"So, this whole time, you been avoiding her, but you're the one that cheated?" I asked Charlie. She was notorious for 'accidentally' omitting key parts of her relationship stories, her latest being forgetting to tell me that she was the one to buy another woman a drink at a bar but painting her girlfriend as the villain.
"If that's considered cheating, the world is definitely doomed," she threw a few pieces of popcorn into her mouth, dropping one on floor. Clutter was something that triggered her, so the popcorn was off of my carpet faster than it had landed there.
"Would you want her buying another girl a drink?" I asked, hypothetically.
"Hell nah," she admitted.
"So why the hell would it be okay for you to it?!" I playfully sent my hand up the backside of her head, making her snap her neck my direction. She pursed her lips at me, knowing she wasn't going to hit me back. Is that a dark pro of PTSD?
"She was on bullshit! If she act single, imma act single-er! Simple as that," she said, adjusting herself on my beige couch. We were half-watching the latest episode of The Office, but were more engaged in our side conversation, using the episode as background noise.
"Y'all just need to break up. It's giving very single from both parties. Like, why keep going through the trouble?" Ayanna was Charlie's high school sweetheart, and the person she came out of the closet with, so she explained to me the soul-tie that had formed between them those years ago. Even if they try to let go, they find themselves together again.
"Ion know, lesbians don't like being single. I like having somebody I can fuck when I feel like it."
"Okay, so friends with benefits is the obvious answer," I suggested.
"No, Indica. Feelings is already involved so that's a no-go. I would have to be friends with benefits with somebody I don't have feelings for."
"Okay, so find someone you don't have feelings for."
"That would mean I would have to go out and be social."
"Okay, so go out and be social," I suggested again.
She squinted her eyes at me, analyzing the angle I was coming from. "Are you being a smart ass right now?"
My lips formed into a smile as she revealed my play. I had this conversation with Charlie fifty times before and I was getting tired of hearing it, at least this way I was getting a new laugh out of a story I had heard a million times already. She launched the pillow closest to her at my head and I dodged it, making her more irritated.
"I think we just need to toxic each other out. Like, keep going back until we just physically can't do it no more. That's what it's looking like."
"That sounds exhausting. No, thank you," I shook my head.
"You say that like you interested in a relationship," she looked at me with 'be so for real' eyes. "You can't say shit to me until you at least go on a date."
"You know I can't do that, Char."
"I do know, but you really plan to live in yo trauma for the rest of yo life? I don't want to sound insensitive but you are not your past. You got a lot of memories you could be out here making, Indica," she said with softened eyes. Charlie had been with me through majority of the trauma I went though. She supports my decisions to keep quiet about it and she never pushes me to talk when I don't want to, despite her inner therapist fighting for its life. She's been the most patient and kind friend I could have ever asked for, and I'm grateful she's empathetic to my situation.
"I'm trying. That's the whole reason I go to my support group."
"How was group yesterday, I meant to ask?"
