Page 36 of Friend Zoned

I’m disappointed that he can’t call me now; but we’re just friends. I’m not about to turn clingy and have him reconsider our friendship.

Me: Sounds good. Headed to my parents’.

He doesn’t text back, and after a couple of trips to my car with gifts, I make the drive to Brooklyn to spend the day with my family.

Hours later, my parents’ house is full. Despite being an only child, I’ve never been lonely. Both of my parents come from large families, and I’m close to all my cousins.

There are people everywhere eating, talking, and laughing. Music plays in the background. My father catches my eye and winks at me. That’s his way of telling me he loves me. I don’t think he’s ever said the words. My parents don’t work that way, but I’ve learned that whenever he winks at me, that’s what he means. I wink back.

My mom shows her love through food and service. She’ll do any and everything for the people she loves. She might fuss the entire time, but she shows up. She was there for me through it all during my divorce. She covered most of the attorney’s fees thanks to those random bonuses she gets. When she learned I got the apartment, she said that was worth every penny just to stick it to that bonehead I married. She never liked Quintin, but she tolerated him. In fact, she never liked Camille either. She said Camille looked at me with envy and that I should not keep her as a friend. I ignored my mother, but she was right.

The signs had all been there, but I refused to see them. She wanted whatever I had, and I justified it. When she copied my clothes, I excused it by saying we had the same taste. When she grew her hair out so it could look like mine, I shrugged my shoulders. She was even envious of my parents. She joked that I was a spoiled princess who was put on a pedestal my entire life.

“One day,” she had said, “everything in your life will fall apart and you won’t know what to do because you’ve been coddled.” We were drinking and I blamed it on the alcohol. After she said it, she pretended it was a joke and started to laugh, but I didn’t find anything funny about it. That statement has always stayed with me. It was the first thing that came to mind when I found out about their deception.

The day I found out about Quintin and Camille was one of the worst in my life, but when I learned Leah knew, that was an even more bitter pill to swallow. In a way, Leah’s deception ran just as deep. She knew for months, kept it from me, and when I told her about their affair, she had the audacity to try to comfort me.

The only gift Quintin ever gave me was when he told me that Leah had known practically the entire time. He told me to get back at me for refusing to let him explain.

“You knew!” She drops the phone and puts a finger to her lips. I don’t care that she’s at work, working the front desk of a hotel. “How could you?” I hiss. She looks around wildly and gestures for me to follow her to the back of the hotel. She unlocks a door that says employees only, and I follow.

“Tell me how you knew my best friend was fucking my husband for ten months and didn’t tell me. You didn’t say a word! I came to you, Leah. I confided in you that my marriage was falling apart, and you looked me in the eyes and said nothing. Nothing but platitudes and empty words.”

She bites her bottom lip, and her eyes fill with tears. She takes a step closer to me, but I step back and hold both hands up.

“It wasn’t like that, Jeannie.”

“Did you know?” I ask. “Yes or no, Leah. I want the next word out of your mouth to be either yes or no.”

She looks around the small room like a cornered animal. I already know the answer from the crazed look in her eyes. Her tears start to fall freely, and she angrily swipes them away.

“Yes,” she croaks out.

“Wrong word,” I say and turn around, but she’s fast. She jumps in front of me and blocks the door.

“I didn’t know what to do. It’s not like I approved of it. I told her she was wrong and that was a shitty thing to do. I didn’t—”

“Shut up!” I yell, stunning her. Her eyes widen and her mouth opens. She swallows the lump in her throat. “Shut up! You looked at me in the face for ten months and never once mentioned you knew that my husband was fucking my friend.”

“I’m sorry!” she yells. “I’m sorry, but it’s not up to me to fix your marriage.” I step back as if she just slapped me. She must realize what she said. She quickly grabs my hands. “I didn’t know what to do, Jeannie. Imagine if you were me. Imagine—”

I yank my hands away from her. My need to hit her is so strong that I shove them in my pockets.

“I wouldn’t have looked you in your face and offered you useless platitudes. I would have told you. I would have loved and respected you enough not to make a fool of you. I would have been a god damn human being, you bitch.”

“Jeannie, wait,” she says when I open the door and walk away. She runs behind me, but my long angry strides are no match for her. “Jeannie!”

I walk out the front door of the hotel. My tears come fast, blurring my vision so much that I bump into a woman on the sidewalk.

“Are you okay, honey?” she asks. I don’t answer. I keep walking, determined to never look back.

“Jeannie,” my cousin Erica whispers in my ear. She waves a hand in my face to get my attention. She’s only a week younger than I am, and we grew up more like sisters than cousins. “You won’t believe this shit.” She snatches my arm and pulls me away, but there are people everywhere. She takes me to the bathroom and closes the door.

“What?” I whisper.

“Leah is here.” Just as the words leave her mouth, there’s a pounding on the bathroom door. I open it, and my nine-year-old little cousin runs in. I take Erica’s hand and walk briskly to the front door. If my mother knows Leah is here, all hell is about to break loose, and it won’t be good for Leah. She thinks my mother is the sweet woman she’s known since she was eighteen. She has no idea of the mama bear that lives inside of her. “Outside,” Erica says. “She just texted me.”

“Why the fuck does she have your phone number?” I ask.

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