by Flatman, NJ
“Colby, why do you have to ruin the time we spend together?”
“Me? Why do I have to ruin it?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “We could have had a good day.”
“Right,” she commented. “Because Spencer isn’t available. God knows if he was around, you would have bailed.”
“I love him Colby. He loves me. You can’t change that. I think you know that. I think that’s what the problem here really is,” I was almost shouting with no regard for who might be looking. “You don’t want me to be happy with him. You don’t want me to love him and him to love me. But why Colby? Are you afraid he will take me away, or are you jealous?”
“What? Jealous? Why would I be jealous?”
“Because I have what you can’t find,” I glared at her.
“Are you fucking serious Avery?” the shock on her face definitely appeared genuine.
“Yes, I am,” I told her.
“First of all, I don’t want what you think you’ve found. Second, I would never be anything but happy for you if you did. And finally, I don’t for a second believe that any of it is real. It’s in your head,” she snapped, her face flushing darker with red than I’d ever seen it.
“Well, you have to accept it. I love him and he loves me. Deal with it. Or maybe you aren’t really that much of a friend.”
“So you’d throw us away because I don’t like him? And you say I’m not much of a friend?” She snapped. “I think I”ll skip the movie. Let’s just go home.”
“That’s fine with me!” I snapped, finally aware that several people were watching the scene unfold in the middle of the mall.
I followed her back through the mall and out to the car without saying a word. I was angry and I was hurt.
Not once on the drive home did either of us speak. I didn’t understand why she kept pushing things with me and Spencer. She’d promised that she was okay with it and would get along with him. She’d told me she would be happy for me.
It wasn’t like I’d skipped out on her on purpose. It just happened. Couldn’t I make a mistake without Spencer paying for it for the rest of his life?
The idea of spending the rest of my evening watching Colby pout and slam things wasn’t appealing. That is what made me ask her to drop me off at Spencer’s. It’d be far better to enjoy an evening with him than for us to end up fighting any further. Our friendship was barely hanging by a thread and too much of this at once would snap it.
“I probably won’t be home tonight,” I told her as I was getting out of the car.
“Of course not,” she snapped at me. “I don’t understand why you don’t live with Spencer.”
“Would you like me to move?” I asked, hurt by her words.
“I doubt he’d let you,” she laughed. “That’d be commitment.”
“I’m done for tonight,” I was just about to slam the door when I stopped and opened it back. “Grow up Colby!” I yelled. “It’s not a fucking competition.”
“No, it isn’t,” she agreed. A competition would assume that I had any chance of winning.”
“Oh my god,” I screamed, slamming the door and walking away.
I heard Colby drive away before she even made sure that I could get inside and it made my anger even worse than it was. What if I couldn’t get in? What if he wasn’t home? Spencer lived in a less than great neighborhood.
That made me think of Colby’s question about Canoe Bay. How did he afford it, especially considering how he lived? I wanted to ask him, but I didn’t know how to approach a subject like that. I didn’t really know how to approach a lot of subjects. Like why he never talked about family or when I would meet them. I didn’t want to offend or upset him, but Colby had made me realize there was a lot I didn’t know about Spencer.
I resented Colby for making me feel insecure with him. I trusted him and I loved him, but she was making me feel doubts. Why? I didn’t understand what the hell had happened to my best friend. For the first time in my life I’d found someone that made me happy and suddenly it had to be a competition. I didn’t get it.
Colby and I had been friends forever. The thought that she’d believe a guy would change that confused me. She didn’t seem to understand that she was the one pushing me away from her and I couldn’t get that point across. In her mind, I was choosing Spencer over her and she was dead set on hating him. Which meant also hating me.
We’d been through so much together. Happy times. Heartaches. We’d never had a problem like this and I couldn’t figure out how to solve it. I was used to the Colby that was there and supportive. Sometimes I’d needed support for stupid things and she’d always been there. But once I was happy she had to start acting like my life was a personal insult to her. My choices and my feelings seemed to a slap in the face of our friendship. At least in her mind.
It was almost as if she was making me choose. The problem was that I would choose him and I knew it. He’d never ask me to choose and that was the biggest reason that I’d never choose someone else over him. Of course there was also the fact that I loved him in a way I’d never loved anyone else. I couldn’t picture anything that would make me walk away from him of my own accord.
‘Bet you wouldn’t love him so much if he chose another girl’ Colby had thrown in my face while we were browsing the mall. It was another way of hitting me below the belt.
She was wrong. If Spencer was happy, I’d be happy for him. At least I thought I would. But I didn’t understand why my best friend wanted to make me feel doubt and worry like that.
“Everything okay Avery?” Spencer came to the door and was surprised to see me. I hadn’t called or text to let him know I was coming.
Suddenly I was filled with paranoia. What if she was right? If he was playing me then he might have company. If someone else was there then I’d be humiliated and shattered and left alone in the dark of the night. My heart raced as I tried to calm the beast roaring its ugly head.
