The news that Sophia was leaving came as a bit of a shock to me. Not just leaving for a little while either, but moving across the country. Just like me, she’d lived her whole life in LA, but now she was moving to New York. Chances were really high that in a few weeks I’d never see her again.
I felt a wave of relief at first, finally I’d be done with her. I wouldn’t have to put up with her meddling in my affairs, messing up my life… The more I thought about it however, the more I started to feel a strange sense of loss, as if part of me would miss her.
I fought that feeling for a long time. It made no sense. I hated that woman, having her out of my life was the best thing that could happen. For most people, having an enemy is something out of a movie. Normal people didn’t have an arch-nemesis, but that’s what Sophia was to me. She would do anything in her power to make my life miserable: Flirting with the boys I dated and sending them fake messages or telling them heinous lies when that didn’t work. Setting up elaborate pranks to humiliate me in front of my friends or embarrass me in public. She followed me online and whenever I showed interest in something new she’d get it first so it seemed like I was copying her…
I did my best to fight back of course. I played it just as dirty. Last week for example, one of my friends told me Sophia would be on a romantic date with a new fling. I bought tickets for the same movie they’d be seeing and then – pretending something had come up, preventing me from going – gifted those tickets to Sophia’s parents, who had no idea of course that their daughter and I were no longer friends.
Yes, we used to be friends, best friends even, after all you don’t become enemies with someone you don’t care about. This was years ago however, back in high-school. That friendship had abruptly ended, back when we were in college. It had all started because of a boy – what else – just one of Sophia’s exes who I’d decided to date long after they’d broken up. Sophia’s the one who’d started all this back then and all because I was seeing him, even though she was the one who’d broken up with him.
That was a long time ago of course and that boy’s been out of both our lives for a long time; yet the resentment still lingers, the back and forth of cruel pranks and dirty tricks continued.
Perhaps that’s what I would miss, not Sophia herself, but that back and forth: embarrassing her and her date in front of her parents, waking her up in the middle of the night with prank phone calls…
It did come at the price of suffering those same pranks myself however. I certainly wouldn’t miss having to host friends whilst wearing no underwear under my clothes because Sophia had broken into my apartment building and stolen my clean clothes from the laundry room.
I thought about it a lot for days. Most days when I thought about that woman I was hatching plans on how to get her back for something she’d done to me. This time however, I was focused on reminiscing about our past and our relationship.
Maybe it was time for all of this to end, I thought. Maybe this was the perfect time to end this childish behavior. We weren’t college students any more, we were older, more mature. Perhaps it was time to bury the hatchet, this was probably our last chance.
It took a while for me to reach that conclusion of course, and I didn’t really plan to do anything with it at first. I could just do nothing, Sophia would move far away and all of this would end just as well.
The more I thought about it however, the more the idea appealed to me. If I were the one to approach her, to offer a peace, it would show that I was the bigger person, between the two of us I was the more mature. It would be a great last prank to play on her. I know that sounds contradictory, but such things don’t always have to make sense.
***
This was a preview.
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