The Sweatshirt Dilemma

The doorbell rang. 

Ding Dong. 

I padded towards the door, expecting to find the UPS man, but instead saw a small, blonde woman standing on the front steps. Her hair, obviously bleached with the brown roots a couple of inches long, was thrown up into a bun and she was wearing a tube top and too-short jean shorts. She wore a pair of oversized dark sunglasses that bulged out from her pallid face as if they were bug eyes drawn on by a cartoonist. 

“Oh, Hi!” She said after a moment, taking me in the same way that I had been taking her in. 

“Hi.”

“You must be the new girlfriend. I’m Kate.” She reached out her hand and I shook it, but continued to block her from entering the house. 

I turned around suddenly, hearing the sound of Jake clambering down the stairs. He appeared in the foyer, hair messy as if he had just woken up, wearing a Columbia sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. 

“Hey Kate!” he exclaimed as he appeared in the foyer, stepping out onto the porch to fold her into a hug. “I thought you were coming over a little bit later. This is Mia.” 

I gave her a weak smile, glancing up at Jake, still confused as to why she had suddenly appeared on the front porch. I knew exactly who she was of course, Jake’s friend Kate that he met on Tinder. He had told me about her - said that it was strictly platonic - despite the sexy photos I had seen on her Instagram of her posing on the very recognizable white leather couch in his living room. 

Jake turned around, leading us both into the house. 

“We were going to take some photos today for Kate’s new portfolio.” he said to me. 

"I'm trying to get a modeling portfolio together!" She declared, gleaming at me.

“Oh okay, well I can get out of your hair then.” I said, looking up at Jake skeptically. 

“No, no! Stay! It will be fun, you guys are going to get along so well. I can’t believe you haven’t met until now.” he said, seeming oblivious to the awkward tension hanging like a thick fog in the air above us. 

And so, that’s how I met Kate. Awkwardly guarding her from entering my boyfriend’s house. We spent the afternoon in the backyard after Kate had transformed into a Barbie doll in a swimsuit, donning some glittery eye makeup and slathering herself with some sort of glimmering body oil. Jake darted around with his photography equipment getting shots of Kate in the pool, flipping her hair, giving a “come hither” face to the camera and giggling often. 

I sat in a pool chair and smoked a cigarette, laughing along with them, being as cool as I knew how to be. Besides, I wasn’t opposed to him having female friends, and after spending a while with Kate I could tell she was harmless. She was the opposite of his type - high maintenance, shallow, model, always looking prim and perfect. She smelled of Dior perfume, and her body was neatly maintained at the gym. Visible abs, strong looking legs. Toned and tanned. Model material, I guess. 

Essentially, she was the complete opposite of me. 

As I watched her smiling her perfect smile and flipping her hair as Jake’s camera clicked, I thought

I can deal with her. 

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

A few weeks later, Kate had become a normal addition to the friend group. Jake regularly had friends over to his house for drinks or dinner, and in the past few weeks she had always been in attendance. It was weird, I thought, that in the previous 6 months of my relationship with Jake she had never been included, or even mentioned. And now magically, after showing up at the door like a lost puppy, she always seemed to be there, falling with ease into his friend group as if she had known them for years. But I tried to push this thought out of my head, as I often had in the past few weeks. She was harmless. 

“Did you want to come, Mia?” Kate asked, suddenly snapping me out of my deep train of thought. We were watching a movie at Jake’s that I had not been paying attention to, but pretended to be engrossed in as Jake and Kate talked to each other over the movie about some guy that had been harassing her online.

“Sorry, come where?” 

“To my birthday dinner! I’m having a birthday dinner on Friday. Jake is coming but I realized I hadn’t asked if you wanted to come yet.” She said, smiling at me, her green eyes glimmering. 

“Oh yeah! Of course.” I said, smiling back. “I’d love to. Where is it?”

“I’ll text you the details” she said, and then turning back to Jake, “So, anyways, this guy wouldn’t stop messaging me all of this stuff every single time I posted something. I finally just ended up blocking him after he didn't stop, but then I found another account he made to look at my Instagram stories.”

“Wow, that’s crazy.” Jake said, raising his eyebrows, seemingly weirdly absorbed in this banal conversation with her. 

Later that night as we were brushing our teeth I turned to Jake and asked,

“Do you think she really wants me to come?” 

“What do you mean? She asked you to, didn't she?” he said, pausing his brushing and looking at me in the mirror. 

