We sat around the coffee table drinking coffee, pretending the elephant in the room wasn’t pushing us into a corner. Faye sat by Scott on the big couch. I sat alone on the small one. For some reason, I thought it resembled my situation a lot.
“Man, it’s so good to see you!” He repeated.
Scott was trying to play nice as much as he could, but I know him. Finding his… wife talking to her ex-girlfriend wasn’t pleasant for him. But he was, honestly, happy to see me. I could tell in the hug he gave me as soon as he saw me.
I took a sip of my coffee and replied. “Yeah, you too. Being trying to get in contact with you but…”
“Man, I’m always busy. The dealership is always bursting with something. Someone did something wrong, someone fucked up with the filing, or there is something that is not selling. Things like that you know?”
No, I didn’t know. “Sure.”
The room filled with silence, but Scott would’ve died before giving the elephant any chance of speaking up. “So what? You’re back for good?”
“Yeah, I think so. Technically I’m in inactive duty but, let’s be honest, they are not calling me any time soon with this arm.”
“What happened to your arm?”
Scott seemed to be the only one who didn’t feel restrained when it came to asking about my time overseas. “Broke it.”
“I see, I see. So, what you’re a private and everything now?” he said as a compliment.
“Uh, privates are enlisted. I’m an officer.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Basically?” He nodded, “I give orders rather than receiving them. Of course, I take orders too from my superiors but I always had people under my wing.”
“Great, and, are you thinking about re-enlisting?”
“Scott,” Faye murmured trying to cut him short.
“No, not really. I served my country, and I made it back. Next time… maybe that won’t be the case. And I’m happy to be home with my family.”
“Right. Well, it’s great to have you back, man.” He commented “You know what we should do one time? We should go play Paintball. I mean, with all the training you got you’d kick our asses but it would still be fun.”
“Scott,” Faye repeated, trying to get him to notice my arm again.
“Oh, right. The arm.”
He seemed disappointed. He was trying to give our lives some kind of familiarity, something we could bound over. Something that would remind us why we were friends in the first place.
“That’s fine. I jog almost every morning, plus it’s not like you can’t carry a paintball gun around with one arm.”
“See?” he said to Faye “She’s fine with it. We could invite Mike and Louise.”
“Isn’t Louise pregnant?” I pointed out.
“Okay, Louise can watch. She’ll end up bossing Mike around so she’ll be there in spirit. What do you say?”
I didn’t want to say no. The guy was trying. Probably out of guilt, but he was still trying. “Maybe. Let’s see how my arm feels in a couple of weeks, then we’ll talk.”
I stood up and offered to take their cups of coffee to the kitchen. Scott refused and tried to take mine from me saying he’d do it. But I hadn’t finished my coffee, so when he tried to take the cup off my hand, it spilled onto my left hand.
“Shit!” Scott yelled “Man, I’m sorry. Let me help you with that.”
“Shook my head “That’s okay.”
“Sorry. That must be hot as fuck.”
I looked at my stained hand and arm sling, then at them and grinned. “I wouldn’t know.”
I took the coffee cup off his hand and placed them on the sink. Then washed my hand as best I could but i needed to go home and take the arm sling off to wash it properly. Faye handed me a towel.
“I should probably be heading home.”
“I’ll take you.” Faye rushed to say.
“No, that’s fine I can―”
“Please, Riley. I’ll take you.” She insisted.
Scott licked his lips in an awkward position but didn’t object. I said goodbye to Scott, who told me again how great it was to see me. I hugged him in an uncomfortable embrace and let go.
As Faye and I approached the car, got in and as we drove off, we said nothing. I stared outside the window while she looked at me every couple of seconds as if she were about to say something and chickened out.
And without so much as a warning, I prompted “My best friend? You married my best friend?” My voice was soft and controlled, but she could tell I was hurt and angry. I thought she’d speak up to defend herself, but everything she did was swallow heavily. “Of all the people in the world you could’ve married, you had to married my best friend?”
She sighed, turned right and after an awfully long time, she answered. “I’m sorry.”
“Why? Why him?”
“It’s complicated, Riley.”
I shook my head “That’s fine, don’t say anything, please. I don’t wanna know.”
“It’s not… I mean…” she stopped to reorganize her ideas, but came out empty handed.” I don’t know what to say.”
“Just answer me this… did you get together when you and I were still―”
“No! No, of course not. We got together months after you dumped me. It happened even after my dad died.” I licked my lips, and she felt the necessity to fill the air with something else. “Riley, I’m sorry. What else can I say?”
I gazed at her cheeks turning pink, her brow twisted into an apologetic frown. I turned away and whispered “You’re my girl, Faye…”
“I know.” she murmured.
