A Best Friend’s Love

June 29, 2005

“You know you’re secretly in love with Adam, Jules,” my friend Sandra informed me as we were sitting in a café on a Sunday morning enjoying breakfast. Adam Cole was my best friend, the guy I had known ever since I was five and fighting over crayons in kindergarten.

“Ha. Yeah right. If I were, then why would I call him to cry over the latest breakup with Mark?” I retorted before taking a bite of my cherished pancakes. Adam was the best friend while Mark was the on-and-off-again boyfriend. I thought the distinction was pretty clear. But apparently Sandra couldn’t tell the difference like I could.

“That’s why you’re secretly in love with him! What else could explain the fact that you guys have to talk to each other at least once each day, know the other’s deepest darkest secret, and have your parents already planning the wedding? Never mind the fact that you always seem to object to each and every girlfriend he’s ever has...” Sandra railed off before pointing her fork at me and raising an eyebrow.

“For the first three things...it’s because we’re best friends and have known each other for thirteen years!”

“I don’t see my parents planning my wedding to Austin,” Sandra dryly answered with a shrug of the shoulders and a roll of the eyes.

“That’s because he’s your cousin!”

“You know what I mean.”

I ignored the last comment and instead concentrated on disproving Sandra’s idea...which she seemed to be hell-bent on proving.

“And I do not dislike every single one of Adam’s girlfriends.” It was true. I didn’t. They just didn’t meet the standards that I thought my best friend deserved. After all, he was charming, smart, witty and funny. He didn’t need someone like Alexandra who was too fake, or Justine who was clearly on the rebound, nor did he need someone like Renee who was so desperate to fit in and be liked. Then there was Kendra, who I actually did like, but she was a college junior. “I liked Kendra.”

“That’s because you knew it wouldn’t last!” Sandra objected. “She was a college junior who was bound to find some other guy her age.”

“Why am I even arguing over this with you? I am not in love with my best friend,” I said with so much force that I began to wonder myself.

---

I still remember how Adam and my friendship came to be. We were placed in the same kindergarten class when we were five. Adam somehow managed to sit next to me that first day of school, at a large, round, wooden table whose surface was already damaged with wax crayons. I was desperately trying to draw my dog, a large brown and black German Shepard that was the love of my life. We fought over the black crayon which he needed to color the tires of his car, while I needed it to make my dog complete. It got so intense (for kindergarteners at least) that we were both put into time-out where somehow the friendship managed to grow.

We stayed friends despite all the obstacles that came our way...from my dad’s death at age twelve to the passing of his sister from a drunk driving accident when we were both sixteen. Adam stayed with me when my mom fell in love again and remarried despite all my objections the year I turned seventeen. He actually taught me to love my stepfather for who he was, and the happiness he had managed to bring to our lives. And those didn’t even add up to the little things.

Chicken and stars always found a way to me in a thermos whenever I was sick. Free copies of his mother’s newly published romance novels seemed to “accidentally” slip onto my desk where I would hole myself up in my room and read for hours. Our traditional birthday celebration consisted of a trip onto the golf course to watch the stars, complete with a pint of ice cream and a plate stocked high with brownies. Adam always provided a shoulder to cry on whenever I needed it and his offer to beat up the boys that made me cry never failed to make me laugh.

The idea that I was in love with my best friend was absurd, yet at the same time it made more sense than everything I had ever known in my entire life.

I picked up my phone and dialed a number that I had endlessly dialed so many times before. It was time to set the record straight...whether I really wanted to or not.

“Hello?” asked a voice that seemed groggy with sleep. The idea that it was incredibly late dawned on me, causing my head to swivel a bit in the direction of the digital clock on my nightstand. One thirty eight on a Monday morning. It didn’t matter. This couldn’t wait. “Hello?” the voice asked again as it shot me back to attention.

“Mark? We need to talk.” And thus so began the long drawn out explanation to my boyfriend of why our relationship worked, but it couldn’t last any longer. I couldn’t tell him that I was in love with someone else...maybe because I still wasn’t sure of it. But deep down, I had an inkling that Mark already knew.