“Yeah, but I don’t know, I feel like she only asked me cause she doesn’t want it to be weird.”

“Why would it be weird?” he asked, turning to look at my real face. 

“I don’t know, because you’re my boyfriend? And this hot girl wants you to come to her birthday dinner?” I said, a little incredulously. How was he not getting this? She didn't care about being my friend at all, that much was clear from the way she had essentially ignored me throughout the entire movie that night.

“Mia, we’ve been over this. We’re just friends, honestly! I don’t think I could seriously be with someone like Kate. I mean, she’s funny and all, but she’s just not my type.” He leaned over the sink and rinsed off his toothbrush, turning around to walk into the bedroom. 

“Okay,” I said, “you’re right. I’m sorry I just feel a little weird about it sometimes” 

“You know I love you. You have nothing to worry about.” He said, turning back around to kiss me. 

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

The night of the dinner, I spent an hour frantically picking out an outfit to wear, eventually settling on a simple black spaghetti strap dress and a pair of strappy sandals, and did my makeup in my apartment. I was supposed to meet Jake and Kate at his house, and then we would ride over to the restaurant together. 

I studied myself in the mirror before I left, noticing the sharp curve of my hips and slight cellulite on the back of my thighs that you could see if you were looking for it. Neither were things that Kate had. 

Discarding that thought from my mind, I hurried out the door and into my car, trying to get myself into a better mood before arriving at Jake’s. 

When I got there, it seemed that all of Kate’s friends had been told to meet at Jake’s house too. I walked in the door and saw 8 people loitering in the dining room, and they all glanced at me as I walked in. Jake appeared from the living room and glided over to greet me, looking quite handsome in a freshly ironed white shirt and jeans. He had this way of looking so effortlessly put together, one of the things that had originally attracted me to him. 

Kate followed him over, wearing a crazy patterned skin-tight dress with shiny gold metallic heels and smelling of hairspray. She glanced at me before quickly looking to Jake. He caught her gaze and glimpsed at me uncomfortably. 

“What?” I said, looking at them both, my eyes darting from one face to the next. Wondering what the hell was going on. 

“Well, I made a mistake.” she said, studying my face, trying to gauge my reaction. “I booked the reservation for 10 people, and I forgot to call and tell them to add one more. It's too late to change it now.” 

“Oh,” I uttered softly, glancing around the room and realizing that with me, the group was 11. “Okay well…” 

“I’m sorry I should have told you sooner!” she exclaimed, “I thought Jake would have told you, I called him earlier to tell him.”

We both looked over at Jake, who was giving me an I’m-sorry-please-don’t-be-mad look. But he also didn’t seem too sorry. Actually, neither of them did. Kate drifted over to her friends, who were pouring some pre-dinner shots of tequila at the kitchen counter. I continued to stare as they all threw them back, laughing and whooping, Kate the center of attention.

I looked back to Jake, meeting his eyes and silently begging for some sort of explanation. 

“Look, just stay here and wait for us. We’ll come back after dinner and have some drinks.” Jake said, giving me a weak smile and kiss. 

I felt duped and left out, but agreed and stood silently in the kitchen as they all filed out the door. I meandered over to the kitchen counter and poured myself a shot of tequila. Fucking Kate. 

By 11:30, I was getting angry, which I should have been already. Where were they? For the past 4 hours or so, I had slumped on the white leather couch, which was much more attractive than it was comfortable, and flipped through Netflix endlessly, eventually landing on some True Crime documentary about a kidnapping. 

Where are you? I texted Jake, taking longer that usual to type the letters in, thanks to all the tequila I had drank since they left. 

After each sip, I had gotten progressively more angry. Who does Kate think she is? Why didn’t Jake stick up for me? Why hadn’t he told me I was uninvited before I got ready and showed up to his house? 

My phone dinged.

Omw back now 

Okay, good. I thought. Maybe this means she already went home. 

I imagined a chaotic dinner, Kate getting drunker and drunker by the minute, Jake getting annoyed with her drunk girl persona. He had told me before that he didn’t much enjoy being around her when she was drunk, and I didn’t either. She seemed to start acting drunk after just one drink - saying whatever thought came into her head, being touchy with anyone near her, slurring her words dramatically. 

I imagined Jake gingerly leaving the dinner table while the party raged on with Kate’s friends, making a French exit in order to get back home to his abandoned girlfriend. 

But, of course, I was wrong. 