“And you married Scott.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Faye parked in front of my house and as I opened the car’s door, she grabbed my arm to stop me.
“What?” I asked. Her eyes looked at the floor, her lips parted, but no words came out of her mouth. In the end, she just let go of me. “Goodbye, Faye.”
“I’m sorry.” She repeated.
“Yeah, well. Doesn’t matter. It’s my fault either way. You… you have a right to move on. See you later, okay?”
“I’ll call you.”
I nodded and closed the door. She waited for me to go inside before leaving. I went into my room, and for the first time in years, I sat alone on my bed and cried. I hugged myself as my chest burst open.
Later that night, I ask mom if she knew. Of course she did, but she thought it wasn’t her place to give me the news. It was something Faye and I had to talk about on our own.
Faye called me every day for the next few days, and despite her best efforts at speaking to me like nothing had happened, I just couldn’t think of anything other than… than Scott touching her. Which results in my speaking to her in a distant and rugged tone. I don’t mean to, I swear, but it just does.
I told her about a couple of places downtown I wanted to look at for the book store, she offered to take me and I didn’t have the balls to refuse. Who am I kidding, I didn’t want to refuse. Even if she was married, I still enjoyed spending time with her. She also wanted to take me to a new place not too far that served the best breakfasts in the world according to her.
She picked me up at ten AM in her Lexus. Now that I think about it, that explains the Lexus. Scott inherited his dad’s dealership, so he could afford to give his wife a Lexus.
Faye looked as beautiful that morning as she does every morning. She wore no make-up, she didn’t need to. Make-up ruins her skin. As we drove off, her eyes turned to me and asked “How are you?” with a sweet smile that proved to be an effort to make things normal between us.
“Fine, I had to tell mom I couldn’t eat her world-class blueberry pancakes, so this place better be the Jacobs.”
She frowned “The what?”
“The Jac―… sorry. Nothing.”
“What?” She insisted.
“It’s just… I had a friend in the army, and he spent like three years in London and he said that a lot. The Jacobs means great or awesome.”
“Oh, I see. The Jacobs, I like it. So I can say I’m the Jacobs.” She joked.
I couldn’t help but laugh, “You’re so humble.”
The place Faye wanted to take me to, turned out to be a new restaurant called Just Like Mom’s but people call it JULLYS for short, and they bragged about their hash browns. The place was neat, bright and loud; the way any breakfast joint should be. Waiters running from one place to the other carrying trays with, what Faye called, God’s pancakes. She called them that because she said if God ate pancake, these would the ones.
We sat close to a window, with the morning sun blazing through the cracks. It was a beautiful day for pancakes. Any day I wake up in my own bed is a beautiful day.
As a waiter came to hand us the menu, Faye looked at me across the table and commented. “Everything is good, but since you wanted blueberry pancakes, that would be a great option.”
I went through the whole menu, reading every dish. “I’m not sure. They have potato hash with toasts and eggs. That sounds nice, too.”
“Sure, anything you want. My treat.”
I placed the menu down and glanced at her. “Don’t do that, Faye… please. If you try to overcompensate it’s going to be worse. Let’s just put it aside, okay?”
“I know. And I’m not. But this was my idea so my treat.”
I grinned. “Okay, but next time it’s on me.”
“Deal. Now, what’re you having?”
“You know what? I’ll take you up on that offer. Let the blueberry pancakes come.”
“Great.”
Fayed raised her hand to call out the waiter. He came, took our orders and left us in an awkward silence. One of those silence you don’t quite realize they are awkward until there is no one to interrupt it.
“Thanks again, for coming with me,” I said. I wished my voice would’ve been more confident.
“Sure, don’t thank me. I don’t really have much to do today so it’s great for me too.”
Then silence again. Jesus, I thought I would grab a waiter by the neck and beg him to kill me if only it could stop the awkward silence from forming. My eyes kept swirling from one place to the other hoping something would come up.
“I’m sorry,” she said out of the blue. I glanced at her. “I know I really screwed things up between us by marrying Scott. That’s a long story and I’m not getting into it now, but I do want you to know that… I never wanted to hurt you, Riley. I’m so sorry.”
“I guess, I guess I owe you an apology too. The way I ended things was… crappy to say the least. I should’ve called, I should’ve written a letter. Something, anything less… Distant. And then your dad died.”
“Yeah. I remember I was expecting you for some reason. I thought ‘She has to come, right? I mean, if only for a couple of days she has to come to visit dad’s grave, then I’ll convince her that we can do this, convince her… convince her not to leave me.’ But you never came. You didn’t even write.”
“Yes, but I sent you and your mom a box. I know what I should’ve done should’ve been there for you guys but―” I stopped myself when I realized the lost expression on her face was telling me she had no idea which box I was talking about. “You never got the box?”
