This time, we actually spent some quality time together.
The upstairs bathroom was occupied when I went to use it, so I waited. After a few minutes, it was my friend who opened the door, fanning his face and apologising.
"You probably don't want to go in there for awhile."
"Pfft, that's fine," I chuckle. I still had to go, but I could hold it for his sake.
"What're you playing?"
I showed him the Sims on my phone.
One of my guys, Adrien, was napping, so I had Ansel out socialising. I let my friend click "Flirty introduction" to Vicki. We watched Ansel and Vicki interact, "whispering sweet nothings," "professing attraction," and "advancing amorously." Hovering over my shoulder as we stand at the top of the stairs, his laugh tickles my ear while we cultivate a relationship for a bunch of ones and zeroes.
"Okay, the interaction is over. What story should they tell? You pick," I say.
"Hmm." He mulls over it like it's an incredibly important decision. "Soul mates," he concludes.
"Epic." I let him click that story path, and Ansel and Vicki go off on some dialogue.
A little girl clambers up the stairs asking for the bathroom. He and I share a glance before he directs her toward the door, then gives me a look that says "Let's go."
So we scramble downstairs, giggling like the idiots we are, running out the back door to start a game of poker in the shed.
✩✩✩
I can't tell you how many people lit up when I showed up to church that Sunday. Their faces when I passed, the warmth in every "Welcome home!", the joy in their shoulder pats. It seems I was well missed.
I step through the worship hall doors and spot him quickly; he's one of the handful of people wearing a purple tshirt, making him easy to pick out from the clumps of fellowshippers. Almost immediately after my eyes land on him does his own gaze meet mine. His whole face lights up, and he makes a beeline through the crowd towards me. Setting his coffee on the floor, leaving me no time to do the same, I'm nearly tackled with the best hug he's ever given me. My coffee sloshes around, splashing on his back.
"Agh, I'm sorry!"
"Pfft, don't worry about it. I get plenty of coffee spilled on me all the time," he says. "Plus I don't mind the smell, y'know."
"Mm yes." Coffee is definitely a good thing to smell like.
"I'm just glad you're home." He holds me at arm's length for a breath, hovering close and beaming brightly.
You might be thinking this feels like a rom-com Step One to a friends-to-lovers arc. But my life isn't a rom-com, is it?
"Yeah," I sigh. "It's good to be home."
✫✫✫
"How is it with your boyfriend, by the way? I just really haven't talked with you in a hot minute and I want to know how life's been," she says.
"Well," I start sheepishly, as I have every other time this question's asked of me. "We broke things off—"
"And I'm so glad you did!" he pipes in.
I had no idea he was even listening. I had tried to lower my voice, but I guess he was standing right next to us. My stomach fluttered annoyingly.
"Excuse you," I grunt. "He's still my friend, he just kinda ... disappeared."
"He's been the same person for six years," he butts in again. "I'm glad you don't have that influence in your life anymore."
What the hell. "Um, that's not true." He doesn't even hear me; someone else calls across the courtyard and he turns to yell his answer. I kinda can't. With him ... or with myself; these feelings I'm feeling.
Barf.
"But yeah," she reels it back in. "You need closure, I get that."
"Oh I do have closure." And I do. "I just..." I'm scared. "As his friend, I want to know that he's okay, y'know?"
"Yeah," they both sigh; her in agreement, him with an eyeroll on his breath.
I am very close to punching him in his stupid mouth. That stupid, stupid mouth of his. Lord help me.
"Anyways. It's all good, honestly. It's for the best; we weren't the best match, and you live, you learn." I shrug off the subject and attempt a redirect.
"Now, tell me about your man," I ask.
Redirect successful, and I'm genuinely happy at how well things are going for her. Focusing as best I can on the words spilling in an adorably incoherent manner from her mouth, I quash the myriad of emotions threatening to escape my own.
He has no right to speak of him like that. He has no right to say these things in front of me. He has no right. No. Right.
Absolutely no right to give me hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, after all these years, after I've finally gotten over that dreadful one-sided crush... He has no right to creep back into that part of my heart like this.
He has no right to fall for me now.
✬✬✬
The first. Always been one of my very best friends. Sometimes I feel like I toss around the term "best friend" willy nilly, but that's because there are so many people close to me for incredibly different reasons. But him, he's one of the originals. He's got a place just a smidge more special than the others, a dear time capsule of mine.
The second, though, he's barely made it to my inner circle. He can be a prick sometimes but he's always got a good time around him, at least in my eyes. We've spent so much time together in this short handful of years, he's close as a brother, or honestly more so. That's the type of relationship I cherish, with all the shared adventures and memories and laughter under our belts.
And the third (spoken of by the second), I've actually had a romantic relationship with. And I love him in such an intimate way that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is about him that attracts me. We're a lot closer emotionally, and certainly more comfortable with physical closeness. That's the other type of relationship I cherish, that kind of unspoken connection. But I feel so distant right now, like he's shut the door to his life on me.
My issue is that I can't say I love one more than the others, because I love the three in very different ways. They each mean the world to me, but it feels like they're not even the same planet. And here I am, watching their orbits with longing and heartache and confusion.
Whatever am I to do?
✩✫✬