bf for f

She is beautiful in the way that most women will never be. Effortless. She’s the kind of beauty you’d love to hate, if it weren’t for the fact that she is also tremendously good spirited.

We met when we were fourteen. We passed notes in the halls each day for nearly three years. And I kept every single one. They live at my mother’s house in a box marked “fragile.” We skinny-dipped in her pool. We caught her parents skinny-dipping in her pool. We got our first speeding tickets together.

Check that. Mine was a warning.

She was a gymnast, a diver and “Class Flirt.” She taught me how to do a front handspring, a back pike and be cavalier. She was the beauty; I was the brains. And we were envious of each other.

We continued on that way through college. We shared a room; we shared a closet. I cooked, she cleaned and we split the grocery bill. Our best talks took place in the bathroom where I would sit in the tub, the curtain drawn, and she’d sit on the bathmat or the toilet seat painting her toenails. She would brush my hair while we watched Must See TV. We’d leave Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and notes in each other’s backpacks that said things like,

“You know why we’re friends? Because we both hate the same people.”
“I love your guts out.”
“If you don’t wash my blue Old Navy tank top by tomorrow, bad things will happen.”

I kept those notes, too.

In ten years, we fought three times.

When she married, I was told to “wear whatever makes you feel pretty. I’m assuming it will be black.” I flew across the country, stood in her receiving line wearing black satin, and cried when I sent her, and her new best friend, off on their honeymoon.

Dear Boo,

Fezzer