A Change in Perspective

I found myself totally spacing out on the couch thinking about the fight we’d had a few days before. I know it’s normal for roommates, and especially roommates who are also best friends, to fight sometimes but it seemed like we’d been fighting a lot more often than usual. Neither one of us had said anything to the other about the fight we’d had, we just sort of ignored it.

I was supposed to be paying attention to the gorgeous man in front of me but I was just too distracted.

“Earth to Molly.” Calvin said.

I’d promised him I’d come by and watch him perform a monologue he’d prepared for an audition and give him some critique but I was having a hard time coming out of my head to pay attention.

“I’m sorry, I’m more distracted than I thought.” I shook my head and pulled my legs up underneath me.

He sighed and sat next to me.

“You guys just had a fight. It’s not a big deal.” He set the monologue he was holding down onto his coffee table and sat next to me.

He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him before kissing my forehead.

“Things just feel so…different since Anna died. Faith and Zoey have been fighting more and me and Faith have been fighting more. I just don’t know how to fix this.”

“Maybe moving out would help.”

I pushed him away and gave him a dirty look.

“I’m really upset here, Calvin! We’ve been over why I’m not interested in moving in with you. Now, when I’m upset about my best friend and I fighting, probably isn’t the best time to lead into that. I swear, sometimes you know nothing about how to interact with women.”

He put his hands up in surrender and I instantly felt bad for snapping.

“I’m sorry. I’m taking this out on you and that’s a super shitty thing to do. You’re such a great boyfriend.”

I gave him a kiss and settled into his side.

“I wasn’t trying to pressure you, Molly. But maybe moving out, whether that’s with me or by yourself or with someone else,” he added quickly, “would be a viable solution to the issues with Faith. Or you could try staying here for a few weeks to see if it helps.”

I blew off his suggestion. Calvin and I have been dating off and on for over three years now and I am completely in love with him. But, we really only labelled our relationship as exclusive a few months ago and it took Amber trying to murder me to get him to realize his feelings for me and enter the exclusive stage of our relationship, so I’m not too sure he’d even be able to handle the commitment living together would entail when not even a year ago he was balking at calling me his girlfriend, you know?

“Maybe I was just too harsh with her…” I trailed off and was back in my head again.

“I don’t think so. Faith is being an idiot right now, Molly. You were right to lay that out for her. She’s such a mess.”

“Hey,” I said sharply.

I gave him a dirty look. It was one thing for ME to complain about Faith, but she was still my best friend and I wasn’t going to be down with hearing anyone insult or judge her, even if they were my dumb boyfriend.

“Faith has had a really hard time, lately, okay? Adam was this great breath of fresh air for her in the shit show that her life has been ever since she dated Sean. I just wish things were easier for her. I just wish she would think about how what she does can affect others. Right now she’s dating or fooling around with or doing whatever with Mike but eventually she’ll have to accept that Adam is gone. And I don’t know what that will do to her relationship with Mike. Mike doesn’t deserve a girl who isn’t ready to open herself up to be with someone. He’s too nice of a guy for that.”

“Well, why do you think she acts this way? Do you think she’s afraid of being without a guy for too long?”

I felt uncomfortable with Calvin’s question, not because I didn’t have an answer but because I did…and I wasn’t sure it was my place to really tell him about the things in Faith’s life that I felt played a role in this…especially since a lot of it has to do with her mother and that was something I didn’t think Faith would appreciate me telling Calvin about. I shrugged and picked up the monologue he’d set down and stared at it to signal that I’d moved on from the conversation.

But in my head, my thoughts were going a mile a minute.

It’s not that I think Faith can’t be alone or that I think she’s incapable of being alone, I think she is and I think she’s almost a better person when she’s not in a relationship. But I think she gets so little love and support from her family that she is definitely one of those “choose your family” types. Her mother is so overbearing and cruel that she basically forces Faith to minimize contact with her, her dad enables her mom’s behavior, and her brother is too busy living his dream life to deal with any family stuff until it’s convenient for him (ie: never), and somehow Faith is stuck in the middle and expected to please all of them and set her life aside. So it makes sense, to me anyway, that she chooses her friends and boyfriends very wisely…because we are the closest thing to a family she has.

And the intimate relationships she has with men serve a different purpose than what I and Zoey can provide her, so I think she doesn’t like to be alone because she misses the different kind of love and support that a man gives her as opposed to her friends. And I don’t judge her for that because I get it. When your dad decides to ditch you and your mom for his new family you try to replace that missing sense of love and support by dating a bunch of really terrible dudes for pretty much all of your teenage years until you stumble into a relationship with a really good guy who loves you and wants you to move in with him way to soon, I guess.

Whatever.

I feel for Faith and I think maybe I was too harsh with her but Mike doesn’t deserve to be a rebound and I wish she would just fucking admit that. Maybe then she’d be able to back out of whatever she’s gotten herself into with him and give herself some time to just BREATHE.

“This monologue sucks. Why don’t you just do the one you wrote for that plays festival last summer? And your accent needs work. I would scrap it altogether. You have time to find something better before the audition.” I looked up at Calvin from the monologue pages.

“That’s my girl.” He smiled and kissed me.

I felt a pang of sadness because I know that Calvin loves me for who I am. Completely. And it feels great to be loved by someone like that and to love them exactly the same way. I’m not sure Faith will ever know what it feels like to be loved like that, she certainly won’t get it from her family, and the one guy who was willing to love her like that she pushed so far away that he moved to a different state. Maybe Mike will be that guy for her and I should just shut my mouth about her future choices.

When I got home the apartment was dark except for a lamp next to the couch.

“Faith?”

She popped up from the couch with a book in her hands.

“What?” She sounded tired and looked like she’d been crying but in the dim light it was hard to tell.

I walked over to her and sat down next to her.

“I wanted to talk to you about the other day…with Mike.”

She looked away and rubbed her forehead with one hand.

“Molly, I’m sick of justifying everything I do to you. Cheating on Mike is the biggest regret of my life. Do you have any idea how badly I wanted a second chance with him? This is my second chance.”

Her eyes were full of pain and I knew she had been crying earlier. I felt bad for being such an ass to her before.

“I know the timing isn’t ideal.” She continued, “But this could be the only second chance I get with him and I have to take it.”

“I understand.” I said, “But Adam-”

“I don’t want to talk about Adam. He’s not here. He’s not coming back. My feelings for him will go away eventually.”

I shook my head and sighed. She wasn’t ready to deal with her feelings for Adam and nothing I said would get her to see that she needed to. I shrugged.

“Fine. You were right, it’s none of my business, anyway.” I got up and walked to my room.

Sometimes you just have to accept that people will make the decisions that they feel they need to make even if they may not be the best ones.