Friends Without Benefits
“Why? Because he found somebody else? It’s been, what, fifteen years?”
“But that shouldn’t matter, not if you really love someone. It shouldn’t matter how much time has passed.”
“You know he is allowed to move on with his life. If she is good people then you should be happy for him.”
“She is good people and I don’t have any problem with him moving on with his life. It’s just that, growing up, he used to tell me about how he met my mom, how he knew at first sight that she was the one for him and that there was never going to be anybody else. They were childhood sweethearts and it just feels like, now, he’s marrying somebody else . . .? He loves her? You see what I mean?”
I heard Nico take a deep breath, sensed the hesitation in his voice. “Can I tell you a story?”
“Is it already story time?”
“Smartass. I should send you to bed with no story.”
“No, no. Please do. And you can picture me, chin resting neatly on the back of my folded fingers, listening attentively, gazing at you adoringly as you tell me a story.”
“I will picture you that way. It’s actually how I typically picture you whenever we speak on the phone. Also, you’re usually naked.”
“Shut up and tell the story already.”
“Here we go,” He briefly chuckled at my mixed message, cleared his throat, then began. “Once upon a time, there was a boy who fell in love with a girl when he was very young.”
My heart skipped a beat, and my stomach tumbled. “Nico . . .”
“Just listen. This might be very enlightening. So, he fell in love with this girl and he didn’t know how to talk to her, because she was better than him at everything, smart, funny, pretty—”
“Nico!”
“Let me finish!”
“Okay, fine, but if you name her Elizabart and him Nici then I’m hanging up the phone.”
“I will call him boy A and her girl A.”
“Wait, is there more than one girl?”
“Yes. There is more than one girl.”
“I’m not so sure I want to hear this story.”
“Would you please just listen?”
I frowned at the thought of more than one girl, but tried to hide my displeasure when I responded. “Fine.”
“Fine. Good. So, boy A, girl A, boy in love with girl A, doesn’t know how to talk to her so he teases her.”
“Got it.”
“Time goes by. She falls in love with boy B. Therefore, boy A became very upset with girl A.”
“Why didn’t boy A get upset with boy B?” This was a question that had been bothering me. I wondered, since his reveal in my room in Iowa some weeks ago, why I shouldered the brunt of his wicked behavior. Why had Garrett been exempt?
“Well, because boy A really liked boy B. Boy B was hard not to like, he was a good person, also funny, really nice. A good guy, you know? They got along really well. Anyway, boy A wasn’t upset with boy B. Boy A was upset with girl A because girl A chose boy B over boy A.”
“First of all, girl A didn’t choose boy B over boy A. As I’ve pointed out previously in the bathroom of your family’s restaurant, girl A didn’t know boy A was even a letter.”
Nico man-sighed. “Can I finish the story?”
“And secondly, this is confusing and it’s sounding a lot like a math problem. Please tell me boy A doesn’t leave Boston on a train traveling at sixty miles per hour.”
“Very funny. You are a natural comedian, did you know that? You should quit your day job and try the stand-up circuit.”
“No, I could never do what you do. I can’t get up in front of people like that.”
“What are you talking about? You stood up in front of our entire high school reunion and—wait, stop trying to distract me from the story. Where was I? Oh yes, boy A was very mean to girl A and did everything he could to make girl A miserable, and it worked. But it didn’t make boy A happy, all it did was make him miserable too. And so he would take his frustration out, part of it, by sleeping around, going out with girls S through Z.”
“Whoa. That’s a lot of girls.”
“And then, well, things happened and we skip forward in our story a few years. Boy A lost touch with girl A and he thought for a while that she was going to be it. That he was never going to find anyone else and that he was just going to be with girls S through Z and he knew that they were just placeholders, stand-ins for girl A . . . But then, one day, he met someone else. We’ll call her girl B.”
