What We Were Good At

They had been good at being friends. That was the thing everyone said about them, and it was true. They had been good at it in the way you are good at a job you don’t talk about much. At your job, you simply show up. You do what needs doing. You don’t make a show of it.

They met when nothing was at stake yet. That helped. They met at a time when you could still pretend the future was wide and forgiving and that no one would hold you to the things you said out loud. He was finishing school then, and she was working two jobs and pretending she liked one of them. They met because he needed help moving a couch and she had a truck and no better plans. He paid her in pizza and hard seltzer. They sat on the floor afterward because the couch wouldn’t fit where he thought it would.

“That’s fine,” she said. “Floors are underrated.”

When she said that, he felt a small interest. He kept thinking about she could make a loss sound like a win. He didn't want to stop thinking about it.

They learned each other in small ways. He learned how she took her coffee and which songs she skipped and which ones she let play even though she didn’t like them. She learned how he folded his shirts and that he always checked the locks twice and that he needed a minute after people left the apartment to feel like himself again. They learned these things without effort. Like they were learning the streets in a city they walked every day.

They did not flirt. That was part of the agreement, though no one ever said what the agreement was. They talked about other people instead. They told each other what had gone wrong and what might go right next time. They were generous with advice they did not always follow themselves.

Often, people asked if they were together. They laughed and said no at the same time. It became a joke. He would say, “We’d ruin it,” and she would say, “We’d be terrible together,” and then they would drink and feel pleased with themselves for having decided something so wisely.

Years passed this way. The days filled themselves. They took trips with other friends and ended up sharing a room because it made sense. Nothing happened in these rooms. That was also part of the sense.

Then something did happen, but it happened late, when neither of them could say exactly how it started. It did not begin with a kiss. It began with a tired night and a long conversation that went on past the point where people usually stop talking. It began with the sound of rain on a window and how the room felt smaller than it had before.

They were sitting on the floor again because the chairs were taken by coats and bags. She leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes. He watched her do it and felt something shift that he had been ignoring.

“You ever think we’re wasting away?” she said.

“In what way?” he said.

“In every way possible,” she said, and did not gesture.

He did not answer right away. He was good at not answering right away. He had practiced it.

“Sometimes,” he said.

She nodded as if he had said more.

They did not kiss then, either. That came later. It came after they had already decided something without admitting it. When they did kiss, it was slow and strange, like borrowing something you might have to give back eventually. It was not fireworks. It was not relief. But it did scare them in a way that felt exciting.

They talked about it the next day like adults. They sat at a table and drank coffee and used the word “risk.” Then they used the word “worth.” They promised each other honesty. They promised to stop if it went wrong.

It did not go wrong right away. It went well. Quietly. They already knew how to be around each other. That was the danger and the comfort of it. They did not have to perform. They did not have to explain their every rhyme and function. They slid into the new shape of whatever this had become like something that had always been waiting to become it.

They slept together and woke without surprise. They made dinner and cleaned up without talking about whose turn it was. They went to parties and stood together in the corner and left early. They did not tell everyone. They told the people who mattered and let the rest figure it out.

Sometimes he would look at her across a room and feel something like gratitude. Sometimes she would catch him doing it and roll her eyes and smile. They still joked. They still fought about nothing. They still knew when the other was lying.

They were laying down in bed on a Sunday afternoon with the windows open. The air moved slowly. He was reading something on his phone and she was tracing shapes on his arm. She stopped.

“Do you want this forever?” she said.

He knew what she meant. He also knew that if he answered too fast it would sound like a lie.

“I don’t know,” he said.

She nodded. She did not pull her hand away. She kept tracing the same shape.

“I do,” she said.

He turned then and looked at her. He wanted to say something that would end the conversation. But he also wanted to feel what she felt.

“I want us,” he said. “But to be honest, I don’t really know what forever means.”

“That’s not the same answer,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I suppose not.”

They did not break up at that moment. They tried to make the difference between them smaller. They talked more. They checked in. They used careful language. They had rougher sex when it suited them both. They loved each other with a new edge to it, like people who know the weather can turn at any moment.

He noticed that she planned more. She talked about townhouses and trips and the year ahead. He noticed that he hesitated more. He noticed that he started to miss the version of himself that did not have to think this far into his life.

