The Middle Man

Its all my fault. I did this. I caused this to happen.

My best friends have always had a rocky friendship. They got along as much as two people with complete opposite interests can and both of them liked me. That makes me wonder though if the main reason they stayed friends was because I was their interest in common, if I was friends with both and I was the glue keeping their friendship together. I hope not. I hope there was something else about them that they liked, something that made them want to find something in common.

None of that matters now, they've reached a point of no return and it's all my fault. If last week I hadn't been on my computer in the lecture maybe I wouldn't have been on the internet. If I hadn't gone onto the musician's website, maybe I could have avoided this. Stumbling across a once in a lifetime up and personal concert was like hitting a goldmine. If only it had been nearby, if only it had been in Glasgow, or London, not all the way over in New York.

When I showed it to them, they were both so excited, one mostly because of the prospect that it was in New York, but she said that she was willing to go to a concert of somebody she wasn't particularly fond of for a trip to New York city, the place she dreamed to work one day. The other was squealing like a demented fangirl, well, I suppose that was what she was. Together we skipped and jumped and clapped our hands excitedly.

And the next day it all fell apart.

"I can't go." I told them sadly. I had got home and realised that a trip like that was expensive, between flights, hotels, the tickets themselves, which, as scarce were pricey. So I, living in a flat with three other students couldn't pull that much money together in the space of two and a half months. Plus work would never give me time off for up to two weeks in the middle of the summer, when the sunshine was at its height and an ice-cream shop was busiest. For me the concert was no more than a dream.

The others said that they were still wanting to go - if I didn't mind of course - and they talked animatedly about the whole thing. Where they were going to go, what they were going to do, how exciting it was going to be. The trip was all that occupied their conversation and I thought finally, something for them to talk about.

Or not.

When I met with them on the day they had agreed to sit down and make concrete plans, I arrived to a screaming match. I had no idea where they had started, I had no idea where it was going to finish but all I knew, was that the plan was over. Words were floating around the fight; 'expensive', 'promise', 'liar'. It turned out that another one had thought about it too, she had sat down and done the maths as I had, and she couldn't go either, in the end she wasn't that bothered because she didn't really like the band anyway, she could always go to New York another time. The other felt betrayed, her hopes had been brought up and the plan snatched away in the blink of an eye.

They screamed and screamed. They called each other, stupid, selfish, bitch. I tried to calm them down but I ended up getting stuck in the middle. They yelled at me too, they tried to make me take sides. I didn't want to take sides, I didn't want to be the middle man. I wanted us to all get along.

The feeling of guilt built up in my chest. This was my fault, I had found that damn show. Now they hated each other, one because she felt betrayed, the other because she couldn't forgive things the first said. I liked them both. They liked me. They despised each other. No matter what I was always going to be the man in the middle.

I didn't want to lose either of my friends, but I didn't want to hear them saying that the other made them feel like shit. I didn't want to hear them say that they hated each other, I didn't want to know that people who were so full of joy and so kind to me were the image of hate and hurt to somebody else. To me neither was a bad person but, to each other, they were bitches. I didn't know how to calm them down. How did I get them to make up? How could I make it go back to the way it was?

I needed to fix the mess I made. Somehow I knew I couldn't.