After days of waiting with crappy weather and even crappier company, Helena was ecstatic to get home. Kelly had driven her to distraction, talking non-stop about Jim, football and work. She regarded everything Helena said as though it had a double meaning. Sometimes she wondered if Jim’s man flu was just a ploy to escape his neurotic fiancée. Helena wouldn’t blame him. A part of her wished she had caught it, just so she might get some peace and quiet too. He was beginning to mend on the last day of the trip and when he said they would need to talk when they got back, her heart went into palpitations.
Helena waited all of five seconds after the two of them had walked in the front door to ask, “Is now a good time to talk?”
He sighed, placed his bags down and sat on the couch. His body language, his manner all told her this wasn’t going to be good, but her heart bounced around like a box full of puppies and told her it would be fine. She joined Jim on the couch, leaving a little space, not too far, but enough to stop her from jumping him right there and then.
Jim still looked a little worse for wear, but at least he had some colour back in his cheeks. “Hels. Shit, I don’t know what to say. It’s over.”
Her brain tried to comprehend the words he’d said. “What? You and Kelly?” she asked.
“No, you and me.”
A strange, unbelieving silence followed. She withdrew along the sofa. A familiar disassociation called to her and she forced it away with all her gumption.
“What?”
“I can’t keep doing this. Whatever this is.” He had a hardness to his eyes. It was an expression she wasn’t used to.
“I don’t understand.”
He shook his head, “I’ll find a place…”
Anger smashed through the gathering fog in her mind. “What?” Helena sprang up off the couch. “You can’t break up with me when we’re not even together! What we have is more than that. It can’t end.”
“It has to.”
“Bullshit it does. What, you want to marry Kelly? Please. You know you sent her the wrong message, that proposal was meant for me.”
“What?” he sounded rattled. Good.
“Shepherd and annoying, it was meant to say stupid and annoying and that was meant for me because you find me stupid and annoying, but you also love me and want to marry me.”
A smile crept onto his face and he pushed it away immediately. She could see his inner turmoil.
“You sent me a message that night telling me you were breaking up with me and didn’t love me. That we were wrong for each other. I think you meant that for Kelly.” He was in denial, but she could see the truth in his eyes.
“I was drunk.”
“You told me that night on the phone you didn’t want to marry her. You said you loved someone else.” She could see him trying his hardest to find a comeback, but he couldn’t. “So, who do you love, Jim? Who else do you kiss and make love to like you did with me? I’d love to meet her.”
“Maybe I don’t love you. Maybe it’s all just selfish manipulations like you said the other day. Maybe it’s all just been a scam to get you into bed.”
She raised her eyebrows, “Wow, we’ve been best friends for what, almost twenty years. That whole time you’ve been working an angle? If so, wow, you truly are a master manipulator. Though, in truth, I’ve slept with guys for buying me beers, so you could just have done that too.”
He watched her then. His eyes burning into hers. His tone was filled with disgust. “Hels listen to me. This, us, it’s over. I don’t love you. You know when I went up to the mine, your boss told me about what you got up to up there, that you had slept with half the miners, that you did it for practically nothing, a lollipop for a blowjob, suck for a suck…”
The slap came hard and fast, the sting in her palm was nothing compared to that in her heart. Jim took it, his eyes still locked on hers. “At least Kelly is not a slut.”
The sting was gone now, replaced by nothing. Numbness. This is what death must be like, she thought. Those words had been so foreign coming out of Jim’s mouth. It was like a horror film when the child talks in a deep demonic voice. She did not want to slap him again; she did not want to touch him again for as long as she lived. She never wanted to see him again.
Shaking, Helena found her car keys, grabbed her already packed suitcase and walked out the door. Everything was silent, everything was dead. Twenty years of friendship and love, laughter and tears obliterated by a few words.
She managed to get into the car and drive away before the uncontrollable weeping began.
*****
He had done it. He knew why, and he knew it was the right thing to do. But it was still the worst few minutes of his life. Typical Hels, she had fought tooth and nail to the end. God, she amazed him, it filled him with the certainty that one day she would be okay. One day, but not today. She would never forgive him, and he would never forgive himself, but it was a small price to pay in the bigger scheme of things. He didn’t need the charade of an engagement anymore. Figuring, he couldn’t possibly feel any worse, he picked up the phone and dialled Kelly’s number.
“Jim, hi,” she said.
He got straight to the point. “Sorry Kelly, I won’t be marrying you.” There was a stunned silence. “You can keep the ring,” he added.
“I don’t want it. You love her, don’t you? You should never have asked me to marry you.”
“I didn’t.”
“What?”
“I meant to send that message to her. Sorry,” he added the last part and knew how pathetic it sounded.
“You know she’s far too good for you, Jim. Far, far too good.”
“I know,” he said, then hung up the phone.