Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Victoria
When I get home, I know Ed is inside so I stay in my car. I can’t actually have a conversation with him right now. Instead, I slump down in the front seat as my mind goes to Reese’s message.
Obviously, I remember Ben.
And I know that sleeping with him was not a nice thing to do.
But Reese had two years of living with him to make her move and it was the same for him.
If he was attracted to her, he would have done something about it.
He wasn’t shy about making his affections known.
From the moment I moved in, I knew he was interested.
And I was interested too. The guy was gorgeous and funny, perfect for a fling.
He wasn’t a rocket scientist and he wasn’t interested in anything serious but after my lonely year in the UK, he was just what the doctor ordered.
I held off because of Reese, knowing how she felt.
The first time he approached me, knocking on my bedroom door at midnight because he saw I was still awake, I told him I wasn’t interested. I was interested but I was being a good friend.
‘Hmm,’ he said, offering me a beautiful smile, dimples appearing on both cheeks. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Not deciding that “no” means “yes”, are you, Ben?’ I snapped.
‘No, no,’ he said, waving his hands and backing away. ‘Just thought we had something, a connection.’ He blushed. ‘I’ll go away now.’
The next morning, he apologised when we were in the kitchen together making breakfast.
‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘and you’re not… wrong, but it’s complicated.’
I didn’t need to say that. I could have just accepted his apology but I liked his attention.
My year in the UK had been really hard. I made friends on my course but I never seemed to progress beyond a quick coffee after class.
And I didn’t really have time to date so I didn’t put much effort in there.
I looked forward to Reese’s emails because I missed my friend and I even enjoyed the emails I got from Camilla, although she did have a way of taking sly digs at Reese and how uptight she was all the time.
I knew that wouldn’t end well and if Reese had asked me about getting Camilla to move in with her before she made the offer, I would have told her it was a bad idea.
There was always a miasma of self-centredness around Camilla.
I knew she would take advantage of Reese’s generosity.
Camilla believed life had dealt her an unfair hand and that entitled her to treat other people badly.
I knew she envied Reese, but then so did I.
Even though her father had issues, Reese was and still is someone who seems to sail through life, unhindered by the same shit the rest of us are dealing with.
I know that’s not the real truth, because I know everything about her life now. But it sometimes feels like that.
I was glad when I got home that Reese had kicked Camilla out.
It meant I had a place to live. I had no desire to go back home where my mother was still in mourning over her divorce from my father, despite how difficult their relationship became after my brother died. And I was too old to be living at home.
I don’t know if Reese ever felt the sexual tension between Ben and me when we were in a room together. Perhaps she was so focused on him that she never noticed it, or the little touches between us when I passed him a glass or made him a coffee or when he helped me with the groceries.
I should have just told Ben ‘no’ and that I wasn’t interested. But I was twenty-three and attracted to him so things between us just simmered away, even as Reese cooked for us and did the laundry and basically stepped into a mothering role. And then she went away for a couple of days.
‘Split a pizza and some beers,’ Ben asked when we found ourselves in the apartment on Saturday night, and I agreed.
We had a few beers and then we opened a bottle of cheap vodka that Ben had bought and then one thing led to another as they say.
I knew what I was doing. But I enjoyed it anyway and I remember thinking at some point, probably when his hands were roaming my body, ‘Screw it, I’ll deal with the consequences later. ’
Reese knew the moment she came back but she didn’t say anything for days, just kept doing everything with a sad puppy-dog look on her face that irritated the hell out of me.
And I kept sleeping with Ben because he was fun and sexy and I enjoyed it.
I knew it was upsetting her but I was selfish, probably as selfish as Camilla was.
I was having a good time. It’s true to say that Ben became boring very quickly.
And I told him I was done, which he seemed to accept.
When Reese finally said something to me, I thought about lying but then just told the truth and apologised and then I made her laugh and I thought it would be okay. But Reese didn’t seem able to let go, no matter what I did.
Reese thinks that if she’s nice to everyone, everyone will be nice to her but life doesn’t work like that. And sometimes I feel like she wields her niceness like a sword, waving it in front of anyone who dares to behave badly.
I told her the truth and I apologised. But I was angry with her for… I don’t know what, being such a doormat, I guess.
I was grateful that she said she forgave me. And I wasn’t ever going to do anything like that to her again. I promised myself that. I even uttered the words out loud in the shower, ‘I promise I will never do anything to hurt my friend again.’
I have known Reese for twenty years and in those years I have told her to stand up for herself a thousand times. She should have yelled at me when I told her the truth, kicked me out, kicked us both out.
Even though she said she forgave me, I could feel her holding on to it as the weeks passed.
It was frustrating because I just wanted to put it behind us.
Reese was my closest friend and pretty much one of the only people I could confide in.
I couldn’t speak to my mother because she was mostly interested in her own distress, and I have never liked a large group of friends.
It felt like I was losing Reese moment by moment and I could see ahead to a time when we weren’t friends anymore and I hated that idea.
I didn’t want to have the same experience Camilla had.
Unfortunately, things were made worse by the fact that Ben wasn’t as accepting of the end of our little fling as I thought he would be.
He began coming to my room at night, knocking on the door and waking me, asking me if I wasn’t, ‘Up for it,’ again.
