Sophie and Ryan

Sophie sat down beside Ryan after calling her father. She was waiting for him to pick her up from the airport.

Ryan and Sophie had just returned from a week-long trip to Paris. They had seen and taken in every sight and sound of the city of love – from the fancy baguettes, to the hundred-year-old wine, to the mimes in the street, to the countless number of tourists crowding around the Eiffel Tower, down to the very last streetlamp that went off and the moths that were drawn to it.

Sophie twiddled her thumbs as she sat next to Ryan. She realized that in ten minutes things would change. They would go their separate ways and forget everything that happened in the past week, in the past year. They would go home to their separate lives and pretend nothing happened. She wasn’t quite sure if she was ready to accept that yet – but then again, most days in their relationship were like that. Every time they met was like the first time because they would often forget what had happened the last time they saw each other. Anecdotes became funnier the thirtieth time they were repeated because they were received with as much attention as the first.

Sophie and Ryan met two years ago, yet neither of them could recall how or when. All they could remember was the semester that changed things between them. First it had just been the regular hang outs, between friends, nothing more. A dinner here and there, an inside joke here and there, but it started turning into a regular occurrence, which sometimes extended into the wee hours of the morning.

Just in the right light, with a minimal amount of sleep, endless peals of laughter, a comforting pat on the back here and there, some light jazz music, a few glasses of wine, and a general enjoyment of companionship once in awhile, suddenly it was the right mood. It was no longer just a casual hang out, at least for Sophie anyway. Suddenly an accidental brush of the hand needed to be accompanied or followed simultaneously with an apology because Sophie felt something. It was something uncontrollable and made her feel uncomfortable. Suddenly the occasional accidental glance stolen at Ryan’s face wasn’t quite so occasional or accidental anymore. Sophie had attached some sort of value to the lines and scars on Ryan’s face. She would notice how things would affect those lines and how the contours would move into a smile, a frown, or a pensive look. The lines were constantly moving and changing shape.

Sophie smiled as she remembered the one drunken night at a club downtown. For Ryan suddenly that night wasn’t just a night nursing a glass of wine and pondering what ifs just like any other night. It was a night of fleshing out the two dimensional skeleton of a what if and watching it take solid form. But for Sophie it hadn’t been just any old passing what if. It had been a what if that had passed through her mind several times and had already had the opportunity to solidify. Sophie could only vaguely remember what it was like to cuddle with someone, kiss, and hold their hand for one night, have them whisper their fetish into your ear and laugh a little, then feel comfortable enough to tell him she was a virgin. What Sophie didn’t expect was for Ryan to rebuke her for being so sexually inexperienced. Sophie remembered more what it was like to fast forward to two weeks later and see him look at another girl the same way he had looked at you that night. It was a sick feeling, realizing that you were in essence, your good friend’s one night stand. In a way, she knew that Ryan regretted that night, that he had felt it was a mistake. And it hurt still, to have stuck around timidly and wishfully thinking that she wanted to care for him and hold him and love him, but to be constantly reminded of the fact that he was not looking for anything more than that. It hurt more still to see how quickly another girl removed his doubts.

Sophie remembered still, Ryan’s attempt to make amends by buying her a cupcake yet not making the effort to give it to her. Ryan’s sudden efforts to establish boundaries had come too late, and was met with nothing but alarm and disappointment on Sophie’s part.

Sophie met someone new, one night in another city. She felt liberated and happy for once, to realize that someone’s feelings could actually be genuine and concrete. It wasn’t a constant struggle and a constant debate for someone to accept and legitimize how they felt about her. She remembered telling Ryan about him and how happy he had been for her.

But it was that damn alcohol. Sophie remembered that sinking feeling when she realized the only time Ryan was going to be honest with her was when his systemic circulation was pumped full of ethanol. It was the only time he would tell her how her moving on made him sad, or how he still continued to wonder what if. It was every other sober moment that he held his composure and locked these types of thoughts away. It was sad still to realize that while he was telling her this, there was someone out there who genuinely cared and loved him. The nail in the coffin was when Ryan brushed aside all of these statements as general drunken chatter. Again, Sophie felt cheap and used, for the only moments of weakness, moments when Ryan showed vulnerability to her was when he was intoxicated, and those were the only moments she ever received from him. She couldn’t understand how the ethanol diminished the situation – it was apparently okay to abuse Sophie’s feelings and affections when Ryan was drunk. For while she had the stolen moments from Ryan, at the end of the day, it was not she who he thought of first, she would always be the last thought, the afterthought. Sophie was almost upset to realize that the efforts she had put into moving up and away had been completely destroyed. All because of one drunken night when her friend could do nothing but selfishly overstep the careful boundaries they had taken months to rebuild.

Though being one of the people that Ryan called and ran scenarios in his life by, in the end, every statement commending their friendship would always be accompanied by one letting Sophie know that she was just one of many girls. There was absolutely nothing special about their friendship, she was not a special girl, and she should never think that. It was replaceable and she should never forget that. How long it had taken for Sophie to build up her confidence again, and to have it broken down by Ryan, someone who claimed to be her friend.

Sophie remembered rehearsing lines in her head of what she should say to Ryan if she ever worked up the courage. She should leave him. She should turn around, walk away, and never look back, never remember his name. For in a way, she knew that they had built a very terrible dependency on each other. Sophie remembered thinking to herself sometimes, wondering why Ryan was calling her to ask about something so trivial, or something so substantial – shouldn’t he be asking his girlfriend this?

But that’s not to say that Sophie was equally selfish. She never wanted to hear about her. She never wanted to meet her, and her eyebrows were often raised every time Ryan brought her up.

Sophie reached down to grasp the handle of her suitcase and walked out the door into the sunrise. Time to forget.