Freaks and Other Friends

My five year college reunion is this June. I know, five years, big deal. But my college is very big on togetherness and I suppose a lot of my friends from school will be there. The Object of My Affection and I will probably go. Rock Starr will want to hang out with his former roommates while I'll probably want to hide from mine.

My Best Friend of the Ever Changing Name (Eva for short) and I will probably drink a lot and make fun of people. My fear of going to reunion, however, is that I'll run into someone who might make me pretty uncomfortable.

My freshman year I met a girl who became my best friend. We were inseparable. We did everything together. We disliked the same people, had stupid nicknames for each other, had a lot of the same interests. Then I met Omar. And she didn't like that. She did, however, decide she liked Omar. Clearly, Omar stuck with me. I mean, hello, we're getting married. I don't think dating Former Best Friend ever occurred to him. But while all my other friends, including Eva, knew that FBF was on a mission to break Omar and I up, Omar and I remained oblivious and unhappy. Omar and I would have an argument and I would go tell FBF. FBF would pretend to take my side and cluck at me sympathetically, but as soon as I left her house, she'd go see Omar and tell him that she was there for him and that I could be difficult but she understood him.

Omar is a good man. Always has been. Always will be. When he's friends with someone, he's friends with them forever. You could never ask for a better person to have on your team than Omar. And that fucking girl took advantage of his friendship to try and worm her way between us. Every time Omar and I had problems she was there encouraging me to think twice about staying with him or encouraging him to consider whether or not he was being fair to me and himself by staying together. Clearly, she was not nearly as good as it as she thought was and she was in no way successful.

The only reason I found out about most of this was because she tried to do the same thing to Eva, except Eva caught on a hell of a lot faster than I did. While I was defending some of FBF's actions to Eva one night (because I was still in the dark and naively believed that Eva was misinterpreting FBF's behavior), Eva finally told me the whole story (this was after we had graduated). I cried for three hours after I got off the phone with her. When I asked Eva why no one had told me (and like I said, everyone had known), Eva said it was because no one wanted to hurt my feelings or alienate me because they felt sorry for me that my best friend was such a fucking bitch.

Because of the shit FBF had pulled, Eva and I became closer and I can now say that she's my closest female friend. So in some ways, I'm grateful for all that because I wouldn't trade Eva's friendship for anything. But the thought of FBF both enrages me and saddens me because I spent some of the best times of my life with her. We traveled all through Europe together when we were exchange students, did crazy shit in college that sounds stupid now but was funny at the time (tag in the quad, hide and seek in the library, midnight margaritas, Bruce Willis movie marathons, dying hair while drunk), and took road trips that we would shriek with laughter about for days afterwards.

After all this shit with Eva happened, we heard from other friends from school that FBF had some emotional problems none of us had known about and that those had probably been a huge factor in her fixations on the boyfriends of her friends. So when I heard she was sick, I was pretty relieved because it meant that most, if not all, of the times we'd been so close in college had been real. It would have sucked to think back on all those times and think that they were fake for her because they were very real for me. For three years, I felt closer to her than Baby Sis in some ways. I talked to her about stuff I didn't talk to anyone about. Finding out that she had badmouthed me around campus in the last couple months before graduation had been devastating and humiliating and infuriating. So finding out she was borderline crazy was actually a relief.

So now here's my question. If she comes to reunion, how the hell do I treat her if I see her? Do I acknowledge the fact she fucked me over or do I just greet her politely like an acquaintance? I haven't spoken to her in four and a half years. To be perfectly honest, there are days I do miss her. She made me laugh more than anyone else except Omar and Baby Sis. Part of me doesn't believe she'll come to reunion. And part of me has a feeling she'll show up to make trouble.

Omar has counseled forgiveness here. But Omar, while affected by her nefarious plot and angered by it (he hates being manipulated), didn't grieve over that lost friendship like I did. Eva says to hell with her and moved on. If she's still hurt by FBF's behavior, she keeps it to herself. There are some things Eva and I do not discuss and FBF is at the top of that list (so is the fact Omar had a serious crush on her once, but that was before he ever met me). So I can't really talk to Eva about this except to say do you think she'll be there?

I don't know. I do know I'll hang out with Eva and Omar's roommates and a couple of my old roommates and friends and we'll get drunk and reminisce (which we do every time we all see each other at weddings and at our annual camping trip in July that we all go on) and we'll probably have a great time. But I know that whole weekend I'll wonder if she came to reunion and if she didn't I'll wonder if it was because she was embarrassed to face us or if she just didn't care enough to come. And if she doesn't come, I'll be really, really relieved.

Is that petty?