After I’d eaten and had a cup of tea, I needed to do something.
“I want to go to church,” I said.
“I’ll go with you,” Dad said, just about flooring me.
That’s what we did. We were a few minutes late, so we snuck into the back. I was impressed that Dad didn’t fall asleep.
◊◊◊
When we got home, Tami wanted to talk to me. I was led to my apartment and expected I would have to finally answer for how I’d treated her. I wondered where Alan had gone.
“This was all my fault,” Tami said once we were seated on the couch.
“Uh …” I stammered.
“No. Let me talk,” she said.
“I forced my way onto your recruiting trips. I’ve had a lot of time to ruminate on it since then, and I owe you an apology. Reflecting back, I realize I messed up in August. If I had it to do over again, I would have accepted your promise ring,” she said as she reached over and placed her hand on my knee.
My gut tightened. Only Tami could make me this uneasy. We’d been best friends since the first grade, and I felt it had grown into more over the summer. She was the only person I would’ve let break my heart so many times and forgive. It wasn’t logical, nor something I could help. Sometimes you found that one person who got under your skin and you couldn’t let go. From the outside, I was sure people thought I was a complete wuss. But sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants.
I could probably go on and on about how we’d grown up closer than siblings; how I’d let her run my life, which made her happy. Like I said, from the outside, it made no sense. Here I was the big badass Alpha Male, according to my uncle, and Miss Tami Glade led me around like a puppy. The thing was, if she was the one, it didn’t matter to me. Tami had always had my best interest at heart, or so I believed.
After she rejected me last summer, I’d tried to convince myself that I’d moved on. I recognized that it was what I needed to do if I ever wanted to be happy. Her leaving for the UK had started me on the path to becoming my own man. When she gave me the ‘someday’ bullshit, in my heart, I wanted to believe it. My brain knew better.
My weakness was my heart. I was too trusting and wanted to be loved. My worldview was of settling down with a woman I could give all my heart to and raising a family. When I found Tami and Alan in bed together, the dream of Tami and I had died. Over time, I wasn’t even sure they’d had sex, but the image of them together was what finally did it.
Whatever hold Tami had over me had died that day. That didn’t mean that I didn’t still care; I did. There was too much history. I would equate it to a couple that gets a divorce after years of marriage. Even though you couldn’t live together anymore, and you’d hurt each other, there would always be something that you remembered of the good times. There had to have been something that brought you together in the first place, which meant they still had a piece of your heart. Tami still had a chunk of mine, but at this point, we’d lost that ‘someday’ that fateful day—at least for me.
“You weren’t ready. It would have been a mistake. You saved us both from what would have eventually torn us both up. In the long run, I would have realized I’d forced you to commit to me. You’d told me enough times that you wanted to have a chance to enjoy high school like every other girl. You wanted to date and have your heart broken, not to be tied down to me,” I said.
“When you say it that way, you make it sound like I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”
“I’m sure you would have, but in the back of your mind, there would always have been doubts. You would’ve missed your chance to grow into your own person. I honestly believe you did me a favor. I’ve gone through a lot in the last few months, and I can tell it has changed me, though in some ways not for the better. For the most part, though, I needed to focus on me,” I admitted.
“David, I never meant to hurt you. I saw that what Alan and I did … supposedly did … devastated you. I also didn’t mean to come between you and your mom. It’s clear now that my actions over the last two years have been nothing but self-centered. I always expected you would do what I wanted and would be there in the end. Now, I think I’ve lost that,” she said as a tear rolled down her cheek.
“We’ve talked about this, and I expect you’re right; I don’t see us as more than friends. But that doesn’t mean that’s a bad thing. I need a best friend,” I said.
“What about Tracy?” Tami asked.
How did she do it? How had she read my mind? I’d only recently begun to consider Tracy my best friend.
“What about her?” I said, playing dumb.
