When Loyalty Costs You the Chance You Didn’t Know You Had

Time.

Enough of it had passed in that the questions asked no longer mattered.

Whatever could have potentially happened had long cooled, and the trials of life had piled on.

Now there was only a shared history that could never be changed.

Did I remember that moment at the party, when everybody left the room and it was just the two of us sitting there?

The silence in the room broken by her first as we talked about nothing at all.

I remember that the conversation, our proximity, and what she was really wondering about.

What she was really asking was why didn’t I ask her out.

At that moment?

Out of loyalty.

She had just broken up with my best friend.

The fact that she dated him right there made her off limits.

But what she didn’t realize at the time, and what took me a few years later looking back was that such loyalty was misplaced.

My friend never had my best interest at heart, or for that matter any of my interests.

I was convenient to him and helpful to have around as I never backed down from anything, both a character strength and flaw.

He knew I would always back him no matter what, and that was useful.

At the time I missed the entire point of our conversation and that our friends in the room didn’t leave because they had somewhere else to be.

They left knowingly so I could ask you.

I missed all of that, otherwise perhaps I would have followed you to Florida.