Safe choices make for boring stories

The real reason my friend's hot boyfriend kept flirting with me

When I was twenty-seven and living in Madrid, I met a reader of my old blog—let's call her Julie.

Brazilian with German roots, Julie had golden skin, chestnut hair cascading to her waist, and fairy-tale seafoam eyes. She spoke three languages and worked as a translator in an apartment crammed with highbrow novels. Despite writing like an angel, she had no interest in being a writer. I envied her contented life—the one I might have had if I had ever been able to let writing go.

Julie was dating a guy—let's call him Víctor—who looked like a Viking: tousled blonde hair, flawless marble skin, and eyes so pale gray they were nearly transparent. He wrote, too, but unlike Julie, he had ambitions. I'd later discover he'd won literary prizes and international fellowships—but when he first told me he was a writer, my knee-jerk, pedantic thought was: "I bet he doesn't know how to place his commas."

Víctor and I joined the local climbing gym together. Knowing he was off-limits, I told him about my climbing gym crush: a physics PhD with deep blue eyes and a wry sense of humor. My roommate had dubbed him "Suckeyes" because—her words—"his eyes make me wanna suck his dick." I explained to Víctor how Suckeyes, following the time-honored tradition of ninety-five percent of the men I've ever been attracted to, acted like I didn't exist.

"I don't get it," Víctor said. "You're beautiful, you're a brilliant writer, you’re strong as hell... I would totally go for it."

I blinked, my brain scrambling. Nobody's ever into me—especially not Nordic gods dating brilliant Brazilian translators. I cracked a joke to defuse the moment and went home to binge-watch Grey's Anatomy.

This entered the top three of my most exciting sexual moments in the mid 2000s #addisex

Weeks later, just when I thought Suckeyes and I were making progress—he'd friended me on Facebook—I lost my grip on a sweaty hold at the gym and sprained my ankle. As I lay on the mat in agony, I half-hoped Suckeyes would notice from the upper level and rush down for a dramatic rescue.

Instead, Víctor materialized.

"Let's get you to the ER," he said.

I nodded, mentally writing off Suckeyes, for whom I suspect I never graduated from NPC status.

In the waiting room, Víctor cradled my swollen ankle in his hands, gently massaging it while helping me snap a photo for Twitter.

"What if he wants to cheat on Julie with me?" The thought flickered through my mind like accidentally tuning into the wrong radio station. Víctor was miles ahead of Suckeyes, but he had a perfect girlfriend—and since I've always chosen celibacy over humiliation, I let it go. They put me in a cast, and we got in a taxi. Víctor helped me up the five flights to my walk-up, leaving me in bed with a wink and a promise to check in.

He kept his word—visited a few times and brought me a short story with every comma in its rightful place. Syntactically smitten, I looked at him with fresh eyes. Maybe Víctor was that rarest of creatures: an attractive, thoughtful guy who could actually write; a devoted boyfriend whose affection sometimes spilled over into lingering hugs.

Once my ankle healed, I went for coffee at Julie and Víctor's place: a dim, ground-floor apartment in Lavapiés, sun-starved but somehow filled with plants. The bed was unmade with that particular disarray of couples who can't keep their hands off each other. They served me tea with fresh mint and some borderline-stale cookies from the supermarket.

We got to talking about infidelity and Julie's affair with a married French professor. I shared my accidental stint as the other woman and offered my half-baked theories on open relationships, most likely using the phrase "ships passing in the night."

Then Julie said, "Well, we know how to take care of women."

I froze.

Were they propositioning me? Could I have made a move on Víctor without being a homewrecker? Or did they come as a package deal?

Julie was attractive and all, but I was more inclined to send her out for takeout—like Ross in that Friends episode—while I role-played non-PG versions of Nordic mythology with her boyfriend.

I’ve recently learned that Friends nostalgia is intrinsically Millennial and lame, but I don’t care, which probably makes me look like I’m trying too hard

Then again, maybe it would work. I'd been in a drought, emotionally squatting in memories of my last lover: an ice climber who'd taken one look at my emotional baggage and realized he hadn't packed nearly enough gear.

I can't remember how that conversation ended. In my memory, it fades to black, and the next scene finds me on a plane to Denver, Colorado, about to meet my husband and begin—though I didn't know it yet—the rest of my life.

I wish I'd said yes to that threesome with Víctor and Julie. Let's be honest: it would've been a disaster. I would've hated being the least talented writer of the three. I would've gotten attached to one or both of them, and my already battered heart would've ended up crushed on the grimy streets of Lavapiés.

But—and it's a big but—I would've had one hell of a memory. Like a prospector, my writer's brain would've mined gold flakes: Víctor's luminous marble skin, the three of us smoking in bed and reading from our latest work, entire Sundays spent horizontal except for coffee runs and picking up the paper.

Some experiences are worth having just for the stories they become, and that threesome with Víctor and Julie belonged squarely in that category.

These days, Víctor's gone full sexy-bald and Julie's still stunning. These days, I have two kids and a husband who claims he'd only consider a threesome with another woman—and honestly, who needs that headache?

I don't have the memory of that threesome with Julie and Víctor, but maybe by telling myself the story of what might have been, I can at least hold onto the memory of its possibility. And given all the ways our story could've gone sideways, maybe that's the happiest ending after all.

Besos,

You can find the Spanish version of this essay here.

P.S. I just noticed this is the second story I've shared here where I hurt my foot in the presence of a crush. If this ever becomes a beloved romance trope (foot-comfort?), I'm claiming authorship.