I like you, Betty.

Well…

I ended up meeting said friend (from now on known as D) for a beer and didn’t China show up.

It’s all good, I’m all over China like white on rice. Yeah, that was totally intentional.

The problem is D. I’ve known him for a while. He is very best friends with a friend and occasional hook up of mine. I was there the night he hooked up with his current (live-in) woman. I’ve thought that maybe there were issues in the ten months since then,but I’ve kept my mouth shut. She and I have had pow-wows every so often when we both end up at the house, pmsing about the boys and whatnot. We have occasional weepy sessions together, as girls will, but nothing further than that.

Tonight, he tells me, in strictest confidence, as one of the boys, that he’s going to tell her in the next two days that she needs to move out of the house, that he needs some space. He tells me that she’ll probably call me looking for support, as we’ve become friends, and that he wants me to tell her that it’s all his fault.

She calls him in the midst of this night, after we had moved on from our original location. He ignores her. She calls me, just when my mother is on the phone, so I ignore her. She calls him again and says she went looking for him at the bar (red light!) and found only my car.

I get off the phone with my mom and I call her. I am a good bro. I tell her I had two beers with him, then my mother called with a dilemma (the truth, btw) and that I left him and China to their beers. I said D probably wanted to hang out with China due to the the fact he was leaving in a week and that I had other things to deal with, but I also listened to her whole “I don’t know, but I feel as though he’s been pulling away lately” spiel. I was good friends to both of them during that conversation. I covered for him while lending support to her. I let her go on for 10 minutes before I managed to squeeze out of it and go back to drinking beer with D & China. That’s where I wanted to be in the first place, that’s what feels natural to me.

Here’s the thing. I know where each of them is coming from. I know what each of them is arguing. I don’t want to choose sides. I don’t want to be in the middle of all this, but I am. It is insanely awkward being in the middle of someone else’s relationship.

Keep in mind that the reason that I was on the phone with my mother is because a 21 year old kid that grew up across the street from me is missing and presumed drowned in a canoeing accident. That trips me out. He’s only a year older than my brother. There were freak storms. It could be anyone I know.

I’m really confused. This has been a weird night.