who should I trust?

“Why are you telling me this?” I am at the sports bar where I usually meet with Holly, we have known each other since we were 4 years old, in fact I cannot remember a single happy memory of my childhood and teenage years where Holly isn’t there to share it with me. Which makes it that much harder to understand what she is saying to me right now.

“Hello!? Emma, do you hear yourself? You should be asking who it is. Why are you not screaming or storming out of here to talk to him?” By now I can feel Holly’s exasperation in her voice but my brain has not yet processed what she is saying to me.

“How do I even know that’s true?” I asked without thinking, because what else do you say to your friend as she is telling you that your husband is screwing around with some other chick around town. I want to believe her but a big part of me belongs to him and my heart refuses to even think about the fact that all these years of happiness were nothing but a joke.

Are you calling me a liar? Holly asks, surprisingly not with a hurt tone but more of an I-cannot-believe-you-are-asking-me-this-question-right-now look and I cannot help but feel bad that I asked her that question, but in my defence Holly has done a lot of questionable things in her life, no one can blame me for putting my guard up with something as delicate as this.

“No of course not, but maybe you misunderstood the situation, I mean he could have just been out with a friend or something…”

“Trust me. There is no confusing seeing your best friend’s husband with his tongue down a woman’s throat who is not your best friend.” Holly responds with an angry huff that I know with all my heart is not directed at me but the culprit of her story, in this case my husband. I want to know more about her perspective because what if she was far away and only thought she saw him, I mean I am a pretty observant person but even I confuse people on the subway all the time.

“Did he see you?” 

“Of course he saw me.” No no no no please no.

“Did you say anything to him?” Please tell me she didn’t make a spectacle of my marriage life in front of God knows who. It is one thing to be made a fool by one person but to show it to the whole world is a whole other problem, specially for a lawyer in one of the most important law firms in the city that also happens to work alongside her husband. But what am I saying I already know what she is going to say next because if there is someone more passionate and aggressive when defending someone she loves it is Holly, and she never really liked Steve, not from the beginning, unfortunately their animosity is mutual.

You mean after I threw his own drink on his face? Yes I told him he was a pig and that you deserved so much better. I said a little more than that but I don’t think it’s appropriate for your ears to hear, given your choice to have a clean vocabulary.” Yeap that’s what I thought.

“Did he say anything to you?”please tell me that there is a way to savage the situation.

“Obviously he tried to deny it all, he said I had misunderstood the situation and that I was treading on a dangerous path. Can you believe it? If that’s not a threat I don’t know what is.” Well for what is worth it does sound like him, Steve is one of the most recognized Lawyers in the state, he is ruthless both in and out of court when something threatens his perfect existence he will not hesitate to bend the laws to work for him and break some people in the process, he is feared by so many and even I am not safe when it comes to his wrath, not that I have ever been on the wrong side of his wrath, I am not afraid of him he is not the violent type and I doubt he would hurt me in any way but unlike Holly I see the danger of his threat. If what she is saying is indeed true then she needs to stay away until I figure things out. Truthfully in an ideal situation, not that this is ideal in any way, the last person I would want finding out my husband is having an affair would be Holly, she is too passionate and does nothing in half measures. Once she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her she smashed the windows of his car and posted a picture on social media of both cheaters and personally messaged the girls fiancée and made a whole mess, the fiancée broke the engagement and obviously she filmed it and posted it online and of course Holly’s ex-boyfriend got a black eye on the process and somehow she was the only one who ended up unaffected, she was able to move on and in no time she had another boyfriend. This was done 7 years ago, I had just married Steve and when i told him what she had done he asked me to stop being friends with her because “a girl like that is always looking for trouble”, of course i told him that I could never do that to Holly, she was more than a friend to me she was a sister and you don’t turn your back on family, ever. Of course that was then.

 “Holly, I will deal with Steve and it will be alright, I think it’d be best if you forgot what you think you saw.”

“I know what I saw!” I can sense a storm coming my way so i get my defensive guard on, as she continues to rant “You know I thought I was doing you a favour by telling you this. I wanted to be with you the way you have been there for me all my life. I thought you would know that while I have made my fair share of mistakes in life, if there is one person I have never lied to, even at my worst, it was you.” 

“Really? You have NEVER lied to me? Because I can remember a time where you were so high you didn’t even know your name.Can you remind me at which point you came up to me for help? I had to find out that you almost OD’d from a police officer who happened to find my business card on your pocket from when I started working at the law firm. Excuse me if I am a little reluctant to believe that my husband, who has been nothing but good and loving to me, is cheating on me.” I cannot help retaliating at her, a couple of years ago she dropped out of everyone’s radar, she started dating a billionaire’s son who showed her all kinds of “fun” and a few months later she was found in a hotel room unconscious almost died of an overdose. After months of being worried sick not knowing where she was, I found her but our relationship has never been the same and honestly I have kept my distance from her ever since, I visited her and supported her through rehab and afterwards i kept my visits to a minimum and our phone calls that used to be everyday dropped to once a week and eventually once a month, we tried to get together every once in a while but I was busy with work and she seemed busy as well so those visits were reduced as well. 