She noticed as well. She did not accuse him of anything untoward. That would have been easier, perhaps.

The fight happened when they were sitting at the kitchen table with the light off except for the one over the sink. There were dishes in the drying rack that had been there too long. She stood and moved one because she could not stand the sound it made when the air shifted.

“You’re already a foot out the door,” she said.

“No, I am m here,” he said. "With you."

“More like you're still here because you're waiting for the check,” she said.

He did not argue. He did not know how to make it untrue.

“I don’t want to be doing the same thing forever,” she said. “I don’t want to love someone who doesn’t care.”

“That is not who I am,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve known that for a long time.”

That was the thing that did it. The way she said those words.

They slept badly that night. In the morning they moved around each other and made breakfast and did not touch. It felt worse than fighting. It felt like they had already decided something and were waiting for it to arrive.

They went on like that for weeks. Nothing exploded, though time thinned. They spoke less. They spoke more tactfully. The jokes lost their timing. The silences grew heavy. They had sex one time, and it was over quickly.

Finally, one night she came home and sat down across from him and folded her hands.

“We can’t do this,” she said. "Not anymore."

He nodded. He had been waiting for her to say it so he would not have to.

“Things were better before,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

They both sat with that. It did not make either of them feel better, at least not yet.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “Me neither.”

Nevertheless, they talked about logistics. Who would move out and when. What they would tell people. They agreed to be kind. They agreed to take space. They agreed to try.

The last night they slept in the same bed, it felt ceremonial and forced. They held each other because that was what their bodies knew what to do. It was sad in a way that felt fine.

In the morning, they had sex one more time. Then he packed a bag. He stood in the doorway and looked at the room like someone seeing a place after a storm.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “About all of it.”

“Me too,” she said.

He left before he could say something else.

They tried to be friends again. They said they would. They meant it. They met for coffee and talked about work and mutual friends and things they had read. They avoided the past and the future. They laughed in the right places. They did not touch.

It did not work the way it had before. They both felt it. They did not say it.

One afternoon they walked together without meaning to. They had met at a park to exchange something he had left. A sweater. They walked and talked and the day was good. He forgot for a moment that there was a problem.

At the edge of the path she stopped.

“This is the worst,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“Remembering how easy it was,” she said. “And knowing we can’t have that again.”

He nodded. He looked at the ground.

“I miss you,” she said.

“So do I,” he said.

They stood there longer than they should have. People passed and did not look at them. The world kept moving.

That night he lay in his new room and listened to the unfamiliar sounds. He thought about the years they had been friends and the year they had not been able to be anything else. He remembered the mistake, if that was what it was. He did not regret loving her. He wasn’t sure he ever could.

Weeks later, he saw her across a room at a party. She was laughing with someone he did not know. She looked well. He felt a sharp, brief pain and then something else. Relief, acceptance. It was hard to tell.

She saw him too. Their eyes met and they smiled. It was the old smile, the one that did not ask for anything. It lasted a second and then it was over.

He left early. Outside, the night was cold and clear. He wished it could always be like that.

Author's Note:

It would be so nice if we could be self-aware at the moments we need to be self-aware. Often, it's too late. You figure out who you are and they figure out who they are at just the right time for you both to need the end. That often, loving each other isn't enough.

I wrote this story on my phone, wonderfully enough. I often go to bars and drink myself into a stupor as if that will make me more creative or, let's say, "self-aware." This particular story, short as it is, came during one of those tough moments last year. I dug it up in my archives of unfinished/unpublished drafts and realized it needed to be finished. No small task if you as the editor (our wonderful Natalia Emmons, everyone).

In this case, I found myself drawn to this idea of how the trope of "friends to lovers" is so typically glamorized. And I get the appeal. I consume the appeal all the time in my own reading. But it's not often this trope receives proper examination. What happens when two people trained by years of non-flirting and non-committing find themselves having to sustain some kind of romance forever?

In the end, it's tough to accept that some relationships end without a perfect reason. They just do. And it's sad. And you have to feel that sadness to at least some extent as you begin to process and hopefully move on.

Jon Negroni is a Puerto Rican author based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s published two books, as well as short stories for IHRAM Press, The Fairy Tale Magazine, and more.

Read more of Jon's work

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