I apologise formakinghim feel uncomfortable…
I should have been a better friend to you.
I’m here for you.
I support you.
I promise to be more open-minded.
I will get to know William better and show you that I respect him as your partner and your relationship.
Fuck. I feel like a cancelled YouTuber fending off the mob with a makeup-free grey-hoodie apology video. The lack of sleep has not made crafting the perfect apology any easier. Am I apologising for five little things or one big thing? If one is apologising for just in general being a shit person, is it even possible to make the apology sound sincere? Shit people generally aren’t talented at apologies, after all.
I hate that I’ve hurt her. I hate even more that I didn’t notice I’d hurt her. The more I think about it, the more I wonder why she is even friends with me. For so long, I was dull as kitchen soap with nothing to offer in our friendship, and then when she really needs me, when I finally have an opportunity to step up, I’m so caught up in my own stuff that I neglect the one person who has always been there for me. And then I started a fight with her like I was in the right!
In the end, because I’m a coward, I write Bee a short letter. I don’t think I’m going to be able to say something to her face without crumbling into tears and possibly grovelling, and I’d like to at least pretend I have some dignity.
I’m sorry I haven’t been supportive of you and your relationship. I promise to do my best to show William how much I value him, and I will make sure you never doubt my care for you again.
Yep: shit person. When I read it back it feels like someone else wrote it.
I don’t see Bee again until Monday night, but for some reason I tiptoe around anyway, trying to take up as little space as possible just in case. She comes home with lasagne from that trendy place around the corner that literally just sells different lasagnes (the butter chicken lasagne feels like a bad business decision, but whatever), acting like the fight never happened. But I can see in the depths of her eyes that she has chosen to forgive…not to forget. Without saying a word or even throwing a look, I am acutely aware that I am on probation, two strikes down. Maybe two and a half.
Naturally enough this spurs me into action trying like hell to prove myself, and it’s a two-hander. She’s droppingbreadcrumbs for how I might get out of the doghouse, and I’m sweeping them up like a robovac. I might be a bit out of practice, but it’s like muscle memory. These are old habits. We’ve been here before, and there’s a weird kind of comfort in that.
I bypass a few post-work champagnes only to come home to an empty and dark apartment. I don’t make any plans—when Bee’s home, I’m at her disposal, and we have more dinners in than we have since we moved in together. When Bee’s not home, I’m sitting in that apartment just in case she calls on me. A few times she does send messages at eight, nine, ten o’clock to meet her, William and the gym gals at some overpriced bar where the cheapest wine is nineteen dollars. And I go. Every time. I even start getting ready for a night out just in case. There’s only a few times that I sit around until midnight before I wash everything off and go to bed.
Things have changed at work, too. I’m a bit more inclined to hang around the bar cutting lemons with Bee than to chat in the locker area. I walk past Nicole and Reg a few times on my way out, and I have to duck my head to avoid first the confusion, then the hurt, then the frustration, then the resignation. After two weeks, they stop inviting me out for drinks.
I haven’t spoken to Arthur since the day after the party. He messaged a picture of a morning bacon and egg McMuffin and coffee sitting on his lap in bed. (I can see his toes peeking out from the end of the covers; they look very well maintained, which is about as far as I’ll go in terms of foot fetishism.) I heart reacted and asked how the dancefloor at the pub was. He said it was taking too long to get in, so they went to a winebar around the corner and slunk off home about an hour later. I sent a crying laughing emoji. He asked how the rest of my night was. I lied and said it was fine.
He sent a few more reels in the days that followed, but when he got nothing but empty reactions back, eventually those fizzled out too. And that was it.
That was about three weeks ago.
I miss him. I miss them all. I miss me too. But it’s all about priorities. It’s time to learn to be more considerate, because my flirtation with self-absorption hurt Bee, and that’s not OK. Apparently I’m incapable of maintaining multiple friendships at once, which seems like such a waste of Arthur’s hard work, and a roadblock we hadn’t anticipated.
He would be ashamed.
No, that’s not right. He’d be disappointed.
Way worse.
William comes over for dinner one night. We don’t cook; Bee orders enough Thai for about six people. We pop open some beers, and I sit across from the happy couple. It would feel like a warped home/job interview, were it not for the inappropriate touching happening across the table. His hand is curled around her thigh, stroking up and down. Her hand is wrapped around his upper arm. Their bodies are turned towards each other.
This is proper third-wheel shit.
It’s weird, but this feels more uncomfortable than if she was straddling him while they made out. The hint that his hand might go upward, the sensual caressing of his arm, all the hints of what’s to come once I put in my noise-cancellingheadphones. I have no idea where to look: to stare feels wrong but to look everywhere but at them and their roaming hands seems to somehow draw more attention to it. I’d like to climb out of my skin and leave it here on my fake-wood dining chair.
I wonder if they’re doing this on purpose.
We keep it pretty benign in terms of conversation until the mango sticky rice comes out, mainly swapping work stories. Bee’s work and my work are roughly the same so I don’t really have much to contribute. That story about the guest using the outdoor umbrella for pole-dancing purposes and going down with the whole thing would have been funny to tell, but I don’t get the chance.
There’s the brief foray into politics, during which I politely zone out. Apparently some new reforms to negative gearing have been proposed, and William is furious because it’s unfair to those of us who have worked hard to purchase investment properties. I ask how many he has, and he says none yet, but he plans to purchase one in the next five years and doesn’t want to be hamstrung when he does. I nod. I don’t think I’ll ever have to worry about being able to capitalise on my equity to grow my property empire, but it sounds stressful.
Bee goes to the bathroom after dessert. William and I are left nursing our half-empty glasses of wine. Looking at each other. He narrows his eyes at me, squinting like I’m an abstract painting in a gallery—is it art, or a cynical cash grab?
‘You know,’ he says, ‘we both care about Bee a lot.’
