not true

There were once two guys and a girl.  The guys were close friends.  They had known each other for about four years, and had passed through many ugly haircuts and disastrous relationships and rained out camping trips.  There were many times when they woke up curled up in a ball on someone else's floor and had to walk home shivering and sharing a cigarette.  In many different cities.  As happens sometimes with friends, they got into arguments and fights.  They fought about which version of Sweet Jane was better.  They fought when they owed each other money, they fought about what movie to watch.  But they had never really, really, fought, until Adelle. 

After Adelle, they were no longer friends, but negotiating parties who weren't sure whether there was any point in negotiating.  They became like UN delegates from countries who are at war.  Civil, but distant.  Always armed. 

And Adelle? Not interested, really, in either of them.  Just a passing, fleeting dalliance.  She was amused by them, thought both of them very attractive, and in the end found their pathetic war very touching.  She moved on quickly when the drugs ran out.  Ray and James contemplated gouging each other's eyes out, thought about knives and baseball bats, and ended up exchanging half-hearted insults late at night through a protective fog of beer and feigned aloofness. 

Would it have been the same had she not had elf ears, one strand of blonde hair which was always in her mouth, and liquid blue eyes? Would it have been the same if her eyelids were not like moth wings through which you could see the veins and the briefly shrouded blue eyes underneath? Perhaps.  But we cannot know. 

She still, wherever she is, has a half-smile and hair in her mouth. 

Ray still misses James.  James still curses Ray, when he thinks about him, which is about every two days. 

But what of it? It's only friendship, and courtship, and someone said something once about All's Fair, and they were right, bastard that they were.