About fifteen minutes later, the entire party of 10 streamed through the front door, loud in their drunkenness, all laughing and talking over each other. I didn’t get up from the couch, annoyed that they had all shown back up here.

Kate came around the couch and plopped down next to me, seeming less drunk than I’d imagined her to be. I glanced over at her, and then stopped and stared. Over her flashy party dress she was wearing Jake’s Columbia sweatshirt. It was unmistakable, the same one that he had been wearing on the day she’d shown up on the doorstep. 

“Where did you get that?” I asked her, playing dumb for a moment. 

“Oh, Jake gave it to me.” she crooned, taking her heels off and tossing them on the floor. She settled back into the couch and looked at me earnestly. “Listen, Jake really missed you at dinner, I’m so sorry you couldn’t go. It really…” 

Her voice drifted off as I got up from the couch and walked into the kitchen, searching for Jake. I found him upstairs in the bedroom, changing out of the white button down he had worn to dinner. 

“Hey,” he started, turning towards me happily, but I cut him off.

“Why is she wearing your sweatshirt?” I blurted out. 

“Woah, how much of that tequila did you drink while we were gone, Mi?” he said, feigning concern. 

“Where did she get the sweatshirt?” 

“Calm down! I gave it to her. A while ago actually. I guess she’s had it for a while. It was chilly after we left the restaurant and she had it in her car.” 

I stared at him quizzically. Did he think I was stupid? 

“Don’t you think it’s weird that she put on your sweatshirt before she came into the house, when she knew I was going to be here? Actually, no. It's fucking weird that you gave it to her in the first place!” I exclaimed, slurring slightly. 

“Mi, calm down, it’s really not a big deal!” He said, defensively, seeming shocked that I was upset. 

“She uninvited me to her dinner so she could get you alone!” I cried, practically yelling “And then she shows up wearing your clothes!” 

He hurried over and wrapped his arms around me, shushing me, probably thinking everyone downstairs was listening. I didn't care. Tears of frustration streamed down my face. I was overcome with jealousy. Surely this was understandable. Ever since Kate had shown up, I'd felt like an accessory to my own relationship. She was always there being prettier than me, funnier than me, fitter than me. Everyone seemed to like her, to want to talk to her. I couldn’t help but feel like he was defending her somehow.

“It’s okay.” he said quietly, trying to comfort me between my drunken sobs. 

I lifted my face out of his arm and looked at him, imagining that I didn’t look too great at that particular moment. Eyes red and puffy, snotty nose. I squinted at him, and then turned around and headed back down the stairs.  

“Mia, where are you going?” he cried, coming after me. 

I grabbed my bag off the kitchen counter and took one last swig from the dwindling bottle of tequila as Kate’s friends looked on wordlessly. I glanced over at Kate, looking confused on the couch, and then turned and marched towards the front door, slamming it behind me.  

✽ ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽

I spent the whole next week sulking in my tiny studio apartment, which was a lot less nice than Jake's spacious house, only leaving to go to work, eating take out pizza and boxed mac and cheese and feeling sorry for myself.

I had taken plenty of looks at Kate’s Instagram that week, and seen the series of photos she had posted of the birthday dinner. The entire group, gleaming at the camera from behind a restaurant table crowded with empty plates and cocktail glasses, Kate making an excited face holding a glass in the air. Another one of the group outside the restaurant, Jake next to Kate, him smiling at the camera and her looking up at him, laughing as if he had made a joke right as the picture was taken. 

The jealousy had only bubbled up more and more inside of me. I thought of all the reasons that I was better than her, why she didn’t deserve him. I had texted Jake and told him I didn’t know if I could keep seeing him. He didn’t seem to understand what was wrong, or why I was upset, which just made it ever clearer to me that it wasn’t going to work. 

On a Friday afternoon, I showed up to his house for the last time to grab some things I had left behind. Some clothes and underwear. Shampoo. Bottles of wine I had bought for us but now wanted back to drink by myself in my apartment. As I was saying a teary goodbye to Jake, as we hugged I took one last glimpse into the living room, at the stupid white leather couch, and there it was. 

The Columbia sweatshirt, draped over the back of the couch in a way that seemed purposeful. I almost felt like it was laughing at me, mocking me, saying “Look at her! She lost.” I turned back towards the door, said bye to Jake, and closed the front door behind me. 

Fucking sweatshirt. I thought, as I drove away, looking at his house in the rearview mirror for the last time.