Work Text:
It had happened over the phone.
There was no beautiful sunset, no rustling water under a bridge, or whatever other cliche romance setting you can think of.
I was a week away from getting on the plane. One week away from finally visiting London and seeing Alex, in person, for the first time in fourteen years since we first met.
It was in a local pub in Alaska after I had just moved to help my sister with my new born niece. They were doing a night of stand-up, and I decided to try something I always wanted to do. Alex was there, too, to do some awkward comedy. He was with his parents, and brothers, on a holiday to celebrate him going to uni the next summer. He was the first British person I had ever met.
I grew up watching Monty Python with my dad, so I was under the illusion that meant I knew everything about the British. Thankfully, Alex found this naivety charming so we became fast friends.
I couldn't tell how the standup went but I can imagine it was shit. What I do remember is us promising to stay in touch, and we did. For a steady fourteen years.
I was there, through emails and phone calls, for when he met this lovely girl named Rachel. I helped him get the courage to ask her out, and soon after they started dating, I got my first email from Rachel. We became fast friends as well. I wasn't able to make it to their wedding, but Shella made sure to send me a video recording of the whole night.
They were there, not in person as well, for my marriage. I had invited them but they were newly parents so I wasn't actually expecting them to show up. I also never questioned why Alex didn't take up the offer to watch the ceremony over Skype. My marriage only lasted three years before I realized that I only said yes because he was the first man to ever tell me I was beautiful.
Fast forward to four months ago, I was on my weekly video call with Rachel, going over last minute plans, when she casually said “when you get here, love, you and Alex need to find somewhere quiet, and have a real long talk. Just the two of you. And know that I love you so much and I am beyond grateful you are in our and the boys’ lives.”
I can't even question what the hell that means before she quickly adds, “maybe don't mention to Alex that I said that. He is already so nervous.”
But I can't stop thinking about it. My first thought is that he’s decided it's not a good idea for me to move to London and work onsite as a writer, instead of overseas like I have been for the last six years. That I am not actually cut out for the British writing rooms.
So I called him three days later.
I explained to him what Rachel said and I told him why I thought we needed to talk. He stayed uncharacteristically silent as I dumped my worries to him.
Finally, he let out a long sigh, “I love you-” I started to say I love you too because it's not uncommon for us to say it. The three of us have never shied away from expressing our love for each other, “- I have since the moment I met you. You were so different to me; loud, smiling and laughing all the time. You weren't afraid to be happy. To make people laugh even if it was at your own expense.”
“Alex, what-”
“Let me finish, please. Rachel knows, if you're wondering. She’s known from the beginning and has always been so supportive. It's probably one of the many reasons I feel in love with her. We’ve talked about it over the years, my feelings for you, and we decided long ago that we want you here. To live with us and- and to hopefully, if you will have me, start a life together. With me. A-and of course Rachel and the boys, they-”
“Stop.” And so he does, thankfully. I don't think I could listen to much more over the loud ringing in my ears. Or the sharp, heavy breathing I am trying, and failing, to control.
After about five minutes of silence he finally whispered, “please say something.”
What do I say? What do I say to my best friend of fourteen years that has apparently been in love with me the whole time. That his wife, who I consider just as close of a friend, has also known, and somehow supports it?
“How dare you,” I barely recognize my own voice, “how dare you, Alex Horne, tell me you are in love with me. Me. When you have an amazing, loving, perfect wife, whom you have three equally beautiful boys with. How dare you ruin fourteen years of friendship.”
“...You're upset?”
“Of course I'm fucking upset! I've just found out that two of my closest friends have had a different narrative to our friendship, from the beginning, than I have! Jesus Christ, Alex, your kids call me Aunt Teeny! We, we’re-” I can't think. I can't breathe. I can't do anything else but hang up on him.
I stare down at the black, blank screen and let myself cry. I cry for the lost friendship, I cry for the three boys lives I can no longer be a part of, I cry for Rachel and the bullshit she's apparently been putting up with. I cry for myself.
And I decided then and there that I, with every fiber in my body, hate Alex Horne.
*
I didn't talk to Alex or Rachel for a month. I canceled my trip to London, of course I did, told Greg and a few of our other friends that my mom fell ill. It was a cheap excuse but what else could I tell them.
