Best Friend's Ex Box Set

“Do I have a choice?” he grinned.

“Of course you don’t,” I grinned back. Two could play this little game.

“Touché!” Brian burst out laughing as we walked to over to Charlie Chang’s for a lunch of bibimbap.

*****

“So, tell me about this plan of yours,” Brian said to me with a mouth full of kimchi.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full!” I laughed as I took a sip of my iced tea before popping a piece of the spicy cabbage in my mouth. Brian laughed at my admonition as the server put two steaming bowls down on the table and asked if there was anything else we needed. I smiled and shook my head.

“But seriously, tell me what you’ve got up your sleeve, Ava,” he said as he stirred a huge squirt of hot sauce into his lunch.

“When you said that you associated the anti-war groups with disrespect and meanness, I started thinking about how a small number of protesters are defining the movement in negative terms,” I said as I pulled apart my chopsticks and balanced them carefully in my right hand. Brian watched and shook his head as he pointedly began eating with his fork. “So, I suggested that we address the issue of those people who protest at funerals instead of spending so much time writing letters protesting a war that is already happening.”

“How do you think you’re going to affect the protestors?” he asked.

“We don’t think we’re going to affect them, per se,” I replied. “They’re using their protests to accomplish something entirely unrelated to the peace movement. They’re using servicepeople as a mechanism to promote their hatred of people who they feel are eroding moral values. It’s somewhat ironic that they’re religious people, because they seem to have missed the overall point of their own religion.”

“How so?” Brian asked. “They’re standing up for what they feel is right and they’re protesting against what they feel is wrong, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but they miss the whole point, love thy neighbor and all, that is what matters, right?” I looked up at him as I explained my take on the situation. I wasn’t sure he was buying it.

“Okay, I guess I can see your point, but I don’t understand what it is you think you’re going to do about it,” he replied as he brought another forkful of the delicious rice and vegetable combination to his mouth.

“We don’t think that we can change the people who are protesting, but we do think that we can show those who are not part of the group how damaging the practice is,” I said as I carefully measured my next words. “We think that if we can show how much pain and suffering these groups cause, then we can get average, everyday folks to step in and help stop the practice.”

“And how do you propose to accomplish this?” he asked.

“Well…” I took a deep breath and pushed forward. “We thought we could use your story to illustrate the way in which the protestors caused so much pain during the funeral of your friend. We’ve got a couple of members who are journalism majors and they would write articles for the newspaper and a couple of other internet outlets that they write for, and then we thought that we could write letters to the university administration asking them to support our attempts to get the city to stop allowing these folks to protest within a certain distance. We also thought that we could do what other cities have done and ask members of various clubs to come form a human wall around the funerals so that the friends and family members wouldn’t have to even see the protestors.”

Brian had stopped eating and was staring at me with steely eyes. I casually continued eating as I waited to hear his response to my plan.

“Absolutely not,” he said quietly. “You will not use my story and you will not bring me into this mess.”

“But Brian,” I countered. “We could do so much good!”

“By spewing my pain and suffering out into the world?” he demanded. “You want to use me to make some silly college political statement?”

“No! That’s not what we’re doing at all!” I cried. “We want to stop these people from causing other people as much pain as they’ve caused you!”

“By making me the face of all of the crap that’s going to come out about this?” He was angry and hurt, but I couldn’t understand why.

“But Brian, this is a good idea! We want to stop the protests!” I said as I felt myself becoming more emotional. Couldn’t he see that we wanted to help?

“You rich kids just don’t get it, do you?” His face grew red as he struggled to keep his voice down and not call attention to our heated argument. “You think that the world is full of like-minded people who have the same opinons you have and t

hat if you just tell people to stop doing whatever you think is unfair, they will.”

“Now that’s unfair,” I lowered my voice to try and calm him down, but I felt myself getting mad at his judgmental attitude. “We’re not trying to tell anyone how to live their lives, we’re just trying to help you!”

“Have you ever thought about the fact that maybe I don’t want your help?” Brian asked as he leveled his gaze. “Did you ever ask me what I wanted? No, you did not. That’s because you rich college kids think you know everything that’s best for everyone. You’re so arrogant and privileged that you can’t look beyond your own lives and see that other people don’t live the way you do.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” I angrily asked.

“It has to do with the fact that those people who are protesting have every right to protest, and that if it hurts my poor little feelings, then I need to get over it, okay?” he said in a tone that could only be described as petulant.

“What in the hell is going on with you?” I was astounded at the rapid shift in our conversation and could not understand why Brian was so angry at me for wanting to spare other service members the pain he’d experienced at his best friend’s funeral.