I hear the ping of my phone & I know she’s responding to our group text. The reply is a GIF making fun of a pair of shorts I love. Amy then responds with her own GIF, & I reply that they’re both assholes because that’s how our relationship is. Thinking back now I still don’t really know what happened. It’s been awhile, almost three years but when I really try to figure it out, I can’t. We were dumb, I guess. I know I was but I’m different. I am emotional with a capital E. A lot of time I let those emotions get the better of me, as I’m pretty sure was the case in this situation. Break-ups suck but I moved on and now? We’re back together! It took about two and half years for one of us to pull our heads out of our asses but it finally happened. Stephen became fast friends with an adorable kid who was a few months older than him while he was hanging out at my parent’s condo. We’ll call him B. Fast forward six months, we ended up moving into the same condos & meeting B’s mom, Luther. Luther was a hoot & we ended up becoming fast friends with her as well, something that I find rare in adulthood. Even rarer is that Amy & I both liked Luther & enjoyed her company. We shared a lot of the same interests & have experienced a lot of the same joys & hardships. We understood each other, we laughed a lot when we were together. Luther & B liked doing the same things we did. We frequented Turkey Creek doing hikes together, spent Sundays at the lake after stopping for ice cream, & obsessively shopped at Goodwill. We watched each other’s boys, went to Legoland, & made holiday treats together. See, I told you, we had a good thing going. The friendship was easy until it wasn’t. I honestly don’t know what happened but it sucked. It was hard to explain to Stephen why we weren’t spending every weekend with B & his mom anymore. The “break-up” happened right before Amy & I got married & I regret to this day that Luther & B weren’t there to celebrate with us. Luther spent a good amount of time calming me down during wedding planning, also making fun of me & my obsessiveness. I’m sincerely sad we don’t have wedding memories with them. A few weeks after we bought our house, Luther married the love of her life. I obsessively stalked her wedding pictures. She was a beautiful, simple bride. Luther is not extra, it’s one of the reasons she & Amy have bonded over their mutual eye rolling of my “super extraness.” I ended up messaging her (after Amy had reached out first.) It was as if no time had passed. We both agreed we should have been at each other’s weddings. A lot of time had passed, a lot of adulting had been done in our years apart. That conversation took place in April & we continued to talk but we didn’t have a chance to get together until November. Of course they boys were overjoyed to see each other and I’ll admit it was awkward at first but when the night was over, it felt like things were back to normal. I knew it wouldn’t totally be because part of the easiness of our friendship was living in such close proximity. Luther lives over the bridge now & neither of us have a pool. No more drunken pool days for us! We’ll make it work though… we’re happy she’s back. We missed her more than she’ll ever know. Tell me your friend “break-up” stories! In Beyond the Lightning Bugs, Lib has a falling out with her sister-in-law who she thought was a friend. Whitney was deceitful and ends up turning the tables on her “friend.”
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