Stab!

For a couple of months E and I were planning a triple date this Saturday with a mutual friend and her new boyfriend's friends. We've actually been talking about it since November and have made and broke the date a few times, but since the new year, it has always been this date.

Until Monday. E decides that she is too tired and just wants to stay home this weekend and not go out. I was disappointed of course. Her actions affect more than just herself, but I just told myself another time. Well this morning she runs into my office and says, "Guess what? I'm having dinner with T tomorrow night!" Oh you mean Saturday night? The night we had all planned on going? And you mean T? The guy they were going to set me up with?

Now I'm not going to fight over someone I have never met, so I let that go. But it absolutely fucking sucks that she broke the plans because she was tired, but now she's going on them. Matter of fact everyone is. But me. I had somehow become excluded.

I have been nothing but a fucking fantastic friend to her. When--

Wow, I just had to put this post down to go cry in the bathroom at work.

She had been on a one date with this guy and then she dumped him because she doesn't have sex and, well, he does. I met him shortly thereafter and he pursued me for 3 straight months and I said kept saying no because she was my friend and, even though she dumped him, she was still hung up on him. And I liked him. I would have dated him, but I didn't because I knew it would hurt her. When her "friend" stood her up, I was the one who provided the entertainment for her to distract her over a guy who couldn't even call her. When she finally met some of my other friends last week, she wanted to bail out early and have the drunkest girl in the bar drive me home when I have been hanging around her other friends from the very beginning.

And now the evening I worked out with the boyfriend is going to be had with everyone but me. When she exclaimed that she had the date tomorrow night, I told her exactly how I felt. That I thought it was shysty maneuvering to cancel the whole evening and then call it back on last night and exclude me. I am not invited because E's original date will not be there. But it's not about the boys; it's about the loyalty. If one of my closest friends disposes of me like she does, what does that say about me? To my feelings she said, "I knew when I said yes to go that it would upset you."

So why do it then?

I went into the bathroom and cried. Then I called N from my cell phone so she could come to the bathroom and talk to me. N overheard the entire conversation. She heard E say that it wasn't her intention to hurt me. She heard me try to articulate my feelings. N agrees that I got the raw deal. Knowing both of us, N pointed out that at 28, E has never even had a relationship. She's never even had more than four dates with one guy and if she has a chance to meet a guy, she's going to take it.

E still believes in movie love. "You know those statements she makes about how life is with love?" asked N.

"Yeah, like how she said sex with someone you love is automatically the best because love is involved?"

N and I both doubled over laughing.

I wet a fresh paper towel and pressed it under my eyes. "I was watching The OC last night," I began to N. "And on it a girlfriend was complaining that her boyfriend wouldn't tell her that he loved her. So she tries to get him drunk to get him vulnerable enough to admit his feelings. Instead she gets tanked and complains to his face that he doesn't love her. So you know what he does?"

"Tells her he loves her?"

"Exactly! Because that's movie love. And you know what I thought when I saw that?"

"What?"

"That if I ever tried to pull a stunt like that, he would a) call me a manipulator for trying to trick him, b) tell me he needs space because I'm suffocating him and then c) dump me."

N laughed. She went on to say that it is much easier for me to meet and date boys because I'm charismatic and outgoing. She wanted me to have a little compassion for E in that regards, because she struggles a lot more than I do.

But it still doesn't change the fact that Saturday night I'm going to be home alone, probably crying again, while she's out.