It wasn't until their eldest son texted me I hope your mum is doing better that I finally allowed myself to answer one of Rachel’s calls.
She’s incredibly encouraging and loving, which just makes everything worse. “How could you be okay with this? Jesus, Rachel. After fourteen years, how do you not hate me? How did you not hate me from the beginning?”
She says all the right things. How much she has always loved my spirit, my humor, and just felt from the beginning how right it was to have me in their lives. “I want you in our lives. Even if it’s just as Aunt Teeny. Even if it’s nothing romantic. Just… you.”
None of it helped with the nausea feeling I had every time I thought about talking to Alex again.
“He’s been sulking, of course. He’s hurting.” I want to scream yeah, well, I’m hurting too. He has ruined everything, and stomp my feet like a child. “He buys onions every week.”
I’m not sure when Alex and I decided it was a thing. If there was ever a moment in our friendship that one of us did something, or said something so messed up that an apology was not enough- that person would have to eat a whole onion like an apple.
“I don't think an onion is enough this time, Rach.”
“I know. But you have to let him apologize, or at least try. You both deserve that.”
The trouble with Rachel is she always says things that are stubbornly difficult to argue against.
I don't let Alex call me, but his emails still come through. He writes to me nearly every day still, sometimes just a sentence or two, often attaching photos of the kids doing something ridiculous. (They have mastered the art of the stick-on moustache. Their record is twelve moustaches per face.)
Sometimes I open the email thread and just scroll through his messages, reading them in reverse order like I'm retracing how things got ruined. Sometimes I don't read, just let the subject lines pile up like snowdrifts in my inbox. “Sorry,” “Still Sorry,” “Extra Sorry,” “Mildly Sorry + Child Update,” “Less Sorry Today, Sorry for That.”
There’s a perverse satisfaction in ignoring him, like building a protective cocoon out of all my own anger and sacred silence. I haven't responded, not once, not even when he attached a video of the youngest in a full wizard cape, reciting stand-up bits he half-remembered from me. I watched it twice, then deleted it.
Rachel gets me on the phone almost every day now, sometimes twice if she hears even a rumor of distress through the friend grapevine. It's probably my fault for being so transparent. She talks me through the moves of her day, the laundry and the school runs and the neighbor who is “on thin ice, Teeny, I mean it.” Sometimes she sets the phone on speaker, lets me hear the soundtrack of their life in the background—a kettle whistling, boys arguing over dinosaur stickers, the thud-thud of loki against the kitchen door.
But with Alex, it’s still a no-fly zone. Just his voice, even filtered through a phone speaker, would set my face on fire. I hoard my anger, roll it around in my mouth like a sour gobstopper. Not because I think it’s noble, but because it’s the only thing that makes sense. Fourteen years and all of it a lie, an inside joke where I was the punchline. Or maybe the unwitting audience, seated in the splash zone.
Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I remember all the little things—the way he always signed off “Yours, for the End of Days, Alex,” or how he’d text me photos of weird British snacks and tell me which ones would kill a weak American like myself. I remember the time Rachel and I spent an hour plotting how to get him a better job, how we both knew she was the brains and I was the morale, and we liked it that way.
Now it feels like being widowed from a whole alternate life I didn’t even know I’d been living.
I tell Rachel, “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him.”
She says, “You don’t have to. You can just move forward. Or sideways, if you want. I’ll go wherever you go.”
It’s a beautiful sentiment, but it’s also exhausting. I want to want things to go back to normal, but the normal I knew was a façade, and now I can’t stop seeing the cracks. My entire life is a before and after, and I’m stuck in the smudgy liminal zone, a purgatory of my own making.
Greg tries to help, but he’s not exactly equipped for emotional landmines. He sends memes and cat videos and offers to “beat up that limey if you want,” which is weirdly comforting. I start keeping a list of all the ways I could ruin Alex’s life without ever crossing the ocean.
Some days, though, the ache hits harder than the anger. When it’s quiet, when I hear a British accent on TV and instinctively want to text him a joke about it, or when I see a kid’s drawing of a family and realize I don’t get to be the honorary aunt anymore. Underneath the brittle resentment, I feel the real loss, sharp and honest as a paper cut.
I still haven’t responded to any of Alex’s emails. I probably never will.
But sometimes I hit forward and send them to Rachel. Just so she knows how many onions I’m owed.