I managed to put aching questions of my future out of my mind when I went to visit Jake. Jake, a long time friend and for all practical purposes, a body double of Collin Farrell—and a much better man with the ladies, I confess—was drinking on Saturday as always when I showed up with free beer. Free beer of course is the secret password for a stag night.
“David!” he bellowed, taking the free beer and welcoming me to his couch. “How are you, man? It’s been a while. I haven’t seen you since you got engaged.”
“Has it been that long?” I asked, relaxing on the couch and instantly laughing my pressures away. Jake’s laidback attitude to life always helped perk me up through the years.
“Yeah, Crystal’s got you on a short leash, man.”
“Nah, I’ve just been busy.”
“You still selling those vitamins?”
“Yeah. I got three new accounts this week, one of which is a major NFL football coach.”
“Awesome. Can I guess which one?”
“I can’t say, but you could probably guess which one. They’ve had a series of bad seasons over the last several years.”
“Say no more. Put me down for a shipment, will you? Need some Calcium, Vitamin D, Ginkgo biloba and Chocolate Thai.”
“Funny!” I said with a smirk. “I only sell legal vitamins, bruhhh!”
“So you’re really getting married, huh?” Jake asked, flipping on the TV and leaving it on a football game, Dallas versus Miami. “I got to be honest. I never pictured you as the marrying type.”
“Really? Why? You were always the perennial bachelor, not me.”
“Yeah well…Crystal, like okay…Crystal is great and all, don’t get me wrong. Don’t misunderstand this. She’s like really hot, actually. Totally out of your league.”
“I know,” I said with a smile. “She’s amazingly beautiful.”
“But I always pictured you with someone more…intellectual, I guess.”
“Owch…owch!”
“Yeah, that came out wrong. I take it back.”
“Damn, Crystal would kick your ass if she heard that.”
“I know, I know, I didn’t mean it that way. I meant more like…”
“I mean, Crystal went to college. The cheerleading thing is temporary, you know. She’s studying physics, she studies mathematics in her spare time…”
“I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant.”
“Well, it sounds like you were saying…”
“Look here’s what I MEANT. Okay, I’m just going to say it because what I said sounds so much worse. I meant, I always figured you’d marry someone…like Amelia.”
“What?”
“Well yeah, you know, a girl down to earth. Someone…down there on your physical level…boy, I better stop talking. I keep making it sound much worse.”
I laughed. “I don’t care, I’m just curious…why Amelia?” My heart was racing at the thought. No matter how I tried to grow up and put silly schoolgirl crushes out of my head, I always felt that flutter in my stomach when Amelia’s name came up. I felt the instinct to deny everything.
“I don’t know. The way you talked about her. The gleam in your eye. I figured you wanted someone to be friends with. Not some movie star or cheerleader…I mean any guy can get that. Girls that are all about looks are easy. That’s all I’m saying. I know, I’m making it sound much worse. Let’s just watch the game, shall we?”
Jake’s comment, while off the cuff, struck me as profound. I always imagined Crystal as the top of the mountain, someone that a guy like me had to try really hard to win. She was the cheerleader, physically perfect beauty that only rich and powerful men could get. The rest of my life would be devoted to keeping her satisfied, the goddess, thegreat beauty among all other women. So when Jake implied that she was beneath me somehow, it took me a while to get my head around the idea.
“Well…” I said cautiously. “We don’t really fall in love with our friends.” By now I was lying. I felt guilty about my amorous feelings for Amelia and now wanted to hide them at all costs. It was like I was back in school again and blushing because of someone’s taunting me, “David and Amelia sitting on a tree…”
But Jake wasn’t taunting me…he was just stating an observation. I couldn’t really take offense to someone speaking the uncomfortable truth.
“No, most guys don’t fall in love with their friends,” Jake said. “But you, I kinda figured you would. You seemed like the kind of guy who would marry his high school sweetheart. Now see, someone like me? I don’t want to marry my best friend. It’s too weird for me. But you, David, you’re a weird guy.”
I laughed. “All right Jake, that’s enough pep talk for a while.”
“No seriously, here’s what you do.”
“Do what about what?”
“Just hear me out. Okay, my gut tells me that you still have feelings for Amelia.”
I took a gulp and shook my head. I was definitely not fooling Jake.
“So here’s what you do. Go sleep with Amelia and then decide if you still like Crystal or if there’s some much greener grass waiting for you on the other side.”
“What? That’s terrible advice! I’m not going to have a one night stand with Amelia and risk losing our friendship.”
“Hmmm,” Jake said with a grin. “Interesting that your first instinct was to avoid hurting Amelia and not Crystal.”
“Well, both.”
“Right but you thought of one before the other.”
I opened my mouth, losing my thought in mid-sentence.
Damn he was right. I fought off my blush, which gave me away and made up some bullshit excuse about how that wasn’t true. But damn it, it was true.
Even if I wasn’t going to cheat, my mind was still putting more value on Amelia’s friendship than Crystal’s heart. What could that mean?
Was it possible that I loved Amelia more than Crystal? Or was Amelia just more important to me than my future wife? This didn’t feel right, any of it. I had to fix this. I had to do the right thing.
And the right thing was, is, and has always been…
Get over Amelia and marry the girl who loves you.