Lean On Me

Short story about lost loves and friendships.

Lean On Me

She took me to the Bahama Breeze Restaurant where her husband sang songs of love in a spring evening breeze under the sparkling stars.  My heart was light and bursting with happiness, enjoying the music and the evening with my best friend.  We laughed and ate our shrimp jambalaya and oysters on the half shell.  When her drunk her husband approached me at the end of the evening with a staggering walk, I wanted to leave immediately. 

Before I could make it to the car, he told me how I should leave my boyfriend.  He continued to tell me how my boyfriend would leave me in the end.  He said my boyfriend would never ask me to marry him and he was scouting out other women already.  He further warned me that if I didn’t leave soon, my dreams of being a wife and a Mom would disappear and I would only be someone’s Step Mom one day.

My evening soured very quickly.  Leaving me anxious and nauseated inside, with my friend I road home in silence.  No longer was I having fun and no longer was she my best friend.   Even though, these words were true, I wasn’t ready to hear them.  I loved my boyfriend.  I still thought we had a future.  The last

hour of the evening, had been a very painful one for me.

Slipping into the warm bed with my sleepy boyfriend,  I ended up telling him what happened that horrible evening.  He assured me that everything was going to be alright, that none of the things her husband said were even true. He assured me that he loved me very much.  I still felt anxious, even though he held me close in his strong lean arms.  I still felt out of balance, like an over loaded washing machine that I always had.  I still knew something wasn’t right.  Maybe our end was in sight.  After years together, he still had yet to propose.

Years later, after my boyfriend betrayed me and kicked me out of our house.  When he told me that it was over for us, he told me that my best friend’s husband was right that night.  He said he knew the truth that night when he lied while I snuggled in his arms, but he didn't care.  He hadn't found the right woman to dump me for at that particular time.  She had to be very special.

My heart had taken years to heal, and transform.  One night I saw my former best friend, whom I hadn’t seen in years since that night at Bahama Breeze.  She seemed so sad, I noticed.  Long had I forgotten that last night that we saw each one another.  When I asked her if she still lived in the same house, she replied that she lived in the neighborhood still.  I could tell that something was very wrong, but she was dining with a new client.  She gave me her business card.

Hours later, curiosity got the best of me. I had to call her.  When she answered, it was like we were best friends again. She was so happy to talk to me.  My heart was joyous deep down inside, how much I had missed this dear friend of mine.  We talked for hours that night. Laughing, until we cried about the lady that used to shower with her black pot belly pig and the old man who had hundreds of poison snakes that he kept in plastic shoe boxes in his living room with only an elastic band keeping the lids on.

How surprised I was to find, that my friend’s husband had left her almost two years ago.  He had locked her out of her house just like my boyfriend did to me. He had betrayed her by seeking the arms of another lover, just as my lover had done to me.  We both laughed at how each man had pointed out the same flaws that the other man had.  How funny this was to us both.

We also laughed at how good God had been to both of us.  Taking us from these men of sin, and providing us with a way to make money and live each day.  I could tell we were going to be best friends again, one day very soon.  Funny how our lives merged such similar pathways several years ago, giving us each a new friend to lean on years later.

 

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[Marie Harrison]

This is a short story about two mutual friends and how their live's mirror each other in the future. How their friendship will be a future blessing to them. It's a poem of hope and shows the value of forgiveness and friendship during hard times.