---

“Good morning, sleepy head,” Adam greeted me that same Monday morning as I trudged by him to get to my locker. I spun the lock, feeling well aware of the fact that I looked like shit, with my strawberry blonde hair casually pulled into a ponytail, faint circles under my eyes and sweat pants on. I was feeling refreshed though. After only two hours of sleep, I was feeling good about myself, knowing who I was and what demons I still had to face.

I was also excited about the fact that nothing jumped in my stomach the moment I saw Adam, no butterflies, no nerves, no nothing. We were best friends and that’s how I wanted it to stay. Nothing could replace the presence Adam had in my life, not even Sandra. We were close, but she didn’t know my history like the back of her hand. She couldn’t name everything that made me tick, nor the extensive list of my phobias, including knives. That was something Adam could do; after all, we had discovered them together throughout our years of growing up.

“Whatever,” I mumbled, pulling out my American Government book, which had its spine cracked, none from the imaginable number of hours I had spent reading it, but from the billions of papers I had stuck inside.

“How was breakfast with Sandra?” Adam asked, like he did every Monday. It was usually the only day we never saw each other as he always had hockey practice and I had brunches with Sandra before we both dove into the homework we failed to do the entire weekend. There were times when we decided to get together to finish our work, but it always resulted in disaster. Adam and I got sidetracked easily...talking about whatever miscellaneous things that captured our attention so much more than calculus.

“The usual,” I answered, trying to be vague for a reason. Usually, under normal circumstances, I gave him all the dirt I had scooped up from Sandra, who made it a point in life to know the comings and goings of everyone in high school. I always pretended to not care, but it was interesting, a life away from the mundane goings of my own existence. But today wasn’t the day I wanted to share my discoveries...they were too personal and too embarrassing because all the interesting things Sandra and I had discussed the day before had to do with the fact that I was in love with my best friend.

“Good,” Adam said, his attention distracted. I followed his gaze down the hallway and saw that it landed on Darlene Wood, a gorgeous cheerleader with a mane of sparkling blonde hair and bright blue eyes. This time I sighed as the feeling I had been so worried about at the beginning of the morning appeared. It was a jealousy that struck my very core, nothing like what I felt when a girl looked at Mark. It was nothing like that at all.

As I was too busy bemoaning over the fact that Adam was staring at another girl, Mark swooped up by my side and grabbed my attention with a little touch on the shoulder.

“Hey,” I greeted, still not too sure on how I was suppose to approach the matter.

“Hey Jules.”

“What is wrong with you two?” Adam questioned, his gaze drifting away from Darlene and to the two of us. “Under normal circumstances, you two would be making out like crazy against the lockers right now.”

I chose to look away as Mark opened and closed his mouth, deciding that it would be my place to alert Adam to the fact that we were no longer together anymore. Mark leaned in and placed a kiss on my cheek, before whispering a soft “Goodbye” and walking away. Ignoring Adam’s questioning glances, I turned on my feet and headed down the hall for my government class with Adam chasing me down the hall telling me to wait.

---

Six months later, the first weekend after graduation, Adam and I chose to sit on the golf course, looking into the sky despite the fact that none of our birthdays were even close on the calendar.

“What are we going to do next year?” I wondered, looking up at the night sky and trying to determine what was a star and what was the light of an airplane.

“What we always do. Survive,” Adam replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. We were both going away to college, two thousand miles away from each other as he was going to Washington and I was going to Illinois. It hadn’t been an easy decision to make, but our lives had come to the point where we had to learn how to live without each other despite still being best friends. He had a scholarship to go play football (even though hockey was his first love) and I had a scholarship to go and prove my academic smarts.

“Jules?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“No...I really love you.”

“I know. I do too.” And with that, we turned to silence and watched the stars instead. Adam and I had a love that spread beyond friendship, beyond the surface of things. The moment he had told me that he loved me, I knew that I was no longer the only one carrying the burden of being secretly in love. In a way, we were made for each other...soul mates to be exact. But somehow something had gotten mixed up. We became best friends instead of lovers, a relationship to cherish more than anything else. I loved my best friend, but I wasn’t going to jeopardize what we had to satisfy an idea, and inclination. We had to make do with what we had, and if that was sacrificing our love for each other, then so be it.