Page 25 of Not My Friend
“What’s the difference? You’re seeing movies together, meeting for dinner, having sex, what you have right now is basically dating anyway.”
I shook my head. “No, if we were dating we’d hold hands at the movies. Kiss each other when we meet at the door. Sleep over. There’s a level of intimacy that we don’t have right now.”
“But you want her to be your girlfriend again?” she asked. “Are you sure? Even after everything that happened?”
“I’m sure. This is our second chance.”
“Well, in that case you need to talk to her. But first, it’s tough love time.”
Tammy gave me a serious look, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what I heard next. I was right.
“Look, I never said anything before, but I think that at least part of why your first relationship blew up was that you couldn’t talk to her about the things that were bothering you,” she said. “I understand that she was a complete asshole, accusing you of cheating and throwing you out. But I have a suspicion that at least part of what prompted that little tantrum was her having a sense that things weren’t right. That you were unhappy. I mean, I could tell and I wasn’t even living with you. It probably made her even more insecure because she could see it too and didn’t know what the issue was. And since y’all didn’t talk about it like adults, things blew up in a big way.”
“Are you saying I was at fault in our break-up?” I asked in shock.
“I’m saying that in ninety-nine percent of break-ups, neither person is completely innocent. It may be mostly one person’s fault, but if you dig deep enough, there’s fault on the other side too.”
“I don’t agree with that.”
She shrugged. “Disagree if you want, but in this case, your communication skills or lack thereof were at least a minor contributing factor. And if you don’t address it now, it will come up again. Work on how to talk about your feelings or I can promise you that you’ll have issues again in the future whether you’re with Gina or someone else. You need to learn to use your words Kim, even if it means someone will be angry with you.”
I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that Tammy was right, but there was enough niggling doubt that I decided to woman up and talk to Gina about it. We were meeting for sushi the following night, so I decided to broach the topic.
“I need to ask you something,” I started. “It’s kind of awkward, but if you feel comfortable answering honestly I think it will help me.”
Gina set down her spider roll and gave me a curious look. “Wow, this sounds serious. What do you want to ask me?”
“First I should tell you something. When we were together, I was unhappy about a lot of things.”
She raised one eyebrow, then used her chopsticks to grab a California roll, taking a bite before answering. “No kidding.”
She didn’t sound surprised.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I was feeling stifled. You always wanted us to be together and wanted to know where I was every minute of the day and it felt like you were being… uh, needy. Insecure.”
Gina nodded. “Oh, I absolutely was being needy and insecure. That’s how I approached all of my relationships back then, even with friends.”
“Did you know I was unhappy?” I asked. “Was that why you assumed I would cheat?”
She filled up both of our waters before she answered. “Yeah, on some level I knew. I could feel you pulling away, and when I asked what was wrong you always said nothing, so my mind filled in the blanks with the wrong information.”
“I never realized this before, but the break-up was at least partly my fault. I didn’t have the guts to talk to you about the things that were bothering me. That wasn’t fair to you.”
She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “It was totally my fault. I had fears and suspicions and jumped to not very flattering conclusions.”
We ate quietly for a few minutes before Gina spoke up again. “Why did you bring that up now?”
“Remember my friend Tammy?”
She winced, then quickly schooled her expression. Tammy had never made a secret of the fact that she didn’t like my girlfriend. Gina assumed that it was because Tammy was secretly in love with me, and I’d never been able to disabuse her of that notion even though it was completely untrue. Tammy and I were like sisters, always had been.
“Yeah, what about her?”
“We were talking about you and I being friends again and she said if we want a relationship to be successful this time, whether we’re just friends or we decide to pursue something more, I need to work on communicating when things bother me instead of expecting people to read my mind.”
“Sounds like good advice.” She gave me a searching look. “Is something bothering you now? Because trust me, I won’t flip out. I’ve learned to talk things through like an emotionally stable adult.”
I could tell by her face that she meant it.