The question was a simple one and I should have been able to just smile and nod before I went inside. But I couldn’t lie to him and the words wouldn’t come out. Instead I just began to cry and shake my head no.
“Oh God,” he cried out and took me into his arms. “Are you hurt?”
I could feel his heart racing and hear the panic in his voice. He was worried for me. I knew I had to relieve that. I was barely able to muffle the sound of a no and he began to pull me inside.
“Let’s get inside and comfortable and you can tell me all about it,” he offered, taking my hand and leading me through his door.
By the time he got me to the couch I was damn near hysterical. The tears wouldn’t stop and my chest was heaving from the sobs. I could barely catch my breath.
A quick glance at Spencer stopped it all as if it hadn’t started. One look into his eyes allowed me to see the fear and pain and that was enough to make me calm down. I never wanted to scare or hurt him.
“Avery,” he barely spoke. “You are scaring me babe.”
“I’m…okay…” I managed to get out between the few silent sobs that were left.
“I’m going to get us both something to drink,” he turned towards the kitchen. “Are you okay until I get back?”
I nodded and forced a smile so that he wouldn’t feel worse than he already did and watched as he walked away. It wasn’t all fake. Somehow being at Spencer’s apartment and with him helped me to relax a little. I felt comfortable and at home with him.
“Here,” he handed me a glass of water. “Drink a little and then tell me what is going on.”
I took a sip as he slid onto the sofa beside me. I tried not to show that I didn’t like it. City water was gross and nasty to me. I preferred filtered or bottled and had actually paid a lot for the filter on the faucet at my place.
“It’s Colby,” I sighed, feeling my shoulders slump as the pain overwhelmed me again.
“She still mad at you? I’m sorry babe. I really didn’t realize it was her birthday,” he put his arm
around me and pulled me into him.
“It’s not just that,” I admitted, trying to decide if I should talk to him about the truth or not.
The problem I had was that I didn’t want to make him feel bad. I didn’t want Spencer to believe that he was the cause of my problems with Colby. I was afraid he’d back off and possibly even leave. Plus, adding to the tension between them from his end didn’t seem like a good idea.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sincerely trying to be there for me. “Is it me?”
While I might not have thought telling him the honest situation was a good idea, I couldn’t lie to him. So I simply nodded and didn’t offer an explanation.
“I was afraid of that,” I saw his face drop. “I never meant for this….”
“No,” I interrupted. “Don’t say that. It’s not your fault.”
“She’s your best friend Avery,” he reminded me. “You guys have a long history. You can’t let that go over me.”
“I didn’t,” I argued. “She did. She’s the one that keeps saying shit.”
“I know,” he squeezed his arms around me. “I know it hurts. But she’s just hurt.”
“Why?” I cried. “What did I do to her?”
“You found someone else you enjoy spending time with. Colby is used to being the one with men. Lots of them,” he laughed at his comment. “She’s used to you always being there for her. Now you have other things to do and she’s lonely.”
“That’s not my fault,” my voice raised.
“I didn’t say it was,” he smiled at me. “But she’s not handling it well. That doesn’t mean let her go. It means hold her tighter.”
“She thinks you don’t love me,” I saw his face cloud with anger, but only for a moment. “She thinks you are playing games and I’m just dumb.”
Spencer didn’t speak for a few minutes. My guess was that he was trying to collect his thoughts in order to not make things worse than they already were.
“Well, she’s wrong,” the statement was simple. “I do love you. More than I want to. I’m not playing games. And most importantly, you are not dumb.”
“She says that you left and came back as part of the game,” I looked up into his eyes as he held me. “That you’ll leave again.”
What I needed most in that moment was for Spencer to assure me that he would never leave. I needed to hear him say that he’d be there and loving me forever.
“I hope not,” his words didn’t fulfill what I needed to hear.
“You hope?” I asked.
“It’s complicated Avery,” his body stiffened beneath me. “You know that.”
“You had a failed relationship,” I pulled away from him. “Welcome to adulthood. We all had them. Why does that make you run away?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” he replied.
“So tell me,” I sat back and looked at him. “Make me understand.”
“You don’t need my past drama tonight,” he shook his head. “You have enough of your own to handle.”
“I want to know,” I pleaded. “I want to know what makes you the guy I love.”
I heard him sigh heavily and I knew that he would give me what I asked for. He always did. I also knew that he didn’t want to or know how.
“Her name was Jamie,” he started. “I was eighteen when we met and my life was a mess.”
“Mine still is,” I whispered, causing him to slide back over towards me and put his arm around me.
“She was a few years older and at first I wasn’t really interested in her. Not like that. I wasn’t like I am now Avery,” he hesitated as if waiting for a response that he wasn’t going to get. “I wasn’t interested in anything but having fun and trying to keep from facing things.”
“What things?” I asked, surprised by that statement.
“That’s another conversation for another day,” he brushed me off and continued his story. “Honestly, I took her home in the hopes of a little fun.”
“You were using her?”
