Frenemies by Megan Crane
chapter one
I blame it on Janis Joplin.
Because until that song came on, I was fine. Fine.
So what if I hadn’t seen Nate since the memorable night I’d walked in on him kissing someone else two and a half weeks ago, which was seventeen total days, not that I was counting?
So what if he was supposed to be my boyfriend?
And so what if the girl he was kissing was none other than Helen Fairchild, my freshman-year roommate way back when?
Who, until that night, I’d thought valued our shared history and mutual exasperation enough to consider me a close friend—the sort of close friend who would find my boyfriend to be off-limits?
Seriously, I was fine.
I took a deep breath, and told myself that I didn’t care in the slightest that Nate and Helen had just swept inside the bar together, looking flushed and giddy and bringing with them a swirl of cold weather from the fall night beyond. I didn’t care that every single one of our mutual friends, all of whom were gathered together to celebrate a birthday, looked from the two of them to me to gauge my reaction. I didn’t care that my heart—which I would have told you had broken into pieces too small to be seen with the naked eye and thus couldn’t possibly break any further—thumped painfully in my chest, clearly whole enough to keep hurting.
If I burst into tears, I would never forgive myself.
I was so busy trying to look as if I didn’t care and wasn’t close to tears, in fact, that Amy Lee had to kick me under the table to get me to notice that she and her husband had returned from the bar, bearing armfuls of drinks.
“Stop staring at them,” Amy Lee ordered.
“It’s fine,” I told her, which was surprisingly hard to do through a clenched jaw. “After all, who cares that we were together for almost four months after knowing each other since college? Who cares about history? I’m perfectly fine with this.”
Amy Lee sighed and exchanged what I could only describe as a significant look with Oscar. Then, she and Oscar settled themselves on either side of me on the plush banquette. In support.
Or, possibly, to restrain me.
The two of them were a perfect example of the whole opposites attract thing, I thought, looking at them through the big mirror on the far wall. Amy Lee looked crisp and pulled together at all times, while Oscar always looked as if he’d just stepped off a skateboard. They’d met in dental school and fallen in love, apparently over molars. It was to their credit that I found that story romantic despite my long-held dental phobia.
Amy Lee slid a beer in front of me.
“Listen up, Augusta,” she ordered me. Her use of my full, legal name—which I hated and therefore generally responded to only in places like the DMV—earned her a baleful glare.
But I listened.
“I get why you want him,” she said. “Everyone adores Nate. He’s practically made a career out of being adorable.”
“I don’t think he’s adorable,” Oscar said from my other side. “Not that he’s not adorable, of course. I just don’t think about it.”
“I think even I had a crush on him for like fifteen seconds in college,” Amy Lee continued, ignoring her husband. “How could you not? He was like the college version of the captain of the football team. All puppy-dog eyes and that bashful smile.”
“Yeah, that’s really adorable,” Oscar retorted. “Let’s talk more about his rugged good looks, so maybe I can have a crush on him, too.”
Amy Lee had all the delicacy of a steamroller. I assumed this served her well in dentistry, but tonight it made me want to upend a drink over her head.
“?‘Puppy-dog eyes and that bashful smile’?” I echoed. I glared at her. “Why do you want to hurt me?”
“But here’s the thing,” Amy Lee said as if I hadn’t spoken. “You’ve known the guy since we were all eighteen and only hooked up with him this summer. That’s hardly raging-hot chemistry, now is it?”
“He hasn’t been girlfriend-free since college!” I protested. “He was with that horrible Lisa for years!”
“I’m just saying it took you an awfully long time to get together with him,” Amy Lee said. “Okay, sure, you liked him more than the weirdos you usually date, but still.” She took a sip of her drink, which, unaccountably, appeared to be a Coke. I scowled at it, and she muttered something about designated driving.
As that was normally Oscar’s job, I looked at him.
“I plan to drink a lot tonight,” Oscar told me, his eyes across the bar on the Happy Couple. “I might toast Nate’s bashful smile a few times, too.”
Since he was staring at Nate, I gave myself permission to do the same. I watched as Nate peeled off his winter coat and exchanged manly handshakes with his buddies. I watched as Helen floated merrily on the end of his arm like a particularly well-tweezed balloon.
Seventeen days had not dimmed the pain even a little bit, it turned out, despite several bold proclamations to the contrary I’d made in the shower earlier that evening. If Gretchen, the birthday girl, hadn’t called me personally and begged me to come, there was no way I would have attended this party. It had been bad enough to stand there that night two and a half weeks ago, face-to-face with the evidence that he and Helen were on kissing terms. Sitting in a crowded bar with half of Boston looking on as I was humiliated with every snuggle and simper was, it turned out, worse.