These Days

“She is dishonest and not loyal. I just don’t want to be around the group when she’s there.”

Six sets of eyes fix upon me. I slowly blink, unfazed by the accusation.

The six-foot-something softie sits to my right; I feel his body tense. I watch as he unlocks and locks his phone, looking for a distraction from this symposium. The green faux leather couch — or is it blue? — holds the presumed guilty parties: myself, the six-foot-something softie who doesn’t like conflict, and the sweet, innocent blonde who looks like he just got done filming an episode of Baywatch.

The sweet, innocent boy is a stand-in for his best friend, The One Who Didn’t Come. He texted me earlier in the day and told me he was still deciding if he wanted to join the “gathering of the gods” as he called it, but ultimately decided it was in his best interest not to attend. Instead, the blonde boy came to listen and, when necessary, defend his best friend’s name.

Across the room, I watch the mediator sink further down into the brown pull-out sofa until only the top of his shiny, shaved head is visible from underneath his homemade Star Wars blanket. I can see him physically fade out of the conversation, his eyelids opening slower with each blink.

My best friend of 14 years — the blonde whose big personality compensates for her short stature — sits on the couch close to mine, not looking me in the eyes but rather straight ahead. She continues explaining why she doesn’t want to be around all of our mutual friends when I am there.

Her sister — the slightly taller, older, but also blonde — sits beside her, nodding in agreement to everything she says.

We had a lot to discuss as a group — five hours’ worth to be exact.

We shared our frustrations. Our disappointments. Our shortcomings.

I glance at my phone. It’s past midnight. Today is officially Christmas Eve.

That was the last time we were all together in one room.

And to think we had only met six months ago.

As the world was finding its footing with coronavirus, I was developing new relationships with people I had met one evening in May over a few games of volleyball.

One afternoon I received a phone call from the older blonde sister:

“Wanna come play volleyball tonight with some people from another church?”

Of course I said yes — I always say yes — and it would be going against my morals to turn down playing outside.

From that night on, ten of us stayed in touch. We did something every day with each other for the rest of the summer. You think I’m exaggerating? Look at my calendar.

It was the kind of summer you only see in the movies.

We filled our days with volleyball, game nights, hiking, cooking, soccer, jet skiing, kayaking, beach trips, cliff jumping, skydiving, long drives, and even longer drive-thru lines — oh, and more volleyball.

Those long drives — whether it was to the beach, to our Airbnb, to the closest Taco Bell, or simply around town — always consisted of great music.

“These Days” by Rudimental was always our end-of-the-drive song. The tune was no different than your average pop ballad on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, but it was a fan favorite. It was the, “Oh! I have one more song to play before we get there” kind of thing.

The first six upbeats of the piano would hit. Macklemore’s bouncy spoken word would pour through the speakers.

I know you moved onto someone new

The car would erupt as the beat dropped lower and Jess Glynne’s seraphic voice juxtaposed the bass. I would look in my rearview mirror and laugh at the dancing silhouettes lining the back seat. And through the hair blowing in our faces, we’d scream the lyrics.

I hope someday we’ll sit down together and laugh with each other about these days

This scene — and those first six beats — became all too familiar as the summer days passed, but it never failed to make me feel warm and immensely grateful to exist with these joyful souls surrounding me.

Summer 2020 was a dream. A beautiful dream filled with drama and adventure and miscommunication and hurt.

It’s the Fourth of July and “the group,” as we call ourselves, is celebrating at the sisters’ family home. Their spacious backyard often served as our baseball field, soccer turf, or volleyball court.

After squeezing out the last droplets of daylight, we call it a night and begin to pack up the portable volleyball net. It only takes a few minutes to disassemble — it’s basically muscle memory at this point.

I’m wrapping the net, and the events of yesterday keep replaying on a sick, sick loop in my mind.

Yesterday, a group of us went for a hike about an hour north of our town.

The abrasive guy, whose therapy often came in the form of late night drives to nowhere set to the soundtrack of blaring rock music, didn’t seem like himself. I watched as he would trail behind the group or go off on his own as the rest of us waded in the freezing water.

