Luke and I didn’t part on the best terms. Basically, I cruelly dumped him and he was heart-broken.

We tried to stay friends, but that doesn’t usually work when one person is over it (me) and one person is still in love (him). I’m sure it was misery for him, and I didn’t set out to cause it. Yeah, I dumped him, but I didn’t want him to keep on being unhappy because of me. So it was sort of a relief when he moved far away. I missed him, of course– he was my best friend before we ever dated. But he deserved a new start, and I hoped the move would give that to him.

For a while, we didn’t talk much. He moved to be with this girl he knew, and they started dating either right before or shortly after. I think they must have dated for something like two years. So, seemingly, it worked. Moved = new start = forget about Ramona and move on.

And then his girlfriend dumped him.

I’m not sure why, but the first person he decided to call when his long-term girlfriend dumped him was me, the last long-term girlfriend who’d dumped him. I tried to be a good friend. I tried to listen. I took his calls on the fire exit stairs of my office building and let him tell me what a bitch she was. I listened to him go through the same “but why” reaction that he did when I’d dumped him. And it was like I was dumping the poor guy all over again. I didn’t like it much, although I have to admit it was nice to spread the guilt around a little. Now I was not the only girl who’d ever broken his heart.

I had hope that it would be a permanent reconnection for us– that we’d keep being friends even after he got over the hurt of being dumped, again; that maybe this new hurt would replace the old hurt that I’d caused him. Alas, no. He lost a bunch of weight, got some tattoos, dyed his hair black, and started dating another girl. He’s married to her now and they seem happy– actually, kind of freakishly happy. So I’m happy for him.

But I miss my friend, selfish as it is. I wonder what kind of catastrophe it would take for us to be friends again, but I don’t want that to happen to either of us, so I just have to be content occasionally stalking him on Facebook and being happy that he’s happy. That’s what a good friend would do, right?