You can’t date my best friend.
Why not?
Because she’s my best friend.
And?
Girl code.
I laughed.
Apparently girl code now governed my romantic life too.
I replied:
We’re both single.
Tara:
YOU ARE MY EX.
Me:
I thought I was your friend.
Tara:
You know what I mean.
Again.
Always that phrase.
I typed:
Friends don’t get ownership over who other friends date.
She called.
I did not answer.
Again.
Again.
By the time I left the apartment, seventeen missed calls sat on my screen.
I put my phone on silent.
The date was great.
Not explosively romantic.
Not fate.
Just good.
And after weeks of emotional confusion, good felt extraordinary.
Marissa was funnier than I realized.
When she was not functioning as Tara’s friend, I saw an entirely different person.
She worked in event operations and had stories about catastrophic corporate conferences, runaway catering carts, and one executive who accidentally presented an internal complaint slide deck to three hundred clients.
We laughed until my face hurt.
We walked afterward because neither of us wanted to end the night immediately.
For almost three hours, we barely mentioned Tara.
Eventually, Marissa stopped near her apartment.
“I need to tell you something.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Tara called me crying.”
“I assumed.”
“She says I betrayed her.”
“How do you feel?”
Marissa shoved her hands into her coat pockets.
“Guilty.”
I nodded.
“But also angry.”
“At me?”
“At her.”
“Why?”
Marissa looked down.
“Because I’ve spent three weeks listening to her talk about how she wanted freedom and how breaking up with you was the mature thing to do.”
“Okay.”
“And then last week she said something that really bothered me.”
I waited.
“She said keeping you as a friend made the breakup easier because she knew she still had you if dating sucked.”
I stared at her.
“What exactly did she say?”
Marissa hesitated.
Then:
“She called you her safety net.”
The words landed softly.
That made them worse.
“Word for word?”
“Pretty much.”
Marissa looked apologetic.
“She said she didn’t necessarily want to get back together, but knowing you’d always be there meant she didn’t feel like she was losing everything.”
I looked away.
There it was.
The thing I had sensed but could not prove.
I was not supposed to become an ordinary friend.
I was supposed to become retained emotional infrastructure.
“Are you okay?” Marissa asked.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t look okay.”
“I’m not surprised.”
That was true.
Surprise would have been easier.
Marissa touched my arm.
“For what it’s worth, that conversation is part of why I asked you out.”
“Because she called me a safety net?”
“Because I realized you were actually respecting the breakup more than she was.”
I looked at her.
“And because I like you.”
“That too.”
We kissed.