Page 7 of Love Triangle
“Oh, you’ve moved around a lot? How come?” he asks as he takes a seat at the table nearest to the door.
I shuffle my feet nervously for a moment before taking the seat across from him. I’m going to avoid questions about me as long as I can. Don’t really want to explain the whole being a freak thing right now.
“It’s complicated. Plus, we’re here about you, not me. I want you to tell me what’s going on so you can stop being a Gloomy Gus in my restaurant.”Nice save.
He lowers his eyes as he wrings his hands, silent for a moment. His face looks older now, no longer that boy.
“It’s just Cliff and I, we have a history. He hates me. There’s nothing I can do to fix it. When he decides something is one way then it’s that way forever. He’s decided he can’t stand me and that’s that. It sucks.”
“Did you do something truly unforgivable?Why is he so angry?” I cock my head to the side wondering what could have caused such a rift between them. Trig seems like a genuinely sweet guy, and I can’t imagine him doing anything malicious to Cliff, or anyone.
“To him I did. But it was an accident. I never meant to hurt him. He was my best friend. I would have done anything for him. I thought he felt the same, but then one day he just dropped me and never took me back.”
We’re quiet while Trig closes his eyes, taking a few deep breaths. When he’s calm and his eyes are open again, I continue to speak.
“Will you tell me what happened? Maybe you need to talk about it.” Plus, I admit I’m a curious cat, but that’s beside the point.
“Sure, I guess. It’s a little long but I’ll do it.”
“Okay,” I say with a nod. “Bring it on.”
Chapter Ten – Trig
Ten years ago, Cliff and I shared a room in college. I was finishing my degree in mathematics, and he was working on his in geology. We were both at the top of the class and feeling good about our futures.
I knew I was eventually going to move back to Isawsa Falls. This place needed a good math teacher and I wanted to be it. Cliff, on the other hand, wanted out. He knew his limits and what he wanted to do. His life here had been awful, frankly, and having to come home was his nightmare. He knew ideally, he wanted to work for a museum, and he wanted to work for a prestigious one.
I was sad to see him go, as I told him many times, but we agreed to meet wherever he went. Because we were best friends. Really. We never spent more than a day or two apart since we were little kids. I knew everything about him and I knew why he wanted out.
Cliff hated Isawsa Falls because his parents were here. His parents were terrible people. They never understood that Cliff is just a little different from most people. His brain operates differently, and traditional ways of doing things won’t always work for him. When he couldn’t fit their mold, they were very…well, they were not good to young Cliff. He escaped to my house as often as he could where he could line things up the way he liked, eat the things he liked, move and speak in the way that was comfortable for him. And I liked it. I liked him and just being near him. And he accepted my differences, even if they drove him nuts sometimes.
Like, when we were little, he spent hours making a perfectly symmetrical sandcastle and lined up all the seashells he found by smallest to largest around it. It was really cool. But I got distracted by an awesome eagle flying overhead. When I went running over excitedly to show him, I looked up too far, fell backward, and crushed his castle. But he forgave me because we still went to the beach together and played instead of him being stuck with his mom and dad.
And he hated how messy my room was. But I would just get so overwhelmed by tasks, back before I learned coping mechanisms. A stack of laundry was like Mount Everest to me. He would come over and have to clean up with a frustrated look on his face every time before he felt comfortable in my room, and I felt bad, but I was grateful he did it. And I didn’t want to wait hours to clean it before telling him he could come over, anyway.
The point is, he knew I was a mess, and I knew he liked things just so. Yet we worked out as friends because we just liked each other as people. I always defended him and took care of him when no one else would. He always picked me up when I fell and we accepted each other’s faults. I thought what we had would outlast anything.
Well, Cliff had a chance to work in the geology department of the most prestigious museum in the country. It was his real chance to escape from this place and live the life he’d planned for himself. Gosh, I was so proud of him and so excited for him.
He had to download a special program for the museum’s security to even apply for the position, so he did and was working on the application. It was nearly done but needed a few more tweaks, according to him. He was almost guaranteed the position as long as he got the application in by the end of that week.
But then, yeah, I screwed everything up.
He told me not to touch the computer (it was our shared computer; neither of us were well off) while he was out visiting with a mutual friend. I didn’t plan on it, but then I heard there was a limited time event in an online game I liked to play.
I don’t know why I decided to play it instead of listening to Cliff. It was just some dumb spur of the moment decision. Back then I was a lot worse about making thoughtless choices, I guess. Anyway, I booted up the game and started to play.
I don’t know how, but somehow the program that had Cliff’s application opened as well. The keys I was pressing to move and shoot in the game started appearing as their corresponding letters in the text boxes of the application. Instead of a perfectly worded form, it was now filled with many combinations of mostly W,A,S,D, and Q. And that was before it hit send.
I got off the game before Cliff came home and barely noticed that the other program was open. I just closed it without thinking anything of it. The next day, Cliff spent the morning at school and when he came home in the late afternoon, he checked his personal emails. In that inbox he found one rejection letter from a prestigious museum telling him he wasn’t funny and to not bother them again.
Cliff was panicking like I’ve never seen him. He walked in circles, pulling at his hair. He even flapped his hands in this upset way like he hadn’t since we were little, making this terrible almost screeching noise. All the time asking “What the fuck? What happened? I don’t understand!”
I didn’t understand at first either. Until I pulled up the sent files and looked at the image. Then I remembered closing out the app after I closed my game. I put two and two together and…yeah.
He stared at me for a long time after I told him. He was stone still and so quiet I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing or not. But he did speak after a while.
“I want you to leave. I am asking you to move out.”