“No, what box?”
“After I got your mom’s email, I packed a few things inside a box. Pictures I kept, things your dad gave me, or CDs and books he liked that I took with me to remember home. I sent them back like three weeks after he died. You never got it?” she shook her head. “Maybe your mom got them, if you were already with Scott.”
“I wasn’t. Scott and I got together less than a year ago.”
“What?”
“We started dating ten months ago. We got married four months after that.”
Now that I think about it, I could have said something less pejorative, because I said “You’re shitting me, right? You dated him for four months before you decided you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him? We were together for six years before you decided you were ready to talk about marriage.”
“We were sixteen when we got together! And with Scott it was different.”
I sighed. “Yeah… I can tell.”
That sentenced made her feel guilty, so she decided to leave the conversation there. The waiter came with our order and left.
I took a bite from the pancakes and I must say, they were a lot better than my mom’s. Don’t tell my mom I said that.
“Jesus!” I exclaimed with my mouth filled and the corner of my lips tainted with purple “These a freaking delicious!”
Faye looked up and laughed at my face. She ate like the good girl she’d been taught to be, while I ate as the hungry wolf I had learned while at the army. I finished my plate while she had only eaten half, so I raised my hand and called for the waiter.
“What can I do for you, ladies?” he asked.
“Can I have the hash potato with toasts and eggs please?” I grabbed the glass of ice tea, finished it, and handed it to him “Also, another glass of ice tea, please.”
The waiter didn’t hesitate to take the glass from me and comply with my order, but Faye stopped eating and focused her surprised expression on me. “What the hell?”
“It’s okay, I’ll pay for this.”
“No, no, that’s not what I mean. Since when do you eat so much?”
“Since my calorie intake is three thousand a day. I’ve got abs and everything, if you wanna check out where that food’s going,” I said joking.
“Oh, you do, don’t you?” she said, joking back, but the way we looked at each other became too serious too quick, so we looked away and the conversation died.
As she finished her breakfast, the waiter came back with my potato hash, which I devoured just as fast as I had eviscerated the pancake plate. Faye watched me impressed as the food on the plate disappeared.
“Don’t you have to, you know… use that energy?”
“I’m jogging in the mornings. I’m trying to stay fit, and it also helps with… well, stuff.”
“Jogging? With that arm?”
“Yeah.”
If only Faye knew that the arm wasn’t the problem when I jog. My brain injury becomes a problem sometimes when I star exercising at it only attract headaches, but I didn’t tell her that then.
“So,” I said, whipping my mouth with the napkin. “I’m done.”
She laughed, then took her napkin and dipped it in her glass of water. With the damped napkin, she removed a stain I had on my cheek and I couldn’t help myself. I placed my hand over hers to stop her from pulling away. I didn’t look into her eyes, mine were on the table while her eyes were on me. But she didn’t try to pull away, or to stop me from touching her in any way.
After maybe ten seconds, I let go of her hands, and softly, she pulled away. We stood up and went to the register to pay there.
Throughout our day we saw some very good places with loads of potential; great location, a lot of space and reasonable rents. But we also saw some crap holes. There was this place downtown that charged one thousand a months and didn’t even had the wooden floor finished.
I had to take pictures of everything and take notes on the things I liked about each place. You never know what important information I would forget, and I didn’t really wanted to be calling Faye all day long asking her for her advice.
At midday, we ate some Korean food from a food-truck and kept looking for places. At three, when she was too tired to continue walking, we decided to go to the mall, buy ourselves some ice cream and consider my options. As we looked for a parking space in the crowded mall, we realized we weren’t going to find any, until Faye saw an empty one… one specifically for vets. As I read the Reserved Veteran Parking, I realized what she meant. Jesus, I’m a vet. I definitely didn’t feel as such so I thought it would be an insult to people who have actually… I don’t know what I thought, but I didn’t want to use it.
“I mean, we could use it,” she said stepping on the brakes and facing me.
“I don’t know… I would feel horrible.”
“We’re just going for some ice cream, we’re not even gonna take that long.”
I made her promised we wouldn’t take long. Taking a vet space made me feel so wrong in so many ways I didn’t want to start to consider whether or not it was correct, or even accurate. We parked the car, we got off and we walked into the mall to buy ourselves two ice cream cones. I swear, we were in and out as fast as we could.
But as we approached the car each of us with a cone in hand, we saw two boys on it, writing something on the windshield with a marker. Faye held my hand, as if to stop me from doing something I would regret.
“Hey,” she said, making the boys turn to us. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
With the boys standing straight, we could see what they had written. ‘This spot is for our veterans only. Have some respect, bitch’.
