Laryssa Notices

Things started to change between Laryssa and my nerdy friend on the day she came home to find me in a submission hold begging Andrew for mercy. She watched in awe as Andrew made me repeat self-deprecating things, knowing Laryssa was his audience. My wife smiled at Andrew, biting her lip, hearing me shout how much bigger and stronger he was than me, and how she deserved to be with a real man like him. She didn’t see past the fact that he was making me shout those things, which made it even more humiliating. While caught in the hold, his dirty white-socked foot made its way between my lips, and when I gagged on his cotton-covered toes, Andrew released the hold, unable to control his laughter. For all Andrew’s flaws, he truly excelled at making me look meek and wimpy in front of others.

Laryssa would later tell me that, while “watching Andrew slap me around,” she realized Andrew wasn’t the nerd I made him out to be, that perhaps it was me that was tagging along with him! She spoke as if her realization was a fact without even considering that I might have had a perfectly good explanation for getting my ass kicked by my tag-along friend. Laryssa offered me some advice, telling me to “stand up to my bully” if I wanted him to stop picking on me. I was flabbergasted at her perception of how things were between Andrew and me. I told her that he wasn’t my bully, reminding her that this was Andrew were talking about – the guy my best friend dubbed “the neighborhood loser.” She wasn’t convinced but didn’t push the issue.

I told Andrew the next day what my wife said about our tussle. I don’t know why, but I felt obligated to tell Andrew that my wife thought of him as my bully. I told him that Laryssa thinks he made me look puny. Andrew interpreted that differently than I intended him to, like Laryssa’s perspective of our friendship had established what the realistic status-quo was between he and I. Andrew’s smile turned into a smirk upon remembering just how much my girl’s eyes were on him that day. Suddenly, I got the same sense of inferiority being around Andrew that I got when I was with Rob.