Steve was more than happy to not have to see Holly at all and honestly I was done with the hostility that always seemed to surround the both of them whenever they were on the same room no matter how big the room was I could always feel the intensity of their hatred for each other. I was forced to choose one of them and I chose Steve, he is my husband and has gone to great lengths to show me how much he loves me and I feel the same way besides I cannot deal with any kinds of lies even lying by omission, and Holly lied to me, I always thought that we knew everything about each other, I thought she trusted me but I guess that was a one sided feeling, I was hurt and I don’t want to ever have to suffer through all that again.

Besides who is to tell me that she is not making this up and even if she wasn’t making it up, I cannot fathom the idea of my husband who has shown me all sorts of affection and respect is willing to hurt me this way. So far it’s all rhetorical based on the opinion of a single person whom so far hasn’t made the best choices when it comes to relationships, for all I know she could just be jealous of the beautiful relationship I have with my husband and wants to stir things up. At this point I have to give my husband the benefit of the doubt, after all he did warn me that something like this could happen. With this in mind I say, “Now that I think about it what were you doing on the other side of the city? You never go that way, its not a neighborhood you would ever find yourself in, if anything, it seems to me that your trying to make a scandal out of nothing. Are you really that bored?” 

“Is that truly what you think?” she asks this with a tone so low its almost a whisper, I am in shock. I thought she would jump out of her seat and yell back at me, right there and then I know how much I have hurt her and it kills me when she continues in the same manner. “Thanks for letting me know how much i mean to you. It is really refreshing to know that I am nothing but a lying drug addict who is trying to ruin your marriage. I meant it when i said i have never lied to you. I was so ashamed of my addiction that i blocked you out of my life, you meant so much to me even then, that the last thing i wanted was to hurt you in any way, i thought you cared about me, and I thought that it was better for me to walk away from your life and that if i ever was able to walk back into it again, i would be better, but you truly do not know or understand how an addiction works. But I have a feeling you’re about to find out.”

“What do you mean?” I asked mainly because I am still in shock and my brain is still trying to process what is happening. Who is this person in front of me? When did she change so much? And where was I throughout the process? The Holly that I knew was reckless and dominating, a spoiled brat who never seemed to understand that there was a right and a wrong and her pride would have never allowed her to lower herself to being humiliated in any way, much less by me who in the basis of her situation is clearly in the wrong.

“I mean that whether you believe me or not, you’re not willing to leave him because you have grown a co-dependancy for him. You love him so much you feel you cannot live without him. Even thinking about leaving him hurts, and you know it’s wrong to be with him but it is so unthinkably painful to live without him that even if you can’t have it all you’re willing to live with the scraps he gives you, and you think that will be enough but the truth is, it will never be enough, you will start needing more and more and you will grow so obsessed with the idea that if you don’t have more you’re going to die. That’s an addiction. It will consume you and there will be nothing left of the happy person that used to be my best friend. I hope you know that just like you were there for me I will be there for you, and maybe time will heal us both and we will be able to recover some of the trust we had for each other. This is all my fault, the fact that you cannot trust me,I am truly sorry that I hurt you to this point, and I get it, trust is earned, now I understand the saying that it is better to be trusted than loved, I know you love me but you cannot longer trust me, my choices have gotten on the way and i have to move on, i cannot and will not live in the past. I am truly grateful for all that you have done for me, you being there through my rehab and recovery it meant the world to me and when you’re ready to begin anew I’ll be here waiting. I never meant to hurt you, not back then when I didn’t tell you about me and not now when i told you about him.”

“But…”

“Also, I am not the same person I was two years ago. I have changed. I was at the other side of the city because I opened a shelter for people that need help recovering from their addictions, we provide all sorts of help to help people get back on their feet. I was a privileged child and had the money and friends to help me recover but not everyone is so lucky. I want to give back to the world what was given to me. I know what it is like to feel helpless and not to know where to turn because you have turn your back on all that is good in your life, you are a living testament of that. I don’t want anyone to feel like they are alone in their fight against addiction. I hope this answers your question.”

Holly pulls out a few bills from her wallet leaves them at the table and says “I got this one” Gets up from the bar and starts to walk away, she takes a couple of steps toward me but i know she is facing the exit behind me then she turns around and says “again I’m here when you need me”

I am speechless and ashamed, I don’t notice i am crying until the bartender offers me a tissue and asks me what i want to drink, I ask for the strongest drink he can offer and pull out my cell phone and call my husband, the phone rings twice before I hear his voice on the other end of the line. “Hello?” I take a few seconds to answer, I want to hear beyond his voice, I try to figure him out. “Emma is that you? Honey? Where are you?”

I finally find my voice and say, “I’m here, I’m ok but we need to talk”