Friends With All the Benefits

1 Ellie

N o one ever told me friendship breakups could hurt like this. My best friend in the entire world looked at me like she hated me. My heart felt like it had been ripped out of my chest. This was pain like I had never felt before. Natalie had been my best friend ever since we were in kindergarten. We were supposed to be BFFs. We were supposed to raise our children together. We were supposed to grow old and fabulous together. We were supposed to make Best Friends Forever mean something.

Now, Nat was screaming that I was no friend of hers. Her eyes were cold, and when I looked into them, I found no trace of the love and understanding that should have been there. It was worse than when I broke up with my boyfriend a few years back. Back then, it hurt, but I knew that I would be okay because he was just a passing ship in the night. But Nat had been my constant for the last two decades.

Now, it felt like the sun would no longer rise, the world would no longer turn. Everything that was home and safety to me was snuffed out in a flash, and I didn’t know if I could ever get it back.

“You’re supposed to be my best friend. I made you my maid of honour. You’re supposed to support me, no matter what,” Nat raged at me. “I told you I didn’t want to hear it. I told you I didn’t want to know. Instead, you come at me with your stupid list, thinking you can sabotage my relationship just like that.”

She gestured violently at the clipboard she had yanked from my hand and flung across our living room. Now it sat wretchedly on the floor, underneath the dent it left on the wall. At least Nat missed the window by just a few centimetres to the right of it.

The list was of all the things her fiancé did that bothered the hell out of me over the last few years, but I could never say out loud because Nat never wanted to hear it. Every time I gently tried to bring things up with Nat, she always shot me down and shut me up. But now that she had gotten engaged to Andy, I could no longer hold it all in. I had to get what I needed to say through to her before it was too late.

I thought our many years of friendship would get Nat to hear me out. I thought she would be reasonable. I thought wrong. Instead, Nat exploded when she saw the bullet points on my clipboard. Now, here we were—a two-decade-old friendship fractured, my hoped-for reasonable discussion completely gone off the rails and my best friend in the whole wide world telling me I wasn’t her friend any longer.

“Nat, I just need you to hear me out,” I pleaded. This wasn’t the way I wanted things to go, and I needed to salvage this before the damage ran any deeper. “You never let us talk about it. I’m sorry I upset you, but please let me say my piece. I promise you this will be the last and only time. But I need you to hear me, please.”

But Nat just shook her head. “No, Ellie. Just no. You’ve never liked Andy.”

“You’re right. I don’t, and I have good reasons for that.” I did, and those reasons were listed on the clipboard on the floor. I knew Andy was terrible, but even it didn’t hit me just how terrible he was until I wrote it all down, and I really needed Nat to see it. “Why would I, when he’s so controlling? Worst of all, he chea—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Nat covered her ears and gritted her teeth. “You’re mistaken.”

“Nat—”

“I said I don’t want to hear it!”

I tried a different tack. “Nat, you know I love you and I want you to be happy. I’m worried about you. I want what’s best for you, which is why I just want to talk. Getting married is a big deal. I know it’s your decision and I will respect that, but before you walk down the aisle, please make the choice with your eyes open. Please listen to me.”

“No, you want what you think is best for me,” Nat spat back. “But you have no idea. No fucking idea. You’ve never had a serious relationship. Your one long-distance thing barely counted because he didn’t have to spend time with you. Andy and I are in an actual relationship, something you have no idea about. And you will never be in one because who would want someone as uptight and sanctimonious as you? So, you have no right to have an opinion. Any opinion .”

“That’s not fair,” I shot back. That was a low blow. I knew Nat was angry, but her insults rankled. “If love looks like what Andy gives you, I want no part of it.”

Nat’s face paled. She stopped railing at me. Silence hung between us for several heartbeats.

When Nat spoke again, that’s when I realised that something had changed. I had crossed a line that I didn’t see, and now there was no way back.

“You seriously think you’re better than me, don’t you? I need you to get the fuck out. I can’t deal with you here.” Her voice had turned cold, so cold. And so furious.

“But…” I stood there, shell-shocked. “That’s not remotely what I meant. I’m sorry if it came across that way, but I don’t think I’m better than you. Please hear me out.”

But Nat was too angry, so much so that she could no longer hear me, didn’t want to hear me. “Get the fuck out. I need my space from you, Ellie. If you can’t be supportive of me, there’s no need for you in my life.”