As if that hadn’t been clear enough, one of them felt the need to express himself further. “This parking space is for our veterans, not for some stupid bitch to put her car here. This is not cool!”
I didn’t say anything, I just stared at the floor feeling we should’ve never taken that spot in the first place.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Faye yelled. “You think you can just go around vandalizing people’s cars?”
The other boy replied, “And you think you can go around parking wherever the fuck you want, you stupid bitch?”
That bothered me, you can call me a stupid bitch but don’t you dare call Faye a stupid bitch. “Look,” I said, “There’s been a misunderstanding, alright?” I was going to elaborate but then, a policeman who had just arrived got closer to contain the issue.
“Ma’am,” he said to Faye, “What’s going on here.”
“These assholes vandalized my car.”
The first boy rushed to justify his actions, “This place is for vets only!”
The policeman looked at Faye and asked, “Are you a veteran, ma’am.”
Faye answered, “No, but she is.”
She pointed at me and the yelling stopped. The boys remained quiet as if they’d just seen a ghost.
“Is that true, miss?” the officer asked.
“Yes,” I reached for my military dogtags, which were hidden under my shirt and lifted the collar up to show them to the officer. “Came back just over a month ago. If you want, you can call my Colonel.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, then turned to the two boys and asked, “And what made you think this lady wasn’t a vet?”
The boys looked at each other hoping desperately for the earth to open them up and swallow them. They wanna face the fact that the only reason they had thought I couldn’t possibly be a vet, was because I was a woman.
“I just.. I mean, I’m sorry,” said one of the boys “I thought… I thought we were standing up for someone. How was I supposed to know?”
“How about you ask before vandalizing my car?” Faye said.
“Look officer, it’s just a misunderstanding,” I repeated “We won’t press charges ’cause they are clearly underage and that’s nothing some soap can’t erase. Let’s just leave it, alright?”
The officer frowned and turned to me, “Where did you serve, ma’am? If you don’t mind my asking.”
I sighed, “Which time?” When he heard that, he felt awkward, but insisted. “First tour was in Iraq, Abu Ghreib. Not too far from Baghdad.”
He nodded knowing there is no reason for me to know that unless I had actually served. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Ma’am. Thank you for your service…”
The office looked at the two boys and signaled them with a killing look, to leave as quickly as they could. They boys left, and Faye and I got on the car. Faye activated the water for the windshield and the ink vanished.
We stopped ten blocks away from the mall, in front of a park and eat inside the car. We were eating our cones quietly until the alarm on my phone went off. I pulled out my cellular and read the message on the screen.
Afternoon pills. Ofteprafine. Two.
“Is everything okay?” she asked licking her ice cream.
“Yeah” I replied grabbing my pill container from my pocket and opened the Ofteprafine compartment. I swallowed two, dry. I didn’t noticed that I didn’t turn the alarm off, I just snoozed it.
“Do you need water for that?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“How long do you have to take those for?”
The way things are going? For life probably, I said to myself, but went with, “I don’t really know. Doctors tell me.”
“And how often do you have to see doctors?”
Faye was starting to ask question that she didn’t want the answers to. Or maybe it was me who didn’t want to think about exams and tests and doctors and how fragile my health and mental stability was. “I have a checkup in a week.”
“Do you want me to take you?”
“No, no, that’s okay. I’ll be fine. Plus, I don’t think Scott would be okay with his wife spending too much time with her ex.”
That seemed to hurt Faye, so she nodded and went back to her ice cream. We spent the next eight minutes completely quiet while we finished eating. Once I was done, I shook my hands, cleaned them up and looked out the window.
But my phone started ringing again.
Afternoon pills. Ofteprafine. Two.
I pulled out my pill box again and Faye frowned. “You have to take more of those?”
“What you mea―” I interrupted myself “…I already took these, didn’t I?”
Faye sighed with a sadness I’ve seen in her voice only few times. “God, Riley, what wrong with you? Why won’t you tell me.”
“Because is nothing, okay? I just forgot, it happens.”
“Yeah, to Alzheimer patients.”
“I don’t have Alzheimer. I just forgot, drop it.”
Faye’s head leaned to the side, “When’s my birthday?”
“Are you kidding me? August, August the fourteenth! I don’t have issues with old memories, is new once that come and go!”
I realized I had spoken too much when she asked, “You mean like that girl in the movie with Adam Sandler?”
“No… just leave it, Faye. I can take care of myself. You don’t have to worry.”
“If it wouldn’t’ve been for me, you would’ve swallowed another two! You’re not okay!”
“Well, I’ve been doing pretty damn fine without you… so what makes you think you’re so damn important,” I replied in a soft voice.
Faye’s eyes left mine and focused on the park next to us, “Alright, point taken…”
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