The phone rings and clicks. I hear Lynn’s voice coming from the speaker. It’s weird, it’s been at least two or three years since we’ve actually spoken. “Hello?” she says, clearly confused to be getting a phone call from me. At least she answered.
“Hey,” I say, my voice cracking because I’m weak as hell. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t know who to call. Kat moved away, and I just don’t really know who to talk to.” I say, unsure if I should continue.
“Yeah, it’s cool. Are you okay?” She asks. Her voice sounds the same, like we are 17 again, drinking Four Loko’s in the back of the school, not 23 and jaded by the terrible decisions we’ve made.
“He fucking cheated on me dude. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Everyone fucking hates me for dating him to begin with, and I just need someone to talk to.” I say, trying to keep my voice even.
“I know.” She says. “Do you want to meet somewhere?”
I don’t say anything at first. Of course she knows. People sure had a way of making sure everyone in town knew every part of our relationship. I guess it’s what I get for inadvertently falling in love with someone’s boyfriend. I guess all of this is what I get.
“Top of the hill?” I say, referring to our old smoking spot in the town we grew up in. “30 minutes?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you there.” She says, and hangs up.
I smoke at least five cigarettes on my way over there, playing my memories over and over again:
Alex, my cheater boyfriend, asking me if I was coming home. Me, deciding to stay at my parents instead of our apartment because we have been fighting over everything lately, and I’m tired of it. So, I tell him that I won’t be home, but that we could talk about things later on during the week.
I text him after work, and he doesn’t respond. A few hours go by, and still nothing. My heart starts accelerating, and I have a terrible feeling in my stomach. I play it cool at my parents, but once everyone goes to bed, I feel the inexplicable sensation that something is wrong.
I drive home at 3 am, and as soon as I enter the hallway to the building, I know something is clearly not right. I hear people fucking, and I am 100% positive that one of those people is Alex. I walk to the door to our apartment, and I can hear every movement, every grunt, and every moan from a woman that is clearly not me.
I wish I could say that I walked in, and called him out. That I ripped him from her arms, and beat the shit out of him. Instead, I just went back to my car and cried and drove around all night. I come back to the apartment to watch her leave at 6 am. I confront Alex. Scream, yell, curse, grab his phone and get the mystery woman’s number.
He begins to get angry and yells at me that I’m fucking crazy. That I deserve this. That I am no good for anyone, and that’s why he fucked her.
I leave.
I smoke pot until I finally call Lynn. 27 hours awake now.
At the top of the hill, I park my car and wait for Lynn to get there. I roll another blunt and begin to spark it when she finally gets there, 10 minutes late. Of course. She gets out of her car and walks toward the bench overlooking the bay. She’s wearing black pants, a black shirt, and black make-up. Nothing much has changed about the way she looks except that now she has tattoos, and somehow has became more angelic in appearance. Her beauty has always stunned me, even though I’ve known her for close to eight years at this point.
“Smoke?” I say to her, handing her the blunt when she sits down next to me. She shakes her head. Okay, that’s new.
“Nah, I don’t really smoke anymore. How are you doing?” She asks, looking at me closely.
“Well, not great.” I begin to tell her about what happened the night before, how our relationship had been on the rocks for months, how I confronted the woman and asked her how long she had been seeing him. How the woman was shocked to find out that I exist. I told her how Alex had been cheating on me with this woman for months, and that the woman had actually started moving stuff into our apartment, and that Alex somehow managed to keep it all from me and her.
She sighed and cursed at all the right places, clearly angry at Alex. She grew up with him too, after all. She told me how they had talked a few months ago, and that all he did was talk shit about me. Like he wasn’t the one that pursued me after I told him countless times that we should not date. She mentioned how he had been badmouthing me for weeks, and that he had been talking to his baby mama about the fact that he had been seeing other women behind my back.
