The Trouble with Just Friends

What a stupid concept, just friends.

Robert Davidson was the first guy I ever loved and being the responsible girl I was at the time, I keep it to myself. After all, Robert and I were just friends.

We met in high school and our friendship grew naturally as we stood in the corner exchanging sarcastic remarks at the teenage folly which surrounded us. He wasn't near as clever as I was, which worked in his favor because his smile was unmatched in all of Brentwood High. I suppose, looking back, it was a smirk more than a smile but still it was unmatched.

I remember the day he told about his feelings for Bre, a mutual friend of ours. She was bubbly, brunette, and the apple of Robert's eye. At this time, Robert was nothing more than a crush and Bre was a good friend so the match failed to phase me. I was content with just friends.

After Bre came Christina, thin, tall, red hair and so not good enough for him. She too was a mutual friend and I remember the night she invited me out for dinner only to find out Robert had asked her out and she was too nervous to be alone with him, I vividly remember her telling me “You have to be there or we won't say a word to each other”. That was the night I truly understood the term “third wheel”. By this time my crush turn into sometimes more, but I'm not sure what comes after crush but before love? That's the trouble with just friends the stages are not clearly defined.

When Robert finally realized Christina was a flop he took a small break from dating, we had just graduated from High School and we both had jobs. This meant we had money and a desire for adventure. Robert and I would pick a direction and drive, not for long, maybe a couple of hours before we turned back around. Those random road trips to nowhere, that's when I began to fear the worst, my crush was turning into more than a crush and just friends wasn't going to cut it. But remember, I was a responsible girl, so I remained we remained just friends.

I can't remember the names that followed, there were so many of them. I began joking with Robert, telling him he was a serial boyfriend and needed to start making wiser decisions. He would smirk at me and little did he know every time I made that joke and every time he smirked my heart broke a little more. “I'll keep quiet, no need to tell him, after all we are just friends”, I would remind myself daily.

Then, I almost lost him. He was in a car accident and was badly hurt. In a sheer panic all my cautionary responsibility went out the door and I told Robert that I loved him and it wasn't the a just friends type of love. He was gracious, said that he loved me too and that I meant the world to him, more than anyone else, that I was his best friend, but...

Ahhhh, that heart breaking, earth shattering but.

...only has his best friend did he love him. See the trouble with just friends is once love enters the picture, once feelings are expressed, just friends is the most impossible relationship two people can have, but because you love the person, you try.

And so we tried. I tried to be cool with every new relationship he had and he tried to treat me the same way he used to treat me before the accident, before the “I love you”. We both failed. I avoided going to parties I knew he would be at with whatever girl was on his arm for the night. He avoided making one on one plans with me to not fuel the perception that perhaps we could be more than just friends. Soon just friends became just acquaintances and finally we wrote ourselves out of each other lives.

Years went by and Robert and I never spoke a word to one another, we went on with our lives as though the other never existed. Well, at least he did. It wasn't until a tragedy brought us together did he smirk at me and we decided to be friends again. See the trouble with just friends is once it ends, you can't pick up where you left off not matter how desperate you are to do so. You remember how easy it was for them to forget you, to move on, to write you off. How do you forgive that? Robert and I finally faded out of each others lives for good. I still think of him from time to time, when I reminiscent about my younger years. I wonder where we would be had I never opened my mouth, would we still just be friends? Or would one day, after he ended a particularly toxic relationship, would he have realized just friends wasn't what he wanted either? Probably not, but sometimes I like to imagine things would have been different had I waited for him to love me back.

It's cruel when unrequited love destroys just friends.

The older I got the better I became at avoiding the just friends relationship. Sure, I had friends, but there is something poisonous about telling someone you're “just friends” as if to say anything beyond friendship is utterly ridiculous.

Eventually I got myself involved in quite the sticky situation. Unlike Robert, Xander and I didn't have to time to be just friends. The flirtation and the attraction was as close to instant as one could get. A couple drinks later, just friends went out the window and we were, well, we were something that never truly got defined.

At first Xander and I were simply make out buddies which is what I thought I wanted at this particular time in my life. We were with each other when vodka stood on the sidelines encouraging us, as if we needed the encouragement. Late night make out sessions in parking garages sort of negated the need to be just friends. The trouble with just friends is it doesn't always follow the same pattern.

Soon drunken stupors didn't cut it, we wanted to spend time together, sober. So we did. We went to lunch together, we text each other constantly throughout the day, we bantered with one another and the flirtations and feelings grew beyond the vodka's encouragement and became something of more substance. Unfortunately, timing can really mess things up. The trouble with just friends is, once you've been more than friends, just friends is a difficult task to accomplish.

You have to ignore any attraction between you two. You pretend when you're walking side by side, to wherever you’re going as just friends, that it doesn't take every fiber of your being not link arms with him. You have to ignore every time you hear him talk about another woman you flair up with unreasonable jealousy. You have to ignore the feeling of sadness you get that you no longer text each other goodnight. You have to ignore those times when you accidentally brush against one another that every nerve in your body tingles at the memory of him holding your arms down and kissing you. The trouble with just friends is it doesn't come with any benefits, only old desires.

You convince yourself that just friends is enough, then one day you realize being just friends is slowly stopping you for being more than friends with someone else because the trouble with just friends is at least one of the parties involved is hoping just friends is just a temporary thing.

You see, the real trouble with just friends is it never works out in the end.  

Author's Note

ramblings, I know tenses and punctuation is a hot mess haha