And as much as it hurt me, the only thing I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy, even if it was at the expense of my own happiness. After I picked myself up off the floor a few months after you left, I just repeated the phrase “it’s okay, she’s happier now” over and over to myself.

Then it dawned on me when you fell into my arms, maybe I was wrong. Maybe this entire time, you haven’t been happier. And I’m the reason. Our friends sided with me this time, and marginalized you as some sort of traitor to the crown. That couldn’t have been easy for you.

As I held you there on my couch, I reveled in your touch once again, only to feel guilty that here I was comforting my former lover while waiting for my current lover to come by and spend the day with me until she was ready for her date tonight with her future lover. It’s like it was some big cosmological joke orchestrated by the gods of love and confusion together, to test the boundaries of my sanity.

I felt you hold on to me tightly, the way you used to when I would envelop and soothe you so that you wouldn’t have to pop one of your Xanax after a bad day at the studio back when we first got together. But I certainly wasn’t prepared for the admission you uttered against my shoulder while I stroked your back.

A mistake? Oh God, Tina, please don’t think of it like that. Not now, anyway. Not when I have finally broken away from the hold you placed on my heart and opened it up to someone new. I wasn’t ready for that at all. I wouldn’t be able to deal with some sort of glimmer of false hope right now.

For a split second, I thought perhaps you were just being selfish because you knew I was seeing someone now, whereas before, you were the only one of us who had moved on to a new relationship. The thought was gone as quickly as it came though when I answered you.

As I pulled back and stroked your hair and face, I thought I saw a flicker of desire, but before it could reel me in as it had so many times in the past, I heard the front screen door creak open. I looked up and there she was, staring at me with curious blue eyes.