It was hard to refuse him because the sex was so, so good but I did.
And then one night, I just said, ‘Yes,’ again.
I’d had a bad day at work. I was working at a small marketing firm and I messed up by forwarding an email to a client that was supposed to be only for the agency.
It was just a discussion on ways to move forward but it did include a detail about the client not liking anything we pitched.
It was sorted out quickly by my boss but I was embarrassed about the mistake.
So that night, when Ben knocked on my door, I let him in and I said, ‘Yes.’
I felt horrible the next day and I went to his room and told him that we could never be together again and that we obviously could never tell Reese about what happened.
‘You loved it,’ he said.
I got so angry with him. ‘Listen, you need to leave.’
‘Leave where?’ he asked, confused.
‘You need to move out,’ I told him. I knew that I would keep giving in to him.
I could see that he wasn’t going to just back off. And I knew that my friendship with Reese was on a knife-edge already. ‘You need to leave,’ I said, but he shook his head.
‘The rent here is low and Reese does all my washing, why would I leave?’
I got desperate then. ‘Look, what would it take?’ I asked him.
‘Just tell me how much money it would take for you to simply go.’ I could have just controlled myself but I also understood that seeing Ben every day was getting in the way of Reese and me putting what I had done behind us.
And I didn’t want to leave the beautiful apartment where the rent was low and Reese was so good at filling the fridge. I didn’t want to lose my best friend.
‘Ha, you couldn’t afford it.’ Ben laughed.
‘Try me,’ I said.
‘I want to go surfing in Costa Rica. I need a ticket and money for accommodation.’
He needed thousands but I told him I would get it to him, if he never came back.
When Reese asked me if I had been in contact with Ben and if I knew where he was, I told her I hadn’t and I didn’t.
But that was a lie. When I had to defer rent for a couple of months, I told her my mother needed money to get the house ready to sell, and that was a lie as well.
My mother was selling the house but she would never have asked me for money.
The truth about your life is that it’s built on a lie.
Are those the lies Camilla is talking about and how would she know unless she was still in contact with Ben? Or is it something else, because when I start thinking back, there have been so many lies.
But I don’t regret paying Ben to disappear.
When we realised he wasn’t coming back, it allowed us to really talk about what had happened and then we resolved to never let a man come between us again.
The usual shit that close girlfriends do.
Everything feels so simple when you’re both young and single, as though there are definite red lines that it’s easy to see so you don’t cross them or know when you do cross them.
But the older you get the more complicated things become.
Why has she brought Ben up again? Has Camilla said something to her?
I’m sure Camilla and Ben were friends of a sort after living together for nearly a year.
Maybe they’ve been in contact all along?
But why would Reese bring him up? And why has she said nothing at all about me quitting my job?
If I had sent her that message a few days ago, she would have been at my house with wine and chocolate and have already looked up a whole host of new jobs for me.
The change is drastic and I have to wonder why.
I told her we needed to strategise over what to say to Camilla. But I’m talking to Camilla myself directly. Reese, obviously, is doing the same thing.
Five seconds after Camilla is back in our lives we’re lying to each other. What does that say about this friendship and the two of us as people?
Is it true that Max is sick or is that a lie?
If it had been up to me, we would never have spoken to Camilla again after Reese kicked her out of her apartment, but Reese is motivated by guilt. She felt bad for Camilla, knowing that she had such a difficult home life and no money. I know she gave her cash when she asked her to leave.
When we saw Camilla again, we should have both ignored her, but Reese let her heart rule her head. Or she felt that she just had to be nice, to take pity on Camilla and show the whole world, once again, what a good person she was.
I sigh and begin to gather my things to go inside.
I hate thinking about Reese like this. She’s my best friend and I’m being really nasty, even if it’s only in my head.
This is probably exactly what Camilla wants.
She hated the fact that we were closer from the beginning and she tried to drive a wedge between us the whole time we were all friends.
It wasn’t just the emails she sent me when I was in the UK, filled with complaints and nasty remarks about Reese, it was even before that.
She would often call me just to chat and inevitably she would wind the conversation around to how pretty Reese was and how lucky she was and how it wasn’t really fair that she got to have everything she had ever wanted.
I never wanted to be jealous of Reese but it’s hard not to be.
And it’s hard not to get irritated at all that niceness and to wonder if it’s real.
When Camilla left Reese’s apartment, that should have been the end of what was always an uneasy friendship, but Reese didn’t let that happen. And in the end, Reese was the one who paid the price.
I made sure Camilla suffered for what she did to Reese, really suffered. Reese has no idea what I did for her, and I would like to keep it that way. I haven’t lied to Reese, just omitted to tell the truth.
I need to deal with Camilla alone. Opening my phone, I send her a message.
You’ve seen me but I haven’t seen you. Clever! Maybe we should meet.
She doesn’t reply. And that’s because she’s a coward and this is all just some scam to get me to worry unnecessarily.
Maybe she had something to do with what happened at work but maybe that’s just an unfortunate coincidence and a problem I will think about later.
Camilla has no power to do anything to me.
She’s watching me but can she do more than that? I doubt it.
At least that’s what I reassure myself with as I get out of the car and go into the house to lie to Ed about why I’m home early.