“YOU AND TABITHA formed a friendship,” Deveraux says. She makes friendship sound like some sort of disease. Tabby’s the goddamn disease.
“I guess so,” I say. I swear, the more questions she asks, the fewer syllables I can manage.
“She confided in you,” Deveraux says. “She trusted you.”
This time, I’m struck silent. She used me, I want to scream, but Tabby has already used up all my words along with the rest of me.
She came into the Stop & Shop and told me she was going to break up with Mark that night. I told her to come over after for a beer, but she never showed up, so I figured it was going badly. I realized I didn’t even have her phone number to text her and ask.
She wanted it that way.
Here’s what happened next, and it’s the truth. She came over two nights later, marched right in and sat on my shitty corduroy couch. “He won’t let me break up with him. He talked me out of it.”
Mark never even mentioned it. Whenever we talked, things were golden with him and Tabby. He was so full of shit. So determined to remain the goddamn golden boy for the rest of his life.
“I just wish he was more like you sometimes.” She bit her bottom lip. “He’s condescending and doesn’t listen. You’re the best guy. You’d make an amazing boyfriend.”
“Uh—” I had no idea what to say. She was full-on hitting on me. She even slipped out of her sweater, and was just wearing this tiny shirt underneath. I wanted her so damn badly.
“He’s going to be difficult to get rid of,” she said, staring at her fingernails.
I swear, those were her words. As if he was something terminal, like cancer.
“Get rid of?” I echoed, sitting down beside her. I pushed a piece of hair off her face. She let me.
“Maybe you can help me with that.”
“Help you how?”
“You know him the best.” She put her head on my shoulder, which made me practically stop breathing. “And besides, you’re smart.”
Nobody ever called me smart. She fed me like that, in these little bites, like she knew exactly what I needed to hear. We were made for each other, I decided, because nobody got me like she did. She fell asleep on my couch that night, in my arms. It was more intimate than sex.
She was wrong about me being smart. She was the mastermind the whole time.