If Only

Story By StormDancer

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He doesn’t get why I’m mad. He knows I’m mad, of course, we’ve known each other for too long for him not to notice something like that. But he has no clue why. That’s not right. We usually can read each other’s minds, know exactly why they’re feeling what. He’s not supposed to have to wonder why I’m so pissed at him. There’s only one explanation. It’s because of her.

That much is obvious, it’s always because of her. Always, as in, since he found her. She’s the reason for everything that’s gone wrong between us. Not that anything really has, on the surface we’re just as close as ever. People still think that we must be lovers or something. But we can both feel the tension in the silences that used to be perfectly comfortable. That’s her, that tension. It has to be.

But he doesn’t get it! Either he can’t feel the tension, when I know, in the way best friends do, that he does and wonders at it, or he doesn’t care. Those are the only two hypotheses I can come up with, but there has to be more. Because the former isn’t true, and the latter can’t be. Not for us.

But I have a horrible feeling it is. We aren’t inseparable anymore. Our relationship has shifted to accommodate her, and I do not appreciate it. She’s the one who he sees and searches for when he goes into a room, not me. She’s the first one he goes to for advice. Well, only some sorts of advice. There, at least, I can be useful. But it hurts so badly, to help him with the girl who’s yanking us apart. Well, yanking me. He’s trotting wherever she tells him to go.

And I can’t talk to him about it. I can’t make him comprehend it. Usually, his lack of intelligence is just part of what makes him my best friend. It’s a part of him, and sometimes it’s amusing and endearing. But right now, it’s just adding to me anger. If I ask him to hang out, he has to go to her house. And when I complain that I never see him anymore, he tells me to go to my girlfriend’s. But he just doesn’t understand that my girlfriend isn’t him. She can’t be; no one else could ever be.

I can’t accuse him of anything, though. How could I? Of getting a girlfriend? I had one before him. Although I never ditched him. We were just as close as ever. I never left him on his own. I was as good a friend as I could be. But no, she’s got him too whipped for him to ever consider his old best friend. The one who knows him better then anyone else, who knows all his quirks and is still his friend. Who knows the darkness in him, as much as there can be in a guy like him, and doesn’t flinch away. She doesn’t know him like that. She can’t.

So he’ll never get why I’m mad until she lets him go, and she’ll never release him. He’s far too good a catch for her. She doesn’t deserve him, and she knows it, even if he doesn’t, although I’ve informed him that she’ll ditch him the moment she finds someone better, and his heart will break, and I’ll be the one to pick up the pieces. But he won’t believe me, will never believe me until it happens, and then it’ll be too late. Where there once was an us will be a me and him, however much I fight.

So I’ll sit here and watch as she drags him around by the ring through his nose. And he’ll never get why I’m mad that we’re growing apart, that we are growing apart. I’ll watch as she dumps him and he’s left with nothing but the pieces of me and him, which will be worth nothing by then. I’ll watch as she destroys my best friend, and he won’t realize he’s being destroyed. It’s so tragic, I could laugh. If only it wasn’t him. If only.