“I’m sorry, Nat, but I am your friend, and I owe it to you to be honest,” I argued in a panic. Honesty was always the best policy, at least to me. I would want to know if I was making a huge mistake in my life. I thought that Nat would be the same, that she would appreciate it. I had been so wrong.

“If you were my friend, you’d support me no matter what.” The volume in Nat’s voice rose again.

I should have de-escalated. I shouldn’t have poked the bear. But things were already broken, so instead, I shot back, “Yeah, but not blindly.”

Nat bristled. “Oh, so you think I’m stupid now, do you? You’re always so self-righteous, Ellie, so goody two shoes and so certain of what’s the right thing to do and I’m so sick of it.”

“That’s not true, and you know it.” Or was it? Was this something that had always been there, under the surface, annoying but not enough to rip our friendship apart until it finally did?

“It’s true,” Nat shot back. “And I won’t be disrespected in my own home.”

“I’m worried about you, Nat—” I kept my voice as level as possible. I wasn’t going to second guess myself. I had come into this conversation with a purpose. This was larger than any issue between Nat and me. Maybe there was still a way to reason with Nat.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Nat cut me off. “Get the fuck out. Now. I need my space from you.”

I closed my mouth. Nat wasn’t in a space to hear me out. “Okay, I’ll leave.” I’d get dinner out on my own, then hopefully Nat would have cooled down when I got home later. “I’m sorry I upset you, Nat. I really am. Maybe we can talk about this later.”

“There will be no later.” Nat’s voice was cold. “When I said get out, I meant get the hell out. Move out tonight. I don’t want you here any longer.”

What?

She couldn’t mean it. This was my home. Nat and I had moved to Perth together three years ago, on a grand adventure in a brand-new city where we only had each other. We had been together in this apartment ever since we both moved here; it had been a blast, a girly sleepover that never ended. I had grown comfortable here. All my things were here. Nat was here. I had nowhere else to go. “But I live here. ”

“Not anymore. You’re evicted.”

Natalie owned the apartment we both shared. Her parents had gifted it to her when we moved here together. Her fury at me shook me to the bone. I had expected the conversation with Nat to be hard, but I didn’t expect this. Technically, she couldn’t evict me without notice, but there was no way I was going to risk antagonising Nat any further. We were supposed to be best friends after all, and I didn’t want to do or say anything that would sever the relationship beyond repair. She might be more rational when she calmed down. Still, there was no way I could just up and move out in a single night.

“You can’t be serious,” I exclaimed.

“Oh, I’ll show you how serious I am.” Nat grabbed the kitchen bin, walked to the fridge, opened it and swept everything from my designated shelves into it. My packed lunches for work, my prepped veggies for dinner, the expensive cut of steak I planned to cook for our dinner tomorrow, even containers, everything went into the bin.

Before I could say anything else, Nat had already moved to the balcony where I had clothes drying. Everything went haphazardly into a basket that Nat then marched into my room and dumped onto my bed. Then she flung open my wardrobe door, dragged out my stored suitcase and pulled it into the middle of my bedroom.

“Do you still think I’m not serious?” she screeched.

I could see that she was damn serious, and mad as hell. Of all the worst-case scenarios I had imagined in my mind when I resolved to have this conversation with Nat, her kicking me out never occurred to me. But it was totally happening, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Get packing,” Nat commanded.

Mutely, I complied. I knew there was no way I could pack up years of my life in this place on such short notice, but I did my best anyway. Nat watched me do so, as if to absolutely make sure that I would be gone.

After several tense minutes of silence, I ventured, “I don’t have anywhere else to go, Nat,” hoping she’d see reason and relent.

Instead, all I got was, “That’s your problem, not mine.”

~

T he car it was then. I grabbed my things in a daze and got the hell out of there. There were still too many of my things in the apartment that I couldn’t realistically pack into one suitcase and a few boxes on such short notice, but I would deal with it when Nat calmed down. All my important documents and valuables were with me, so at least there was that.

I barely registered driving away from our apartment block. It was a miracle I got anywhere without causing an accident.

Nat kicking me out was a shock to my system. I knew that bringing up Andy would be a hard conversation, but I didn’t expect this. My head swam, my face and limbs were numb, and I knew it wasn’t from the chilly evening air. Whatever happened after this, there was no doubt that my friendship with Natalie was truly over, and I couldn’t quite process it.

