a couple weeks back i mentioned briefly a situation wherein i slept with my best friend's girlfriend, and we didn't speak for a long time. then, eventually, we did, and everything's hunky-dory now.

what i failed to include in the story was the involvement of a girl named becca block, a fact she has taken great pains to remind me of since.

so here's the deal.

i suppose you might have said that becca and i were dating, though i certainly never said that. she was a quiet rich girl with amazing curly brown hair who appeared troubled and withdrawn. she was sarcastic. in my youth and inexperience i didn't realize this was a defense mechanism, but there you go. i fell in love, or at least a sixteen year old's approximation of love, almost immediately.

i discovered interesting things about her, and enjoyed bringing about her inherent self-destructive side that until this point was pretty much buried. she was a high-school good girl, dare i say almost a geek, and had never so much as cut class.

until me, roguish charmer that i am.

becca revealed a lot about herself to me. i'm sure most if not all of it was very interesting, but i was a junior in high school and an unrepentant egomaniac. much of what she said didn't even go in one ear and out the other. it more or less bounced off my shell of self-righteous irony.

and time went on.

by the end of senior year, i'm sure our friendship was pretty much theoretical, as i had already rejected out of hand her love and affection, settling instead for the aforementioned girlfriend of the best friend i had been so cavalier about fucking over.

we spoke still, but becca never really forgave me for being a dickhead about what she saw as an honest confession of love, yet another fact she enjoys reminding me about to this day.

in what can only be described as synchronicity, becca began dating britton, again the aforementioned best friend i had been so cavalier about fucking over.

by now, i had begun college, and had pretty much abandoned all pretensions of caring about the nonexistent-but-formerly-mythic friendship britton and i had shared throughout high school.

until the day becca called me and told me i should talk to him.

"you're joking, of course," i might have said.

"no, not really. we've been talking about you, and-"

"talking about me?" once an egomaniac, always an egomaniac. "what the fuck do you two possibly have to say about me?"

"not much, you asshole, except that britton has forgiven you and would like to be your friend again. prick."

"oh." to this day, i believe becca is the only person who has ever deflated my indignation.

"so call him. it might do you both some good."

and so i did. and so britton and i hung out for the first time in a year, and he didn't punch me or throw me through a plate glass window or anything. we had a couple drinks, had it out, and that was pretty much it.

becca, i'm sure, fairly glowed with victory, although she was probably just tired of hearing britton bitch and so wanted to do something about it. there are no altruistic actions.

so now britton and i are better friends then we ever were, calling each other constantly throughout the four years since, and it's all becca's fault, another fact she is in love with reminding me about.

she is a true mensch, a saint among devils. and the funny thing about her is, well...nevermind the funny thing about her. just remind yourself of her existence from time to time and be grateful that such people are in the world.