"How about beloved?" I asked as we sat sideways on his parked motorcycle outside Sydney's house in a small subdivision.
"Doesn't really roll off the tongue, Mal," Paul gave me adoring side eyes. "Nobody in high school calls their girlfriend "beloved" anyway. Babe or Baby are my personal favorites, but I think I could do Gorgeous, Beautiful, Doll…"
I shook my head no. "I can't get on board with all that. I mean I can deal with 'baby' without jumping down your throat, but I need something else if you're gonna do a pet name. I won't solely be defined by my outward appearance." What did I just say?! Was I really ok with baby?
He looked at me right in the eye. "You are ok with 'baby'?"
" I mean, If you like it I'm cool with it. I get you're not calling me a baby and you don't see me as this frail infantile thing that needs to be managed." I rolled off, almost thinking outloud.
"Far from it. So, what else should I call you?
I scrunched my lips and pushed them to the side of my face.
What could he call me? What could he call me?
"How about buttercup?" I asked.
"You're ok with a flower?" His eyebrows raised as I googled "buttercups" on my phone.
"They actually have extremely tough roots," I read off. "They can grow and thrive anywhere under pretty hard conditions."
He nodded his head. "Pretty too," he said looking over my shoulder, the air between us feeling heavy. "Ok, Buttercup. Let me put this letter in the mail slot and we can head back."
I looked down at the envelope in his hands, my thoughts spinning back to our current predicament.
"Isn't that cheating?" I asked.
It had been about three week after our kiss on the cliffs and he had one final apology left, Sydney. Sydney was complicated. Paul had taken her virginity Freshman year, and she wore the battle scars all over her heart. She didn't trust Paul's apology tour, as she referred to it. To her it was clearly contrived and Sydney was sure he somehow duped me into dating him.
Knowing that she didn't want to speak to him in any capacity, Paul wrote Sydney an apology letter. It was four pages long and sealed in an envelope that said, 'open whenever you're ready."
"She doesn't want to speak to me, Mal. I don't even think she even could. Trust me, this will go over better. This way she can read it when she wants it, if she ever wants it." I nodded. It made sense. It gave Sydney the control, something she should have.
"You know what this means, right?" He looked at me suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows after he dropped off the letter. "We get to go out on a date," he answered his own question as he got back on the motorcycle.
"Paul, all we've been doing is going out on dates."
"I know, babe," he said like a happy puppy, "but this one is going to be superfucking amazing," he smirked.
I walked into my house to see Kim stradling Jared with her tongue down his throat on our living room sofa.
"Gross," I said. "Where is mom?"
She popped up with her messed up makeout hair and then they both sat up to look at me, red faced and sweaty. Kim seemed more annoyed than embarrassed.
"She had to work this weekend, remember? What are you doing at home? I thought you were off on the apology tour with Paul?"
"He finished," I announced. "We're going to go on that date tonight," I said.
"Ohhh, the big date," Jared crooned. "Want me to pick out your clothes again?" he said, humoring himself. He was fully back to dopey dude Jared. I chucked a throw pillow at him, which he expertly dodged.
"No, you idiot," I was clearly irritated at that idea. "I can't believe I'm stuck with you for life."
"You love it," he snickered. Did I? I thought. To be determined.
"Whatever. You guys aren't invited on the date anymore," I jeered and stomped up the stairs.
"I think the big solo date is going to be pretty epic," he must have had insider information. "Bring a bathing suit!"
The doorbell rang an hour before our date. I groaned as a rush of anxiety ran through me and I was not ready at all. I pushed aside my sheer curtains and peaked out my window, but didn't see the motorcycle I expected. Instead I saw a small blue slightly rusty sadan that belonged to Sydney. I could hear Kim answer the door and send Syd up to my room.
Of fuck. A wave of anxiety washed through me. She was going to confront me on being a shitty friend. Normally I never backed down from a confrontation, but I just felt so… so… guilty.
I hobbled over to my bed and sat there in the middle of it, criss-crossed and barefoot. As she walked into my room I wanted to hide my face in my hair. Verbal diarrhea slipped out of my mouth unfiltered:
"I'm a shitty friend," I said nearly in tears before she was even fully through the door. I could see her clutching onto the letter that Paul placed in her mailbox.
She looked at me, her raven hair pulled back in a slick ponytail, her large eyes somewhat puffy.
She had been crying. Double fuck.
She shook her head at my statement. "What? Mallory. You are the best friend,"
Hold the fucking phone. What?!
I couldn't look her in the eye. Was she trying to sooth me? I stared at my ceiling fan, then the poster of RBG, anywhere but in her glistening eyes. She continued speaking as my eyes pin-balled around the room.
"You made that unbearable year a little more bearable. And this year you screamed at Paul in front of all his friends and your sister, and made him apologize to over 20 girls! Not because he hurt you, but because he hurt your friends."
I held my face in my hands. "But, Syd, now I'm with the guy… the guy that hurt you so badly."
She sat on the bed next to me in parallel.
"Is he that guy, Mal?" She asked.
"Cause this guy," she lifted up the letter, "who wrote me a 4 page apology isn't the same guy that hit it and quit it on me two and half years ago without saying a word. And if he was, I certainly never saw that side of him."
I looked up at her, tears welling in my eyes.
"Look, I'm not going to throw you guys a party and I don't want to regularly hangout with him or anything, but he clearly has changed, somehow, and I'm not willing to throw our solid friendship away because you're dating him. You were the most supportive friend to me. I can be that for you."
Rivers were running down my face as Sydney wrapped her arms around me.
"But I feel like I've hardly seen you lately… like you've been avoiding me…" I said in between sobs.
She nodded. "I've been going to therapy and trying to figure out exactly how I feel about everything before I engage in any conversation about it."
I pulled away from her and looked at her. I was an emotional trainwreck, and although she likely cried before, she was and had been calm during the whole conversation.
"I wish you told me… when did you start?"
"I asked my parents if I could go after Olivia so readily accepted Paul's apology and I couldn't even look at him. I mean I just wanted to rip his limbs off of him and beat him with them, Mal. That shit is too much to carry around everyday. Too much anger to hold on to forever without unpacking it. Figured I should talk to a professional and sort through it."
"Wow, Syd. That's so mature of you." She was a warrier.
She laughed and then shrugged.
"I mean, it's a process, right?" She said as she looked at me. I wasn't exactly sure what she was exactly speaking about, but likely everything. I nodded my head and gulped and I hugged her deeply.
Minutes passed and I didn't let her go. I was so grateful for her friendship.