His Best Mate’s Girl

I’d been out shopping with The Girl I Can’t Forget when I received a weird text message from a squaddie friend of mine and Whisky. Let’s call that friend Milkman.

“I think you should know that your fella is shagging his best mate’s girl,” the text said, and my heart started pounding in my chest.

I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him. Milkman had tried to flirt with me on a couple of occasions, but I’d already chosen my army boy: Whisky. Had he sent the text as a weird ploy to try and break us up, or was my boyfriend of four months really sleeping with his best mate’s girl? Whisky and I had already discussed exclusivity, so it would definitely have been an infidelity. Allegedly.

“Are you okay?” The Girl I Can’t Forget asked. “You’ve gone a funny colour.” I showed her the text message, and she just shook her head in response. “I fucking knew it. That guy is a prick, NotSo.”

She’d hated him from the very start, but as I’d already had a dalliance or two with her, I just put it down to jealousy. I mean, I was jealous about every man that she dated, so why wouldn’t I think that she felt the same?

I called Whisky. No answer. I called again.

“Hi,” he said, answering on the fourth ring. His voice was suspiciously quiet. Almost meek.

“Are you shagging your best mate’s girlfriend?”

I’ve always been the gobshite of the group: the one who says the things that everyone else tries not to say. I didn’t want to beat around the bush with him. I had very, very strong feelings for him at that point, and although we hadn’t said the big L-word to each other yet, I was fairly sure that I did actually love him.

“Can we talk about this when you get home?” he asked.

My blood ran cold. Fuck. Milkman had been right, hadn’t he? I’d given Whisky a key to The Flat literally one day before, and now I was going to have to take the damn thing back. That was the first key I’d ever given out to a boy, too.

I made my excuses to The Girl I Can’t Forget, then rushed home to find Whisky on my couch. The living room curtains were closed, but it was light enough that I could see him wearing all black, with a black baseball cap and black sunglasses.

“Why are you wearing sunglasses?” I asked, almost laughing at the sight. It would’ve been funny if we weren’t just about to talk about his potential infidelity and the potential breaking of my heart.

I walked over and opened the curtains, then stood across the room from him, waiting for him to say or do something. He hadn’t moved or said a word, and I was starting to do more than worry.

Slowly, he took his hat off. The sunglasses went next, and I gasped loudly when he revealed his face.

“What the fuck happened to you?” I asked, shock evident in my voice.

His face was discoloured and swollen. One eye had the beginnings of a whopper of a shiner. His top lip was split on one side, and the bottom had two splits. One cheek had a huge bruise. His entire neck was bright red, and there looked like a cut along his hairline. All in all, he looked a fucking mess. Someone had clearly done a number on him.

“I wasn’t sleeping with her,” he said quietly. “I was helping her. But he [his best mate] didn’t believe us.”

He went on to explain that she was depressed and struggling with their two kids, so he was helping her, quietly, without making a big deal of things. They’d gone out for lunch, apparently. She sent him text messages sometimes when she felt overwhelmed or annoyed. He was, in essence, her therapist-slash-best-friend.

He sounded so realistic, so honest, so true. But there was a feeling deep down in my gut that told me not to trust him. My hands were shaking. How dare he be a therapist and/or best friend to someone else’s girlfriend? He was meant to be my therapist and/or best friend. He was mine. Well, he was meant to be.

As I listened to him, I almost wanted to blacken the other eye. Instead, I said calmly, “I would like my key back, please. And then, I’d like you to leave.”

Whisky shook his head and slowly got up from the couch. “Fine, but I’m not giving up on you. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Three minutes later, the spare key back in my hand, I was alone in The Flat again… and I could do nothing but cry. I wanted to believe him so, so badly. I did. But best friends don’t give each other black eyes for no reason, do they?

I cried for a week, eventually spilling the beans to Bestie, who had clearly noticed (as we lived together) that something wasn’t right.

“I do not like him,” Bestie said, over and over and over again. Repeatedly. Every single day.

“I’m sad without you,” Whisky text, over and over and over again. Repeatedly. Every single day.

What the fuck was a girl meant to do?

The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: Birthdays, Buckfast, and Blowjobs.