My Best Friend's Girl Read Online Free PDF

after year of being called fat and ugly hadn’t done a thing except spur me on to success. No one, except maybe Adele, knew that beneath my adult veneer, beneath my confidence and great job and ability to sleep with good-looking men, beat the heart of a terrified girl.
    The outside world, and even to an extent Adele, was taken in by my facade; the impenetrable, polished image that I diligently maintained. People truly believed I was cool and haughty, confident and capable. Nate had seen through me. He discovered almost straightaway the thing that terrified me more than anything else. My ultimate phobia? People.
    It’d started before the bullying at school. I suspected it was what triggered the bullying—those who terrorized me saw that I didn’t fit in, that every conversation was underlined with the fear that they’d discover I wasn’t like them, and they exploited that terror.
    I didn’t seem to have that thing that binds us, makes us human. I struggled to make those connections, struggled to form relationships, even platonic ones. I grew up in a big family, was close to my siblings, but for some reason I never quite knew how to react in certain situations. I was so worried about messing up, about saying the wrong thing, of inciting wrath, that communication became an exercise in terror. And it made me seem standoffish, judgmental and, in later years, a hard-faced bitch. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to relate to others, it was just that I didn’t know how.
    Then I met Adele and found I could do the communicating thing. I started to believe that I wasn’t defective, broken. I could form relationships.
    I’d been seeing Nate for a few weeks when he told me he knew my secret. We’d gone to one of his work parties and from the moment I walked in I knew I didn’t belong. I wasn’t dressed as classily as the other women, I didn’t radiate their insouciant style and I didn’t work in broadcast media. I tried to make polite conversation but I knew with every word I was confirming how different I was, how out of place I was. When, three torturous hours later, Nate said, “Shall we go?” I was out the door and hailing a taxi before he’d finished forming “shall.” Later, Nate wrapped himself around me like a cat curls around its owner’s legs and said, “People terrify you, don’t they? That’s why you’re so cold. I saw you tonight, you were trying to talk, to connect with people, but you had such fear in your eyes.”
    I sometimes think people can see that I’m defective, that there’s nothing there. Behind the job and clothes and makeup there’s nothing to know. I sometimes think I’m this shell and I can’t work out why people like me. And when I’m with strangers it reminds me of that. That I’m insubstantial.
I didn’t say that to him, of course I didn’t. Even if I could get the words out, why would a casual fling want to hear that?
    To my silence he added, “You don’t have to be scared. I’ll always look after you. I think you’re amazing. You’re everything to me, babe.” That upset me so much I got dressed and went home.
    Nate didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t one hundred percent strong, independent and capable all the time, that he was with someone who had the potential to become needy and dependent. He took me as I was, loved me whether I was nice or nasty. He dealt with everything I threw at him, and then some.
    It wasn’t one-sided though. I put up with a lot from him too. He came across as laid-back and infinitely secure, but he was a mass of neuroses that I took on once I decided to give it a go with him. We had balance, Nate and I. A perfect symmetry of love, honesty and trust. With him, as I confessed to Adele after about six months, “commitment” and “forever” weren’t only concepts, they were a reality.
             
    Saturday night.
    It was a Saturday night two years ago. Del and I had put Tegan to bed with the intention of doing some wedding