Page 21 of Betting on the Best Friend
So the plan is to give her light bulb moments. Illumination. Be the Thomas Edison of love. No, that guy wasn’t a good dude. I’ll be . . .
I sift through my memories from a senior trip to Houston where we saw this art show that was all about light. Turrell. That was the artist. He made a giant sphere, and the viewer was rolledinside it on a slab. When the lights came on, it was so bright you started to see things that weren’t there, like floating rainbows and sharp shapes. Except it was you seeing the biological structure of your own eye.
Mind-blowing.
I’m going to be the Turrell of Ruby’s eye. Mind?
Heart.
And because Ruby gave each matchmaking scheme for her roommates a ridiculous—and yet unironic—nickname, I’m giving this plan one of my own.
Operation Thunderstruck is about to go down.
Chapter Eight
Charlie
I haven’t felt likeI was up against a clock before, but Ruby’s roommates shoving her into the dating pool feels like it activated a timer. Can I get her to see me,chooseme, before she drifts into another “good enough” relationship?
How do I build a giant sphere and make Ruby see the inside of her own eyeballs?
The question preoccupies me for the rest of my shift after Ruby leaves. I need to research this. Real research, not reading or watching romcoms. This will take prowling subreddits and the “Modern Love” archives of theNew York Times. I need articles about romantic soulmates who started as friends. Psychological profiles. Primary sources. Podcasts.
There have to be patterns. If I can find them, maybe I can use them to trigger Ruby’s epiphany.
As soon I get home to my quiet apartment, I grab my laptop and start my research. I type,How do best friends fall in love?
I’m up way too late diving into stories about real people who fell in love with their best friends. It’s split pretty evenly between it being unrequited and working out with marriage and babies.I read for hours. I fall asleep reading them and wake up to discover I never made it under my covers and my laptop is dead. But my brain stayed busy because now it’s electric with ideas. I see the patterns.
I head for my sofa so I can plug in my laptop and use the coffee table as a desk. As soon as it reboots, I start a document labeled “Patterns.”
A major pattern in the successful stories is people believing they’re meant to be or they aren’t. And if you aren’t, there’s no changing that. Many of them express a sense of fate.
I didn’t believe in fate until Ruby dumped Niles, and I had the strongest sense of . . . inevitability? That I was watching pieces fall into place that had been put into play long before I saw them. It was no accident she’d been hired for my library branch, no accident we’ve built a strong friendship over three years. No accident that I’m here and ready for her when she finally became free.
I type almost as fast as I can think, adding more patterns. A big one is couples who become friends by proximity like as neighbors or coworkers and staying friends by choice. Check.
The next one is a sudden moment where everything changes. It’s most helpful to read those experiences from the person who figures it out second, about when and how the realization hits. By the time my stomach demands food, I have a plan on my screen.
Strategies for Turning a Friend into More
1. Spend a lot of time together
2. Create opportunities for her to see you as dateable
3. Stay safe but become less comfortable
4. Intentional connection, e.g. focused eye contact
5. Share intense sensory experiences, e.g. live music, adrenaline stuff
I print it out and study it while I make myself some scrambled eggs and toast.
In some of the cases I read, it took only a single, intense instant for epiphany to hit. For other people, it took a combination of things.
I’ll try anything and everything, but where do I need to start?
We already spend a lot of time together, so now I need her to see me as dateable. Maybe part of making Ruby see the inside of her own eyeballs is letting her see me through other people’s eyes. Okay, this analogy is falling apart, but the plan is coming together.
