked about his favorite football team and the burrito he’d had for dinner.
I didn’t like the Spencer that pretended I wasn’t significant. He said that wasn’t the case, but it was how I felt. It wasn’t that I minded sharing him. I just didn’t like that typical male attitude that he got from time to time. It wasn’t him. Not my Spencer. And no matter how many times I saw it, I couldn’t seem to adjust to it.
After a couple of hours I’d made him take me home and I’d spent the entire drive to my place arguing with him. At the point I’d gotten out of the car and stumbled inside, I was pissed enough to not care if I saw him again or not. Of course when I’d sobered up, I had instantly regretted it and sent him an apology that he’d quickly accepted.
But his lack of communication or presence had left me wondering if maybe he was still angry. Mostly it’d left me feeling empty and alone. I was used to him being there in some capacity and found I’d come to almost depend on it.
That’s why I was surprised to hear him down the hall, early in the morning, yelling with my best friend. Since I couldn’t make out any of the words they were saying, I decided to get up and make my way towards them.
“Don’t you have your own man to drive crazy?” Spencer shouted, causing me to smile just a tad at the insult.
I felt guilty that I found the statement funny, but I did. Colby was notorious for being so high maintenance that so far no man had been able to tolerate her for very long.
“So you are her man now?” she asked, changing the direction of the conversation away from herself. “Did something change since the weekend?”
I heard Spencer huff and I knew that he was angry. He seldom got angry, but when he did it would get ugly. I wanted to stop it, but I was afraid to interrupt them.
“That’s why you can’t keep one Colby,” He shot at her. “You don’t believe a man can be with you and have anything else in his life.”
“What I don’t believe Spencer,” she drug out his name and made it sound evil, “is that you should insist your girl spend the evening with you instead of doing what she was going to do so that you can sit her on a sofa and ignore her for poker with your buddy.”
“Funny that you are angrier about this than Avery is,” he retorted. “Or maybe that’s not anger and is jealousy instead.”
“Jealous? What the hell would I be jealous of?”
“That she chose to spend the evening with me and not
at the movies with you for starters,” he answered. “That she has me is another good reason for your jealousy. That I don’t want you.”
“You honestly think I’d want you?” she laughed. “Why? Because you are attractive?”
I walked towards the living room, but stopped in the doorway. I didn’t want to catch their attention because I was curious. I couldn’t have fathomed what would come next, the way it would make me feel, or the chain of events that it would cause.
His anger soared. I could see it. His normally smiling face showed nothing but contempt. His jawline was rigid and his eyes cold and dark. This was not something I was accustomed to. These are the same eyes that would light up when he looked at me and smiled. This is the same face that would grin in a way that could melt a heart.
I looked at something else. I had to. I couldn’t see the anger on his face anymore. I couldn’t fathom a look that would break me more than this one. I couldn’t be the one to look at him and see it. She didn’t seem to care. So I let it go. And I kept my mouth shut. I wish he had done the same thing.
I couldn’t possibly have envisioned the words that would escape his lips. As I heard them, I felt my heart sink. Everything that I had wrapped my world around came crashing around me. I was broken. I was damaged. I was not sure I would heal.
I can see how it played it from a logical standpoint. In that moment, however, nothing was logical. My brain had shut down the first time he smiled and it had yet to reengage. My eyes darted back and forth as the heated conversation became even more explosive.
“Because it drives you crazy that Avery has something that you don’t. That she was the one I picked at that stupid little party.” He snapped at her. “Because you look at me and see a guy that is supposed to want the high maintenance pretty girl. I’m not supposed to want someone like Avery.”
The words were his concoction of venom aimed at my friend and meant to destroy her argument the way some snakes can destroy a life. Unfortunately, they did not have the desired effect. Instead the last three words he spat out sank deep into my soul and created a divide.