Right then, I had much more pressing problems. I didn’t have anywhere else to stay for the night, much less the foreseeable future. My parents lived interstate, but they had washed their hands off supporting me the moment I was legally an adult. Besides, on their best days, they were benignly neglectful anyway. I had no other relatives in Perth. Nat and I grew up together in a large Victorian country town and we had moved to Perth together for work. We had been inseparable. Until now.

I drove until I found myself in the parking lot of a deserted park. The evening was growing dark, and the wind was picking up speed. I got out of the car and rummaged for my warmest jacket. At least I had most of my wardrobe with me. It was now autumn, and at this time of the year, the days were still sunny, but the nights had turned bone-chillingly cold, more so when it was windy. There was no way I could sleep in my vehicle tonight. Not without freezing to death or catching a cold. There might have been other options, but I was too much in shock for anything else to come to mind. It was the car or nothing at all.

I crawled into the back seat of my car, pulled my jacket tighter around me, and prepared to rough it for the night. No one else was around to see me. No one would brave the outdoors in this weather. It was then that I finally allowed myself to cry. I didn’t know how long I lay in the back, grieving. It was pitch black when my phone screen lit up with an incoming call.

I spent way too long rummaging in my huge tote bag for my phone, hoping the caller wouldn’t hang up before I got to it. Maybe it would be Nat telling me that she was just as sorry as I was and that I should come home. Hope soared in my chest until I finally found my phone and saw the caller ID.

It wasn’t Nat, but it was someone I was always happy to hear from.

“Ellie! I was wondering if you’ve got dinner plans for tonight. I know it’s a bit last minute, but I’ve got a craving for Thai food, and I know you mentioned the other day you’ve been craving it too. Do you want to feed that craving with me tonight? If you don’t have other plans, that is. Nat can come too.”

It was Hannah, a friend I made from work when I first moved to Perth, and she always spoke a mile a minute. Her cheeriness was surprisingly welcome after my personal mopefest.

Now that Hannah mentioned dinner, I realised I was starving.

“I could do dinner,” came out weakly. I really did need food, and the company would help, as long as Hannah didn’t mind hearing about how my life had just imploded.

Hannah and I met when we were both interns several years back. It was friendship at first sight the moment we saw each other’s bullet journals. We became bosom lunch buddies during the entire internship, and when we moved on to different jobs, we still caught up regularly. Hannah grew up here and to my everlasting gratitude, she folded me into her small group of friends. She tried to fold Nat in as well, but it didn’t quite take. Right now, that worked out perfectly for me. I didn’t have to burden Hannah with choosing between Nat and me after our falling out.

“It’s just me for dinner, but you know you love me,” Hannah chattered on. “Everyone else is meeting up for drinks later. Joyce will come by after dinner with her folks. Callum and Ethan are busy with I don’t even want to know what, but they’re coming too. Ethan’s definitely coming.”

Hannah’s voice turned sly as she emphasised the last sentence.

Joyce was Hannah’s best friend. Callum was Hannah’s boyfriend. Ethan was Callum’s best friend, and Joyce was Ethan’s sister. Their close-knit group was like a square until I came along, and they folded me into their ranks.

Hannah knew I had been in love with Ethan ever since I first met him years ago through her, but he had never once looked at me that way. Hannah and Joyce still slyly tried to matchmake us every time we got together, but Ethan and I would never be more than friends. Even so, any opportunity to spend time with Ethan still got my heart racing. Any opportunity but tonight. I was too shocked, too hurt to muster any excitement for once.

“Dinner and drinks sound great,” I replied, although I felt anything but.

Hannah didn’t notice. “Oh, goody. Is Nat coming too?”

“Nat’s not coming,” I told Hannah.

This time, Hannah must have picked up something in my voice because hers turned soft. “Is everything okay?”

The concern in her voice nearly undid me.

“Nat…Nat’s kicked me out of our apartment. I fucked up.” My words were heavy, but I made myself sound them out.

“What do you mean kicked you out? How can Nat kick you out?” There was surprise and indignation in her tone.

“I—” The words couldn’t quite come out of my mouth. It still hadn’t quite sunk in for me. Where did I even begin?

“No, never mind. Tell me everything over dinner. Are you okay to drive there on your own? Do you need me to come get you?”

I shook my head, then remembered that Hannah couldn’t see me over the phone. “No, I’ll see you there. When do you want to meet?”

“It’ll take me fifteen minutes to get there. How about you?”

“Twenty.”

“Then I’ll see you in twenty.” There was a pause, then Hannah added, “Drive safe, Ellie.”