Best Friend's Ex Box Set

“I see.”

“What? Are you saying I have a problem?” I felt defensive and resented his insinuation. “I don’t, you know. I don’t have a problem.”

“Uh huh,” he nodded without saying anything.

“I don’t!” I protested. “I party on the weekends and I attend class and get good grades! I’m not a screw-up who can’t control herself.”

From behind his dark glasses, Brian looked at me without saying a word.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry,” I quickly apologized. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Of course you did,” he said with a shrug. “But you’re not talking about me, you’re talking about you.”

“I just meant that I have a handle on what I’m doing and it’s not getting in the way of my classes,” I explained. “But I can see where it might be a good idea not to do this every weekend.”

“Your call,” he said as he sipped from his steaming Styrofoam cup. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t wish I could party sometimes. I do. It’s just that the consequences are so awful that I know that if I did, I’d probably wind up in jail—or worse.”

“It’s that bad for you?” I asked as I reached for a berry.

“It’s that bad,” he affirmed.

“Well, it’s not that bad for me,” I said. “I don’t drink to avoid anything, it’s more like…”

“Like you use it to become someone else when being plain old you isn’t good enough?” he finished.

“Yeah, it’s a lot like that,” I admitted. “Sometimes I just want to escape from my own skin and be someone else. Someone who is totally not me.”

“I get it,” he affirmed. “My problem was that I drank because I never wanted to be myself and alcohol was the only way to avoid being me.”

“I don’t want to avoid being me all the time, I just drink when I feel like I’m becoming the me I used to be,” I admitted.

“Either way, there are days I still have to fight to hold on and accept that I’m the me that I am right now—even when I don’t like that me,” he said.

“Well, I can assure you that the you that you’ve become is still not missing out on much in terms of the aftereffects,” I said with a grim look.

“Oh, I recall those mornings,” he laughed. “Somehow the memories never really go away. Maybe that’s a blessing in disguise.”

“Maybe…” I responded. “How did you get past these awful mornings? What did you do instead?”

“That’s when I really developed a love of the great outdoors,” Brian said brightly.

“Weren’t you always in the outdoors in the Navy?” I asked as I ate another strawberry.

“I’ve always loved nature, but the SEALs training wasn’t really about being ‘one with nature’,” he explained. “We spent a lot of time outside, but it was less about appreciating the surroundings and more about defending the territory or whatever.”

“Or whatever?” I questioned. I was genuinely interested in what he’d done and seen while in the service, but I didn’t know how to ask about it without sounding like a gawking jerk.

“Yeah, whatever,” he said firmly, closing the door on that line of inquiry. “SEALs training is all about rescue and survival tactics, so I learned a lot about how to live on very little food and how to navigate my way out of just about any location on the face of the earth, but I didn’t spend a whole lot of time contemplating my human existence. I mean, we were, after all, there to do a job.”

“But aren’t you guys the ones who do all the brave heroic rescues?” I asked. “Aren’t you the ones that whenever someone is in trouble the president calls and asks to solve the problem?”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” he said as he dramatically rolled his eyes. “We’re on the president’s speed dial, best buds and all.”

Before I could stop it, a small burble of laughter escaped from my lips and I quickly bit my tongue to contain it. Sheepishly, I looked over at Brian, only to find him shaking with silent laughter himself.

“You’re so mean!” I cried.

“What? I’m mean?” he laughed harder at my mock outrage. “Because I’m laughing at the fact that you think Navy SEALs are gods?”