The night my boyfriend’s best friend sat on his lap in front of me, smiled like she had won something, and then started opening the birthday present I had bought him, I finally understood why people do stupid things when they feel humiliated. I wish I could say I rose above it. Instead, I let one ugly little thought grow into a decision that nearly destroyed three relationships at once.
Chapter 1
Evan and I had been together for eight months by then, which was long enough for me to know he took his coffee black after noon and hated sleeping with the bedroom door closed. It was apparently not long enough for me to have an opinion about Claire Donnelly, the woman he had called his best friend since high school. Whenever she crossed a line, Evan gave me the same explanation: “She’s basically family.”
Claire appeared everywhere. Evan and I would plan dinner for two, and halfway through appetizers she would stroll toward our table saying she happened to be nearby. Sometimes Evan had invited her without telling me, and sometimes she had texted him and he had said, “Sure, come join us,” as if a date could become a group outing with no discussion.
At first I tried to be reasonable. I was forty-one, divorced once, and old enough to know jealousy could make intelligent people ridiculous. Claire had known Evan for twenty-five years, and I wasn’t going to compete with childhood memories, old teachers, first cars, and stories that began with, “Remember senior year?”
The problem was that Claire seemed determined to make everything a competition anyway.
If I ordered an appetizer Evan didn’t like, she would laugh and say, “See? This is why you still need me. I know what you’ll actually eat.” If I wanted to leave a party early because I had work the next morning, she would grin at him and say, “You used to stay out until sunrise with me. Guess somebody finally domesticated you.”
Everything came wrapped as a joke. That was her genius.
Nothing was cruel enough to justify a public argument, but almost everything was sharp enough to hurt.
One night after Claire had inserted herself into another dinner and spent twenty minutes telling a story that apparently proved no one knew Evan the way she did, I brought it up in the car. I was calm because I wanted him to hear me instead of defending himself.
“I don’t like the way she talks to me,” I said.
Evan kept his eyes on the road. “What do you mean?”
“She compares herself to me constantly. It’s like she needs me to know she was here first.”
He sighed. “That’s just Claire.”
I hated the answer immediately.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“She does it with everybody.”
“So everybody being annoyed is supposed to make me feel better?”
He glanced over. “There’s nothing going on between us.”
“I didn’t say there was.”
“Then what exactly are we talking about?”
That was the moment I realized Evan believed the only possible relationship problem involving Claire would be sex. If they weren’t sleeping together, then as far as he was concerned, the friendship was innocent and I was overreacting.
I tried again. “I’m saying I feel pushed out when she’s around. And I think she enjoys pushing me out.”
He told me Claire had helped him through his mother’s illness, two bad breakups, and years of family trouble. Then he added, “None of my other girlfriends ever had a problem with her.”
I actually laughed.
“So I’m the problem.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s close.”
We went in circles until I said, “Forget it.”
I didn’t.
Over the next month, I noticed everything. Claire touching Evan’s shoulder when she laughed, then looking at me. Claire calling him during our dates about things that could have been text messages. Claire finishing old stories with, “You had to be there,” while smiling straight at me.
Then came Evan’s birthday.
He had a small party at his condo outside Providence. I spent the afternoon helping him clean, moving folding chairs into the living room, arranging food, and pretending I wasn’t nervous about how the night might go.
Claire arrived late carrying a bottle of bourbon and an envelope.
She insisted Evan open her gift in front of everybody.
Inside were two tickets to see a band he loved.
Evan stared at them. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” Claire said. “And before you ask, I’m obviously going with you.”
Then she looked at me.
“Girlfriends never appreciate good music anyway.”
A couple people laughed.
Evan gave her the strained smile he used whenever she went too far. “Megan likes music.”
“Not like we do.”
Small enough to deny.
Sharp enough to land.
Later, Claire wandered into the crowded living room and announced there were no chairs. There were two empty ones six feet away.
She ignored them and sat directly on Evan’s lap.
I stared at her.
Evan froze.
Claire wrapped an arm casually around his shoulder and continued her conversation as though she had taken a perfectly normal seat.
After several miserable seconds, Evan stood and pointed toward an empty chair. “Here. Sit there.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Oh my God. Relax.”
I said nothing because it was his birthday and because if I started talking, thirty people were going to learn some new vocabulary.
Then I brought out the gift I had bought him, an expensive set of woodworking tools he had mentioned months earlier.
Before Evan could finish thanking me, Claire reached over and tore open part of the wrapping paper.
“Excuse me?” I said.
She blinked. “I’m helping.”
“You’re opening somebody else’s present.”
She stopped, but the damage was done.
Evan finished unwrapping it and smiled. “This is exactly the set I wanted.”
Before we could have even one normal moment, Claire leaned over.
“That’s cute. Very practical. Mine’s more of an experience, but cute.”
Something inside me cracked.
I laughed, but there was nothing amused about it.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, say it.”
Evan stepped between us. “Can we please not do this tonight?”
That hurt almost more than Claire’s behavior.
Somehow, after months of her disrespecting me, the problem had become two women causing trouble while Evan stood in the middle asking for peace.
I smiled tightly.
“Sure. Happy birthday.”
I walked into the kitchen before I embarrassed myself.
When the last guest finally left, I turned to Evan.
“Why did it take you so long to make her get off your lap?”
He rubbed both hands over his face. “Seriously?”
“Yes. Seriously.”
“I didn’t want to humiliate her in front of everybody.”
“So I’m supposed to be humiliated quietly?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, what isn’t fair is acting like I’m crazy every time she crosses a line.”
We argued until nearly two in the morning. Evan said he hadn’t understood how bad things were because he thought I was complaining about Claire’s comments, not her physical behavior. I asked him how many separate categories of disrespect I needed to submit before he understood the general concept.
He finally snapped.
“She’s my oldest friend. I’m not throwing away twenty-five years because you don’t like her personality.”
“I never asked you to throw her away,” I said. “I asked you to act like you’re actually in a relationship with me.”
We went to bed angry.
The next morning, Evan apologized for minimizing my feelings, though the apology arrived wrapped in explanations. He promised that if Claire did something “obvious” again, he would address it.
That word stayed with me.
Obvious.
Apparently, I still needed evidence.
Two weeks later we were at a friend’s house when I noticed Daniel Reed standing alone in the kitchen. Daniel was part of our wider social circle, a quiet software engineer with a dry sense of humor.
He was also the man Claire had secretly wanted for years.
Everybody knew it except, apparently, Daniel.
Claire always denied liking him, but she watched every woman who spoke to him as if she were monitoring suspicious activity.
I looked at Daniel.
Then I looked at Claire across the room.
And one ugly thought slid into my mind.
Just once, I wanted her to feel what I felt.
I walked over to Daniel and started talking.
That was all.
Five minutes would have been enough.
Five minutes might have made my petty little point and ended there.
Instead, Daniel smiled at me and said, “Nobody ever asks about this stuff.”
And I smiled back.
Across the room, Claire was watching us.
For the first time in months, she looked uncomfortable.
I should have felt ashamed.
Instead, I felt powerful.
