The Sweet One
Destruction of a friendship
Janine, the blonde guy really likes you, Mary whispers, coming through our hotel room door. Two of the men I’d left her with trail behind her.
I’d stormed out of the Delano Hotel bar, determined to walk back to The Eden Roc along the beach. Barefoot, heels in hand, mascara crusted down my cheeks, I surrendered to a taxi about half way.
I get rid of the men. Mary is married and I’m not interested. I tell the men this in so many words. And by so many words, the ones I choose are: get the fuck out of here.
Mary looks at me dejected. A stranger at a bar I can get on my own. I was hoping for something else from her.
What was that back there? I demand.
What do you mean? She says, casually making her way into the bathroom, pulling makeup remover out of her cosmetics bag.
Oh no you don’t. Don’t give me that who me, deer in the headlights bullshit.
James might fall for that garbage, but I know you longer. And better.
As the words come out of my mouth it hits me. She has been pulling this shit with me from day one. In the dorms, at the sorority house, when we lived together a year after graduation. Always playing the sweet one, with her big brown eyes and cute freckles, the innocent kindergarten teacher. Big mouth, outspoken me – it turns out, the scapegoat.
Mary was the type of person who would pull your chair out then point to the person next to her to assign blame as you fall to the floor. A sneak. How had I what – not realized, forgotten?
We’d come to Miami to celebrate her 40th birthday. It’s a bit of a scene, I had warned her given that her nights out had been relegated to the neighborhood Chili’s. I wondered why she wouldn’t want to celebrate with her friends in Charlotte. James must planning something. I can’t be her closest friend, I hadn’t seen her in maybe five years.
Throughout the weekend, she told me about her marital problems, confessed to an affair. My eyes must have bulged out of my skull when she told me. Mary. An affair? James was her first, her only. I was stunned. I was supposed to be the slutty one. Her words, not mine.
She went on to tell me that her estranged father lost what was his left of his retirement gambling and had been forced to live out of a van. She’s the only one of her three siblings who hasn’t tried to help him. She opened up to me in a way she’d never done before. She went deeper and further than I knew she could.
When we’d stepped inside the Delano, white curtains parted from the ocean breeze. Cheesy Euro techno music came through the speakers.
We sat at the bar with insurance brokers in town from the Chicago suburbs, their Midwestern accents thick with aw shucks. We drank on their company’s tab. When one of these nice men asked if we both had kids, I said that Mary did, three.
None for you, Janine?
I shook my head. Nope.
She could have, Mary said into her drink.
What’s that now? He asked.
Oh my god.
She could have been a mother. Twice, actually.
Janine’s no stranger to the abortion clinic.
There it was. My secret. The thing so few people knew about me.
What the hell is wrong with you? I asked.
I’m just joking around, she said as if she had told them my SAT score, which by the way, I also don’t advertise.
So when I stormed out of the Delano, I sobbed on my way out the door.
Because I was angry.
Because I knew I could never ever forgive this betrayal.
Because I’d lost a friend.
The sweet one.
World's worst friend. I want to read more.