“Do you talk to your exes?” I asked him nonchalantly.
“Well… you,” MFL answered with a chuckle.
“Besides me.”
“No, god no. My last ex was terrible. A terrible mistake.”
I swallowed the xiao long bao in one gulp and my ears perked up. He had never talked about his relationships before. At some point in the last three years, we had formed an unspoken rule not to talk about our love lives.
“Oh? Why?” I asked, as offhandedly as I could.
“She was just horrible. Really unreasonable. I have no idea why I went out with her.”
I took a bite of a steaming shao mai and thought before I spoke again. “I don’t really know her but she has always been cold to me.”
He paused. “To tell you the truth… she hates you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re my ex.”
“Just because of that?”
“Yes, just because of that. Which I find absurd. It actually really bothered me. She just hates you. And she creeped you on Facebook.”
“She did?”
“And she interrogated me about you, about all my relationships.”
“Interrogated?”
“Yes, actually interrogated. Like ‘Do you miss her?’ and whatnot.”
“She sounds like a –”
“Bitch. Yes, she was a huge bitch.”
“– bitch.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it,” MFL looked down at the table, “it was so obvious that she was a bitch. But we were just together constantly, I couldn’t see it, I was blinded. But when I went away for the summer, I realized immediately. So I broke it off.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. We sipped the xue cai and tofu soup in silence. My head was swirling with a million thoughts but one came clearest: my intuition was bang on. When I met BE in first year, I immediately thought she was a bitch, namely because she completely ignored me when I tried to talk to her. I wasn’t sure at the time if she knew I was MFL’s ex, but I should have guessed. And the few times that I talked to MFL that year, I could tell their relationship did nothing for him. Maybe that was why I had gotten the boyfriend-vibe from him, because he did miss me. Because as inadequate as I might be at playing The Girlfriend, I was still light years better than BE.

“What about SAD1? Do you still talk to her when you’re back in The City? She was a nice girl,” I ventured, hoping he would tell me more about his relationships now that he had opened up to one. I reached for the last luo bo si bing (radish fried cake) with my chopsticks.
“No, never.”
“Why? I thought you liked her. She was a nice girl! From my perspective at least.”
“She was… okay.” It was obvious he was hesitant to agree with me. “At the time, I talked to L about it and she said, ‘As long as she isn’t just a rebound.’ And she so was. She completely was.”
Inside, a tiny voice was actually cheering. I was right again. I knew those two were not right for each other. On the other hand, I don’t know why he got together with her in the first place, at the expense of my feelings. But that was a matter of pride, and there would never be an adequate explanation for that.
“She was a mistake too,” he sighed. “I have made quite a few mistakes it seems.” He started to tackle the untouched bowl of dan dan mian.
I was torn. As his ex, I was happy to hear that the two girls he dated since me were both “mistakes.” But as his friend, I felt bad for feeling good.

“Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. You have actually done pretty well for yourself. I mean, you only made two mistakes. I’ve made dozens.”
He looked up. I could tell he was interested. “Really?”
“Yeah, of course. I mean, at least you had real relationships, even if they were a waste of your time. I didn’t even have that.” In my head, I knew I should have stopped at that, but I couldn’t stop. My mouth just kept moving. “I had one bad date after another. Believe me, I have made way more mistakes than you. Like ten more.”

He was quiet. I already regretted giving him a definite number. “I guess so,” he finally said. Now he was feeling bad for me.
I turned the attention back on him. “To be honest, I have to say that hearing you say they were mistakes kind of makes me happy, as your ex. But as your friend, I want to ask, what about your current relationship?”
“Oh, this one is definitely not a mistake. No, definitely not,” he smiled. My heart sank. “Her name is B. She’s great. I mean, her friends are terrible, but she is nothing like them. She’s logical and reasonable and –”
I cut him off. “That’s great! That’s really good to hear. You seem happy.”

I realized that whatever opportunity I had had for getting back together with MFL came and went with the two previous “mistakes.” Now he was with a girl he really liked, maybe even loved, and I had known it right from the beginning. From the first time I saw him on the phone with her, I knew: this one was different. This one actually meant something to him. But as hard as I fought it, I couldn’t let him be. I couldn’t let him go completely.
Which was when the second realization of the night dawned on me. He was more loyal to me than any of the girls he’s been with. It was clear as day. He valued my opinion more than his relationships with them, and if I had said to him that so-and-so was a mistake, or so-and-so wasn’t right for him, he would have gone and broken up with her without a second thought. Not that I had ever told him to break up with any of his girlfriends, because I felt it wasn’t my place, but he made it clear he would listen to me. It was freaky to have that much power over someone’s life.
But with power comes responsibility, and I knew that the only reason I did have that much power over him was because he trusted me. He knew that if I saw him with someone who was right for him, I would not let my over-inflated pride get in the way of his happiness. It was true. As long as he was happy with B, I was rooting for them all the way. I still care about him so damn much that his happiness supersedes mine.
And of course, the last, most obvious realization. I still love him. I know because I fail to be selfish when it comes to him. I know because despite how much I just want to be his ex and not his friend, I am his friend, and I am a good friend. And maybe his past, present, and future girlfriends will all hate me for being in his life, but I cannot let him go.

But I have to also believe that while he may never leave my heart, there is room there for someone else. And so I, like him, will find someone who can really make me smile, and then it’ll be MFL’s turn to be happy for me.

  1. SAD was the girl that “caused our break-up” so to speak. We were in a relationship low and I saw that there was a spark between them. SAD really liked him, but I am not sure how much he liked her. Either way, she was the girl that he got together with about a week after our break-up. [↩]