The stillness of the forest and the rushing waterfalls couldn’t drown out the sound of his endless, swirling thoughts.

I approached him about it and he snapped, “Just lay off, okay?” He then proceeded to fall further back in step from me.

I know I shouldn’t have kept pushing him to share what was bothering him because he clearly didn’t want that.

I was still put off by his sharp comment. Right after the hike I expressed my frustrations to the older blonde, whom I confided in often.

She encouraged me to tell him how his words made me feel. I thought about what I was going to say, and I realized I had never really shared with others how they made me feel — especially if I was hurt.

And so, as people began lighting firecrackers and dancing with sparklers, I pulled him aside.

I start, “I felt hurt yesterday by the comment you made to me.”

“You’re going to have to jog my memory.”

I roll my eyes. “I asked you what was wrong, and you told me to ‘lay off.’”

We talk for another hour or so. It turned out to be one of the most vulnerable conversations I have ever had with him — or with anyone for that matter.

High school me — no, second-semester-junior-in-college me — would suppress rather than express what caused pain.

But there I was, standing in the dark of the tree-lined, car-lined driveway, telling a boy I had just met six weeks ago, “You hurt me.”

It is through this newly learned and newly appreciated vulnerability that I am not afraid to share what I had done to garner such an accusation from the petite blonde who has stood by my side since the third grade.

I cannot speak for the six-foot-something softie or The One Who Didn’t Come because, although some of our offenses overlap, their stories are not mine to tell.

As for me: I lied. Not directly, no, but lying by omission is still a lie nonetheless. I was always worried that I would “get in trouble” by my best friend if I told her the truth, which, in retrospect, should have set off alarm bells a long time ago. But I digress.

Instead of being honest and saying, “I don’t want to hangout anymore because I want to go to so-and-so’s house instead” I’d say something like, “Yeah, I should probably go…I think my mom wants me home to help her with x, y, and z.”

When we had our one-on-one “breakup,” as I like to call it, she explained, “You’ve always been like this, coming and going as you pleased, and I had accepted that; I didn’t love you any less for it. But this summer, oh this summer, it was one lie after the other. You would say you have to go help your mom. Lie. And then I would see you at so-and-so’s house instead.”

While reflecting upon the petite blonde’s accusations, I realized I subconsciously developed that defense mechanism to avoid being controlled by her. I never felt the need to omit information from my other friends in order to — I don’t know — spare their feelings? I never felt I would get in trouble with others for living my life on a whim.

And now I find myself back on the green faux leather couch that had no right to be that comfortable on an uncomfortable night such as this.

We all had chips on our shoulders. In the name of honesty, we decided to lay everything out on the table so that, regardless of the outcome, we would have the peace of mind knowing we didn’t hold back.

Do we let bygones be bygones? Could we let bygones be bygones? Or do we need to turn the page on this once-in-a-lifetime chapter?

Regarding my one-on-one relationships with the sisters, the ones whom I had known for over a decade, we decided to part ways. I am growing and they are growing, but it is no longer a part of our lives we can walk through together.

At different points in the night, my mind shuffled through the best days of the past few months. The background song to my mental highlight reel? You guessed it.

But a certain line in the song hit me differently.

Too young to feel this old, watching us both turn cold…And I know it ain’t pretty when the fire burns out

The song describes lost love, fleeting moments, and the bittersweet emotions that come with each. And the reason we fell in love with that song is because we knew every moment we spent together was inevitably slipping through our fingers, no matter how tightly we grasped.

The title of the album is “Toast to Our Differences.” Do you see the irony? Because we as a group could no longer toast to our differences, for their growth has outpaced our own.

It’s been a little over two months since The Talk, but I can proudly look back and say, “These days were good” while in the same breath I will give a hearty toast to our differences.

And maybe, just maybe, someday we’ll be able to sit down together — perhaps even on that green faux leather couch — and laugh with each other about these days.