Memories Are Wonderful

[James]

It had been weeks since the party and I hadn’t seen Daisy once. Elizabeth mentioned her every once in a while when she went out with the girls but I didn’t want to think about her. I tried going to the bookstore a few times but I never saw her.

This particular night Dave, Tom and I were out having some beers, and playing a game of pool. It wasn’t often that we saw each other because we didn’t live in the same city, but because Tom had gotten some time off work and had come for Dave’s birthday he decided to stay around a while. It was nice having them around. Seeing Tom was so rare.

“So how’re things with Elizabeth?” Tom asked, eyeballing his next shot. Right now it was him and I playing while Dave watched.

“Things are good.”

“What about Daisy, how’s she doing?” Dave asked from the sidelines. Tom finally took his shot and the balls on the table knocked around the edges and into each other but nothing went in.

“Why would I know how she’s doing?” I tried to concentrate on my shot, and not Dave’s questions or the distrusting look he was giving me.

“Yeah, what’s the story with her? She was the artist, right?” Tom was clueless.

“The artist is her sister.”

Dave interjected again, more questions. “What really happened between you two though? You were really good friends, you were always talking about her and she was always over and then randomly you stop talking about her, she’s never over.”

“Nothing happened.” It was getting hard to concentrate on the game but I still managed to pocket a few stripes.

“Awww, come on. We’re your brothers!” Dave pleaded with a smile. I was pretty sure his curiosity only went as far as his entertainment.

“People grow a part Davey, that’s just a part of life.”

“You seemed pretty close at Dave’s party.”

“What’s with all the questions?” Really, why did the shit between Daisy and I concern them so much?

Dave and Tom exchanged a look, “What’s with all the evading of said questions?” Dave asked. He was clearly the leader of this inquisition. Tom barely knew who or what we were talking about.

“We kind of had a fight in Telluride, but we’re cool now.” Could that just be enough for them, please?

“Ahhh see, you should have brought me,” Dave said, making Tom laugh.

I wouldn’t have given that night up; I had invited the right person.

“Because that would have solved everyone’s problems, eh Davey?”

Tom knocked in his last ball, then the 8, winning the game. “How serious are you and Elizabeth?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean I haven’t told her I loved her or anything. We’ve only been together a couple of months.”

Dave smiled. I knew somewhere in his mind he had notions of Daisy and I but he didn’t know the impossibility of that ever happening. There was no way, no how. Not with our history. Even now we were already growing apart. I fucking hated it, and I wanted to do something about it really bad but I couldn’t think of anything to fix it. The more I thought about it the more I realized that last time I had done nothing because I was afraid it would scare her away, but we still ended up growing apart, and even now I was trying to play it cool, we were getting distant all over again. Were we doomed to repeat this vicious cycle? I felt like I should just fucking give up because I was obviously too cowardly to fix this and the worse part was realizing it.