My heart fucking explodes like a can of soda that’s been shaken. I don’t know how to feel. Everything about this is terrible. The fact that he did it, the fact that I saw it, the fact that I thought he would treat me differently. Then, a sudden feeling of rage towards Lynn begins to manifest as well. If she knew this months ago, why didn’t she tell me?
Her and I suddenly stopped being friends three years ago. One day we were friends getting drunk and smoking weed, and then she just fucking ghosts me. No word, no text, no call. Nothing. I try reaching out to her a ton at first, but after I hear that she’s hanging out with everyone but me, I get the message. I stop trying to figure out why, and I move on. Even though that happened, we have been through so much together. We have seen each other through the worst. She couldn’t pay me this courtesy?
I keep smoking. Lynn doesn’t say anything. I think she can tell what I’m thinking. She always can. “Well, fuck.” I say, unsure of what to say or how to feel. I become aware of how tired I am, how empty I feel. “How are you?” I ask her.
She begins to talk to me about her relationship, and all of its problems. She tells me about her family, and about her struggles. She tells me that she’s trying to be a better person, and that she’s trying to amend for her wrongs in order to move forward in life.
“Lucia?” She says, her voice shaking. Weird for her to use my full name.
I finally turn to look at her in the eyes. Her bright blue eyes are filled with tears, and are starting to get red even though she isn’t smoking.
“Yeah?” I respond.
“I need to tell you something.” She says, her voice now shakier.
“Okay,” I say, completely unsure that I can handle anymore.
“I fucked James.” She states, her voice a little steadier. Her eyes trying to read me.
“I know.” I say looking back into her eyes. “He told me.”
James is my ex-guy, not really boyfriend, but guy who had me at the palm of his hand from the ages of 16-21. He’s also the first boy to ever ask me out in sixth grade. James had told me about this though, on my twenty first birthday, when he decided to appear uninvited. We made out behind the house, and then he stopped and decided to tell me that we could never be together because he’s terrible, and fucked Lynn.
Seems like a great time for Lynn to remind me about this.
“Yeah, but I don’t think you understand Lucy. It wasn’t just once.” She says, pausing to put her hand on my knee. What the actual fuck. The way James told me, he made it seem like it was a one time thing. “We fucked for like a year. Lucy, he even tried to get back with you while we were still fucking. Then when you went back to him, we kept fucking.” She says.
I’m not really sure why she’s telling me all of this right now, but I’m so god damn tired and sad that I can’t even summon the strength to get her to stop. Lynn begins to map out all the different times they hooked up, how those times coincided with the same times he was trying to fuck me. How he told her all the same lines he told me, and how she had honestly fallen in love with him. She told me how she cheated on her boyfriend with James for a year, and how James made it a point to brag about double dipping between best friends to anyone who would listen. She tells me how all of this fucked with her, and that he’s the reason she abandoned our friendship.
By this point, I’ve smoked the blunt and another three cigarettes. I can’t breathe. Lynn just keeps talking about how she just wanted to tell me because she’s been bearing this weight on her chest for years, and that she can’t move on in her life with that weight bringing her down.
Now, I’m fucking furious. I’m furious at James for doing this to me, even though we have known each other since grade school. I’m furious that Lynn decided that this would be a great time to tell me all of this information. I’m pissed at the sheer selfishness that she is exhibiting by trying to clear her karmic debt at a time like this.
I’m fucking mortified at the way that these men in my life have treated me, and how I always seem to fall in love with people who are willing to hurt me. I’m depressed at how many people decided to stop being my friend when I started dating Alex. I’m basking in the information that Lynn is revealing, and this knowledge that I am so much more alone than I ever realize. I am so broken, so weak, so empty.
“Okay, Lynn.” I say suddenly, a little too loudly. “Thanks for telling me. I hope things go well for you, and this helps you move on. I’ll see you around.” I say to her, cutting her off from saying anymore. She looks flustered, unsure of what to do.
I walk away. I get in my car. I have nowhere to go. I drive back to Alex.