He paused, and I became aware that I was gripping my sheet, my hands were sweaty, and I couldn’t speak because my throat was tight with some unknown yet terribly unpleasant feeling. I wanted to tell him to stop talking, that I didn’t want to hear any more of the story, but I was paralyzed, fascinated.
I also needed a moment to process the fact that Nico had dated other people over the last eleven years.
Of course he has dated other people over the last eleven years. It’s been eleven years, fruitcake!
“Boy A met girl B and fell in love with her.”
I gritted my teeth. The issue wasn’t so much that he’d dated other people, the issue was that Nico had dated other people and liked them. He’d loved girl B!
“How is that possible?” I blurted, my voice a pitch or two higher than usual, ripe with complaint. “How is that possible if you were still in love with me?”
“Elizabeth, it is possible to love more than one person at the same time. That is a possible thing.”
I didn’t want to be yelling, but I was. “Well maybe boy A wasn’t ever really in love with girl A or maybe he doesn’t know what love is or, maybe boy A’s feelings for girl A were shallow and it isn’t really love.”
“No, Elizabeth. Love is not one single definable thing, it doesn’t work the same way for everyone. Over these last eleven years I watched my father die of lung cancer, my niece orphaned when her parents were killed in a freak accident. Maybe boy A realized that you have to find happiness when and where you can, that falling in love isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. Because, if it is a once in a lifetime thing, then he was doomed to be miserable at seventeen. Maybe boy A was tired of being miserable.” He didn’t sound upset. He didn’t even sound defensive. But he did sound somewhat exasperated.
I meditated on what he said, what he admitted.
When Nico’s father died I’d sent the family a sympathy card. He’d been a larger-than-life figure—just like Nico. He’d been funny like Nico too, and bighearted.
Of course he would move on—or try to. It was what normal people did. I’d systematically rejected him for months after I left. Of course he believed the door was closed on us, I’d all but slammed it shut in his face.
The thought of Nico going through life unloved caused me a measure of physical pain. Despite my preconceived and conflicted feelings on the matter, I almost found myself rooting for girl B.
“Back to the story. Boy A fell in love with girl B. And they were very happy, for a long time.”
“How long?”
“For three years, actually.”
Three years . . . “What happened?”
He sighed. Somehow I knew his eyes were closed. “She was there before he became famous. She supported him through all the trials and errors. Before he had an HBO special, before he had a show. When things started heating up, when he went from small time to big time, she couldn’t deal with the attention. She didn’t like having her picture taken and she didn’t like the lack of privacy . . . She asked him to give it up.”
I swallowed, waited for him to continue. When he didn’t I prompted him with a question to which I already knew the answer. “So did he?”
“No. He didn’t.”
Then I asked a question to which I didn’t know whether I wanted to know the answer. “And did he regret it? Picking fame over her?”
“He didn’t pick the fame over her. He chose his career, his dreams over her. But, yes, for a time. Yes he did regret it for awhile. He missed her.”
I felt a little sick to my stomach and realized that I was seething, I was upset. I was angry with this faceless girl B for issuing him ultimatums and leaving him when he is so obviously amazing.
What a feckless twit . . . It was at this point I realized I was truly mentally disturbed.
Regardless, I forced myself to ask the next obvious question. “So why not just give it up and go get her?”
“First of all, she is now married and lives in Long Island with her two kids and engineer husband. And, secondly, there were other reasons why they split. The fame was really the last straw. He doesn’t regret his choice anymore but he has learned from it..”
“You think you would still be with her if you hadn’t become famous?” I picked at a thread on my comforter and braced myself for his answer.
“No. Ultimately we wanted something different than each other. But that doesn’t mean I loved her any less. It just means we weren’t compatible in the long term.”
“Then why did you regret picking your career over her? If it was going to end anyway.”
“Because I realized it doesn’t mean anything—all the fame, the money, the recognition, the accolades—it doesn’t mean anything to me without family, without having someone to share it with. It’s not really success.”