Shoulder to Cry On

I don't know what it is about me that makes people treat me like their diary, but despite my stoicism and rampant sarcasm, people seem to open up to me. It's possible that they think I'm internally judging them (which is rarely the case) and they're simply attempting to humanize themselves in my eyes in an effort to gain my approval. Whatever it is, I usually can't make people shut up, so I'm often the first person that everyone comes to when they need to vent or when they have something they need to get off their chest and don't feel comfortable bringing to anyone else. And sometimes it's uncomfortable.

Ophelia had recently started dating Kenny. And when I say recently, I'm saying that they had been together for, roughly, 2½ days, and the relationship was already far more dramatic than it needed to be.

"I don't know what to do," she muttered as she threw herself down in the chair beside me. I normally would have asked what was troubling her, but I had learned that, quite often with Ophelia, it was some over-dramatized event that would inevitably involve me somehow going out of my way to help someone when I had neither the interest in doing so nor the time within which to do it. Instead I was working under the assumption that if I simply didn't engage she would drop the subject.

Here's an interesting fact about young women: they don't drop any damn subject, no matter how unimportant or uninteresting. Even when it would never have involved you had she not brought it to your attention, she will make it your problem. Women are the wizards of pain.

Ophelia had taken to sighing and making other disapproving noises until I finally asked her what was on her mind. "It's Kenny."

Ophelia and Kenny had started dating on a Friday, and it was now Monday. At least, that was my understanding of the events. "Rough weekend?" I asked, wondering if I was crossing the line between being rude and being funny, but didn't really care to backtrack.

"Well, we're not really dating yet." This was interesting to me, as it kind of validated all of the talk that she was just using the relationship with Kenny in an effort to make me jealous, but rather than verbally calling her out on it I just gave her 'the look' and remained silent until she explained herself. "I mean, he just hasn't answered me yet."

I imagined Ophelia asking Kenny out on a date and, before allowing him an answer, turning on her heel and running to the bus at top speed to tell me that she now had a boyfriend that looked like me.

"I gave him a note, and it said how I felt about him, and I saw him showing it to his friends and laughing. What does that mean?"

I was a little incredulous at this point, verging on annoyed, a little confused, and it was one of those rare moments when I would rather have been doing my schoolwork. I kind of shook my head for a moment before asking "...was it a funny note?"

This is when she started crying.

Many men know the uncomfortable moment when you break up with a woman in a public place and she screams something akin to "YOU THINK I WON'T MAKE A SCENE?!" and then proceeds to make a scene. This was kind of like that, except we were surrounded by a group of people who knew us by name and would be passing us in the halls every day for the next few years. They looked at me like I was a monster, like I had broken this girl's heart, and I didn't even get the satisfaction of all of the good parts of the relationship coming before breaking her heart.

There were a few minutes where I was like a deer in the headlights, just staring dumbfounded at this blubbering mess of a teenage girl while the rest of the class whispered about me from behind their books.

When she finally calmed down enough that she wasn't wailing as loudly as possible, I handed her a tissue and said "...so, it wasn't so funny, then?" She shook her head "it's not a joke, this is my life." That sentence in itself was a joke, but she wouldn't have appreciated me saying so, so I kept my mouth shut.

She started asking me a series of rapid-fire questions regarding the nature of Kenny's laughter, the reasons he would have showed the note to his friends, but she wouldn't stop talking long enough to listen to any of my answers.

When she eventually ran out of breath, I took my chance, "he probably showed his friends the note because he was excited to have someone interested in him, bragging that he had been asked out and not the other way around. They were probably laughing at him rather than the note, saying that either he wrote it or that it was some kind of prank. He probably hasn't given you an answer yet because he hasn't seen you and doesn't have your phone number, and he'll probably come talk to you at some point during today when he finds you."

"So...you don't think asking him out in a note was lame?" Listen up, everyone: asking someone out in a note is totally lame. I mean, damn.

As much as I didn't like going from being the object of desire to being the shoulder to cry on about the new boy in her life, I much would have preferred it to what was to happen between us. I had become the shoulder she would cry on about other boys while simultaneously flirting with me and trying to push me into a relationship. It was the worst of both worlds.

But Ophelia and Kenny would go on to be very happy together. For the rest of the week. Almost.