Written by Ute Orgassa
SOLOMON & VERA | Photograph by Adam Jon Miller
I watch Mark’s charming smile, his assured motions, guiding Alice just where he wants her to be. He’s attentive and protective (oh so protective). He keeps a close watch on who she talks with and what she talks about. Distracting and redirecting whenever something comes up he doesn’t like. And he doesn’t like a lot of things.
She’s my best friend. Alice and I have weathered elementary, middle, and high school together. We were there for each other during parent divorces (hers and mine), health scares, first loves, break-ups and college all-nighters. She is my chosen sister; I am hers.
He is her newest boyfriend, who proposed too fast, has all the right answers, and is dazzling her and everyone around her. Well, not everyone. Not me.
He knows it, too. He puts his body between her and me, almost instinctively, whenever I come close while we’re all out and about as a group. I get to look at his broad back, his impressive shoulders (he goes to the gym every day), instead of her familiar face.
I patiently reschedule times with her again and again, because something just happens to come up with Mark whenever Alice and I just want to hang out by ourselves. Alice says that she misses our get-togethers. Life just gets so busy at times. I know in my heart that this is not it. I see Mark’s patterns. He is artful, I give him that.
Alice is taken in by his generosity, his impressive gifts (the diamond on her ring, OMG!), and his gallant manners. Her parents (all four of them), like his independence and his sophisticated home. Our friends enjoy the perks he just casually offers. I listen when he talks about his crazy ex-girlfriends. I notice the way his ring finger already has a tiny tan line and then I bring it up. I ask where he had lived, specifically, before he moved here. No, he does not like me at all.
Alone at home I go through the whole situation over and over. I also look inward to see if I’m maybe overreacting. If jealousy is clouding my vision, or I’m just finding fault, because I want to. (Doesn’t hurt to check, does it?) Thinking back, I have usually liked Alice’s former boyfriends. Some less than others, yes, but never before has a man in her life raised my hackles as much as Mark does.
The more often I see him, the higher those hackles go. He is too perfect. Always in control, just the right amount of emotional (not too much, not too little), never flustered, and always magnanimous and forgiving. Alice has been forgiven for whatever he thinks needs forgiveness more in the last six months than she had been all her life before him.
And I see her shrinking. Her light is dimming just a tiny bit. Maybe a lumen, or lux, or two (or whatever the correct measurement for light is). It is barely noticeable, but I do know her. I see her. I have always seen her. I know all her registers. I also know she is head over heels in love. All I see is a freight train of disaster speeding at her in the dark, horns a-blaring and search light cutting ahead. He is bad news. I wish I were not the only one to see him that way.
Alice has always confided in me. She looked for my take and my opinion since we were playing under her family’s dining room table (with the yucky bubble gum sticking to the underside). I listened to her equally; followed her advice. We swore to always tell the honest truth to each other.
Now I have a decision to make. I don’t want to tell her about this, my visceral reaction to Mark. What if he already used the last six months to manipulate her away from me? Driving ever so tiny wedges again and again between me and her? (After all, he is a master manipulator.) And even if he has not, if I wasn’t important enough for him to do that, I might not get past her rose-tinted glasses. She is happy. I want her to be happy. Why destroy that?
Because the whole relationship is fake, it’s not real (I argue with myself). Because Mark is not real, genuine, honest, or right. He is wearing disguises; he is putting on a performance. He is rushing her into a position she will not be able to leave by herself without facing enormous problems. I must tell her. I really don’t want to, but I have to find a way to make her see. I must at least try. She is too important to me, too special not to let her know that she is not imagining things, and that there are patterns to his ways.
It might backfire spectacularly. I might lose her over this. Become persona non grata at her wedding, instead of maid of honor (in a pastel-colored dress, no doubt). Speaking up is a risk, I know. Nobody wants their dreams shattered. But I will not be able to live with myself if I don’t speak up now. Yes, I think as I head to the cafe to meet with her. I must do this, or I will never know peace. Let’s just hope it’s not too late.
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Ute Orgassa was born and raised in Germany. She now lives with her family in the Bay Area. Her short stories have been published by Shortwave Publishing, Haunted Word Press, Alternative Milk, Punk Noir, Alien Buddha, Infested, Cursed Morsels, Epistemic Literary, and Cat Eye Press. Her play A Different Track was produced by Awkward Pigeons Theater.