Not way back, I threw a going-away social gathering earlier than shifting to Los Angeles. It was a dimly lit, wine-soaked send-off within the basement of a Croatian restaurant on Decrease East Facet. By hour three, I had consumed one too many glasses of orange wine and in some way ended the night time with out my high. It felt like an applicable farewell to New York: chaotic and overly intimate in that individual downtown approach.
I invited an ex-lover—or quite, somebody who was my ex in each approach besides by official title. I wasn’t clinging to something unresolved. I used to be in a cheerful relationship, and it felt grownup, even beneficiant, to supply a pleasant goodbye to somebody who had as soon as been a part of my life.
The following day, he texted me: Wouldn’t it be okay if I requested out Marie?
The phrasing was thoughtful. The sentiment, much less so.
Quick-forward a number of months, they usually’re now relationship. My finest buddy and my ex.
At first, I attempted to think about it anthropologically: How fascinating, this contemporary entanglement. However in actuality, it has modified our friendship in ways in which I might have by no means anticipated.
The second time this occurred, I had simply completed scuba diving in Hawaii. I emerged from the water—much less Baywatch, extra Loch Ness Monster—and checked my cellphone with sopping fingers. A textual content from one other shut buddy: Would you care if… You’ll be able to guess the remainder.
She needed to hook up with somebody I had dated semi-seriously the yr earlier than. “It’s not that deep,” she assured me. In fact, it already was. Because it seems, they’d been seeing one another in secret for weeks. She’d simply been too scared to inform me.
At first, I assumed: Am I cursed? Is there one thing about me that makes folks suppose I’m chill with this? Have I given off some sort of cool-girl, boundary-less power that screams, “Certain, take my exes, take my leftovers, take my toothbrush when you’re at it”?