Love Letters

Love Letters (Part 40)

Jem

I was sick of being stuck between Charlie and Benny and having to deal with their constant bitterness towards each other. Thankfully Sam’s presence made it slightly more bearable although we found ourselves constantly ‘teaming’ up. It always felt like Charlie and Sam were at war with Benny and me.

The breakup scene wasn’t pretty. Neither of them cried but there was so much anger and hostility during those few minutes that I was still reeling from it for a while after.

‘I’m glad. I’m glad we’re breaking up, you know why? You’re so petty and insecure; being in a relationship with you was like torturing myself.’ She screamed at him.

‘But Charlie, you said you-’ I attempted to correct her but Sam shook his head at me, willing me not to get involved in their domestics. They needed to either break up or make up, by themselves.

‘Thanks for reminding me Jem, it’s about time he heard the truth. I hate you Ben.’ She lied.

That’s not what she was supposed to say, she was supposed to tell him the truth about how she felt, and she was supposed to tell him she loved him.

I couldn’t believe Benny either, he was stood there taking it all, he didn’t try to stop her, he didn’t try to silence her with a kiss, he didn’t even stop her from walking off when she was done, he just stood there staring at the ground. He had gone against all the clichés of a happily ever after and we’d just witnessed it.

‘Don’t look at me like that Jem. You can’t force these things to work out, sometimes they just don’t.’ He said to me, shaking his head as Sam contemplated his next move, I could tell he was considering going after Charlie but he wanted to stay in case things with Benny heated up.

‘You could’ve tried…’ I replied sadly. I’d never witnessed a happily never after before and right then, it was pretty miserable. It was childish of me to have felt that way and it was childish of me to think that these things didn’t happen, I knew they did.

‘Just don’t alright?’ He turned to Sam, ‘and what the hell are you looking at? Shows over, move along and mind your own business.’

Credit to Sam, he didn’t react to Benny; he just held up his hands in surrender and remained silent.

Before Benny could walk away again, I left with Sam and we walked towards away together, heading towards our own homes, our paths the same, for a while anyway.

He wasn’t the silent type and kept the conversation going, ‘Relationships huh, it’s a headache if you ask me.’

‘Yeah tell me about it.’ I thought about Tyler and our non-existent relationship.

I wanted to tell him how I felt about him, but how could I when my two closest friends were clearly suffering? How could I even think about my own love life when they were troubled by theirs?

‘Speaking from experience?’ He asked, the tone of concern in his voice sounded genuine.

‘Something like that.’ I replied, not wanting to get into details just yet, after all we barely even knew each other. ‘You?’

‘It’s a long story.’

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t press him for more details and I wasn’t sure he wanted to say anything else. Usually when people say that, it means they’re not up for talking about it.

‘Well, there was this one girl. There is this one girl, we were together for almost two years, and then her parents found out about us and suddenly she’s engaged to some other guy.’ He must’ve misunderstood the sympathy on my face for something else and he elaborated, ‘she’s Asian, and since I’m white her parents didn’t… well, it’s not that they didn’t approve because I’m sure they didn’t have anything against me but… she was never really serious about us in the first place. She always knew things weren’t going to work out but she let me fall for her without once thinking about the consequences.’