When I Leave, and Other Broken Promises

The Boyfriend Solution and Other Stupid Ideas

The rest of the weekend unfolded as winter weekends often do. Candice and Jillian stayed up late Saturday night watching movies, then slept until almost eleven on Sunday morning. By early afternoon, Candice was babysitting her cousins, wishing it was five o'clock so she could go home and veg out alone for a while.

When Candice did manage to get a few hours of quiet and solitude, she often found herself thinking about Curt and how their lives would change if he were ever able to see her as something other than his buddy. Jillian usually blamed Curt's "blindness" on Candice's inability to be completely honest with him about her feelings, but it wasn't that simple... at least not in Candice's eyes. Their relationship had a long and convoluted history making it difficult to know precisely how to define, or redefine, it.

Candice and Curt had met when they were six. Their parents had once been best friends so the two saw each other regularly. But, then one day, things went sour between the two women and Curt and Candice lost touch. It seemed unlikely that the two would ever see each other again. But, then Curt's mom enrolled him in public school at the start of fourth grade, and, suddenly, Curt and Candice were reunited.

As the two grew older, they found that they enjoyed similar pastimes. During the summers, Candice would ride her bike over to the local ballpark and help Curt practice his pitching. During the winter, Curt often stayed after school to help Candice with her volleyball serve. It was a friendship without pretense. It was pure, easy, and uncomplicated. But then, during the spring of their sophomore year, everything changed. That was the year Curt got his first real girlfriend.

It had never even occurred to Candice to be jealous. After all, Curt had always been her buddy, her sidekick, her best friend. He was the guy who tackled her during flag football, hid in her closet to scare her on Halloween, and allowed her to ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance so she wouldn't have to ask anyone else. But, then he'd complicated everything by doing something completely ridiculous: he'd asked Lindsey Anders to go out with him.

Candice remembered that day all too vividly. She'd stopped by Curt's house after school because she'd needed help with her Geometry homework. He wasn't any better at math than she was, but he made her feel better about her own incompetency. She'd bounced up the stairs and hit the doorbell absently. Then she'd turned at the sound of the door opening and seen Lindsey standing in the foyer.

At first, Candice wasn't sure how to react, mostly because she had no idea why Lindsey was even there. Was she working with Curt on some school project? Was her boyfriend on the same sports team with Curt and she was just tagging along? Within moments, Candice learned that Lindsey was at Curt's house because he'd invited her, and he'd invited her because they were together. Going out. Dating. Candice told herself she was fine with all of it, but underneath her calm exterior, something had shifted.

For weeks, Candice went along as though nothing was wrong. She joked around with Curt in the hallway, texted him in the evenings, and harassed him during PE. But then, one Thursday afternoon, she'd walked out of school and seen Curt kissing Lindsey by Lindsey's car. And, in that moment, Candice suddenly became aware, with a slow, soul-crushing realization, that she liked Curt... liked him the way that Lindsey liked him. It was like falling in slow motion and being powerless to soften the blow. As Candice watched the two of them together, she felt herself imploding, collapsing inward on herself.

Indeed, Candice desperately wanted to be angry, but what she felt, instead, was more akin to sadness. This was mostly because she felt, for the first time, that maybe she didn't really matter that much to Curt. After all, he'd chosen someone else, hadn't he? It didn't matter that Candice had known Curt for almost a decade and the two knew virtually everything about each other. It didn't matter that Candice could read him like a book, or that she could make him smile when no one else could. It didn't matter that they knew each other's favorite songs, foods, colors, everything. None of it mattered.