Friendship road

“I think this all just loops back to your father, Cherish.” 

Jon was looking at me deeply, with concern and a mix of something else, impossible to place. I named it love.

In the early years Cherish would respond flirtatiously, good naturedly, maybe a bit greedily. In the early years, Cherish though that a text from Jon meant she was allowed to exist, or that she mattered enough to. 

That was then; now, Cherish pushed back.

“I don’t think one man could commit all this destruction. She waved to herself, a tall, thin woman dressed in a huge sweatshirt and nice enough looking jeans. 

Jon nods, sympathetic to her situation, always.

“Maybe you need to try going to church again.”

Jon always says this too. He’s a bit of a repeating record, but Cheri psh is too obsessed with him to notice. She’s too obsessed with him to notice anything about him, in fact, and has instead superimposed an image of her ideal husband onto the blankest man she could. There is nothing about her admiration in him that is rooted in real. 

But sometimes, it’s different, and they connect. Cherish probably, still, talking too much. Jon probably, still talking about God or some other variation of father. But sometimes, it felt like they were connecting much, much deeper. Soul mate level deep, if that could even be possible. 

.

Jon was overly happy, Cherish was often depressed. 

Jon was highly manipulative, Cherish was in love with someone she could not force to like her. 

In a way, they are a match made in heaven. 

In a wrong way. In an unbalanced way. 

Cherish started smoking weed, at first, to hang out with Jon. Then, she started smoking weed because she liked it. She liked it so much she would go alone to the popular smoke shop. 

Whenever Jon found out he would run over to her, even in the dead of night, and “sesh.” Jon and Cherish had good conversations here. Actual, real, conversations. Short-lived, vital, foundational conversations. 

“Sup” 

“Yo”

Or 

“Yo”

“Sup”

Cherish loved the way she saw herself with Jon, but at the 6  year mark of their 10 year friendship, she began to notice that he hated the way he saw himself with her. 

She didn’t believe in God. But Jon could never understand any of Cherish’s issues with fathers, or men. The gender war divided them, but it felt like eventually something would. 

He stopped masturbating in year 8, and then the divide just grew. 

“Can we go to the beach? I have no way to go with, and I miss going with you.”

“Nah, not today.”

“Tomorrow? Nah, I don’t really swing that way.”

“What way? By the beach”

“Yea with all the immodest dressing and slutty women. I’m past my prime.”

“Omg, wait…is it because”

“Yea because it makes me horny.”

“Don’t you miss the beach?”

“No.”

Cherish felt that “No” rocket all the way into her heart. She felt it lodge too, stuck. 

“I think God is making you selfish.”

Cherish finally said, and turned on her heel.

“We drove together,” Jon yelled, but she never turned back around. 

Most friends fade away after baby and marriage, and Cherish was ashamed that she thought she wouldn’t be the same. But now things were changing, he was changing. She wasn’t changing, she was staying the same in the hopes he decided that he did want her after all. 

Eventually Jon met a woman, and even though there was no reason at all, Cherish resented that woman and still wanted Jon to choose her as his potential wife. Her jealously grew at the poor young woman, who was 23 and perfect, and stealing her man out from beneath her. 

But she was also mad at Jon because what in the world, was he at 30, doing with a 23 year old?

Cherish wanted to be her, and she wanted her to be Cherish. 

Cherish was not in her right mind. 

Not Cherish’s finest moment, not her weakest either.

You know how it can be. 

A girl is just a girl. 

Even if she’s subtly obsessive and bi-polar. 

Even if there is another girl in the way. 

But Cherish is not just any girl, she is Cherish, and Cherish does what no one says. So, she knew that she couldn’t handle any more of this kind of jealously. 

“Surely, I will end up doing something I regret.”

Cherish kept thinking with a shudder.

She knew that something had to end,, and so she chose the relationship. 

That is hers’ with Jon, not Jon’s with his Emily. 

So, Cherish, sent three images, one to him, two to his wife. Her, Cherish, beaver out, front and center, for the world to see. 

The bridge burned quick, it was magnificent to see – even though Cherish never watched it burn with me. 

She was too busy finally seeing Jon for what he was, a conventional dud. 

A conventional dud who, like the rest of them, deserved better and to be left alone.