“We were going to use each other,” he admitted. “That’s how I saw it. But Jamie wasn’t like most of the girls I’d known. She was beautiful,” I felt myself flinch at the statement. “But she was very ….she wasn’t going to do anything with me randomly. So we ended up watching a movie and talking.”
“I see,” the idea of him sitting there doing the same things he did with me with another woman hurt me. I knew it was a typical activity, but I didn’t like to think of Spencer with anyone else.
“To me, she became a challenge. I wanted to prove I could get what I wanted from her. She swore I couldn’t.”
I tried to keep my breathing calm so that he didn’t realize the conversation was bothering me.
“Are you sure you want to hear this Avery?” he asked, squeezing me tighter.
“Yes,” I lied. I did and I didn’t.
“So I started spending time with her. The whole idea was that no one told Spencer Phillips no. I would win her over, fuck her and then adios.”
“But you fell in love with her?”
“Not at first,” he told me. “It took some time. But she had her own challenge. She was going to save me.”
“Save you from what?” I asked, but he ignored.
“So she started working on that end. Giving me more to live for than what I had been. Keeping me away from the people that were destroying me. She knew what I wanted, and she dangled it in front of me to help me find myself.”
“So you fell in love with her?”
“I did,” he admitted. “She changed me Avery. You have no idea what I was like. Where I was headed. The things I was doing. The pain I felt.”
He took a break and sipped on his water. I watched as he ran his hand through his dark hair and wished I could comfort him.
“She gave me a reason to live. She gave me hope,” he continued. “I fell in love with her. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to spend my life with her.”
“So you proposed?”
“It took some time. About a year and a half altogether from when we met.” He looked as though he were thinking of details. “We still hadn’t had sex. Our first time was the night I proposed. She was so happy.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Why’d she cheat on you?”
“It wasn’t quite like that,” he admitted, surprising me. “I did some things. I went backwards. I hurt her.”
“I don’t understand,” I pulled away from him again. “you said she left you for your best friend.”
“She did,” he assured me. “She did. I hurt them both. They were working together to try and figure out how to help me. But I wasn’t having any of it.”
“What did you need help with?”
“It’s in the past,” he replied shortly, refusing to elaborate. “There’s no need to focus on that.”
“Well it’s hard to understand,” I confessed. “I’m confused. If you loved her then why would you hurt her?”
“Because there are things in this world that you can’t help. There are things that even love can’t stop.”
“I don’t believe that,” I told him.
“Trust me,” he replied. “I was a person that would repeatedly self-destruct. And no matter how much I wanted to do better for her, I couldn’t.”
“So you were cheating?”
“No,” he told me, assuring me that wasn’t the problem. “I wasn’t cheating. I wanted no one but her.”
“Then I don’t….”
“And you won’t Avery,” he stopped me. “I prefer to leave that where it was.”
“Okay, so go on,” I was frustrated only hearing half of the story.
“She gave me an ultimatum,” he told me. “Change or lose her. I didn’t think she’d do it. She loved me. But they both did. Her and Jason, my best friend. They both told me that if I didn’t stop, they’d leave.”
“And they did?”
“It took them a while. They tried to hang in for me. Leaning on each other and s
pending their time helping each other through.”
“Oh,” suddenly it made sense.
“Right,” he nodded. “I didn’t think they’d go, so I didn’t change. They got so close that they fell in love.”
“Wow,” I shook my head. “That sounds like a bad movie.”
“She ended things and left town with him,” he looked down, shoulders slumping and body leaning forward. “They never even betrayed me. She ended things before they did anything. But I pushed them to do it. I made them leave and pushed them together. Me.”
“Well,” I tried to think of what to say. “It changed you, so that’s good.”
“No it didn’t,” he admitted. “It took another year.”
“Oh,” I looked down. “So then why are you worried that I will leave you? If she didn’t leave you until…”
“I’m not,” he corrected me. “I’m afraid that I will push you away. That I will fuck up and hurt you. I’m afraid that by loving you, I will destroy you. Jamie was never the same Avery. She started as an innocent and naïve woman. Someone that believed in love and its ability to conquer anything. When she left she was hardened to the world. She was skeptical. She even doubted Jason a little bit. Afraid he’d do the same.”
“Is that why you ended things? You were going to do whatever it is that makes you hurt people?”
“No,” he added. “I was taking you to my brother’s and I realized that I didn’t want this to be that way. I didn’t want you to be hurt. So I stopped before you were.”
“I don’t understand,” I spoke softly as he pulled my head onto his shoulder.
“Neither do I Avery,” he shared his own thoughts. “Neither do I.”
“Are you planning to leave again Spencer?” I asked, tears filling my eyes.
“No,” he told me. “But I’m me. And I always do what I don’t think I will. I’m a fuck-up. You deserve so much better.”
“I don’t want better. I want you.”
“And I’m trying. But for now, I’m here.”
For the rest of the night Spencer talked to me about Colby and how I shouldn’t let a friendship go for anything, not even love. He told me how important having someone like Colby was in life and he made me promise to talk to her and work it out.
