the other girl

I didn't even know she existed until the guy I'd been dating posted a vlog entry on YouTube. Although he spoke in generalities with characteristic charm, he chronicled a date he'd gone on after Easter dinner-- a date that I had not been party to. It was a clear enough time marker, and I knew I had been home alone, likely hoping to hear from him. That's the problem with smart girls. Until then, she had been theoretical. He had merely reserved her space. If I want to date other people. If I want options. She had been other people. She had been options. She had been if.

Moving forward, I never really cared to venture about who she was. I'd promptly removed myself from an overly complicated equation with one-too-many variables. I had solved, quite simply, for the appropriate "x" and I didn't look back.

I never knew her name or her face.

But she knows mine.

This is all weeks behind me now. I lead a busy life, and it's scarcely crossed my mind. Yesterday, however, the plot thickened. While talking to a new potential, he revealed that he knew the other girl, and that she'd been poking around, trying to learn what she could. He curiously knew my ex's name, and details too on-point to come from anyone but the girl in line behind me.

"How does she know we're friends? How does she even know who I am?" I demanded. It was uncomfortable, vulnerable, in the way it must feel being watched behind a one-way mirror. Someone was clearly looking at me, but I had no way to see to the other side.

He didn't reveal her name, but then, I never asked. I had already walked away from that situation with as much of my dignity as I could sweep up. I haven't verbalized, even to my closest friends, details she had so freely intimated. Part of me feels vindicated. We end up where we belong.

I cannot speak for her, because hers is a voice I do not know. But it's not a great leap for me to imagine that,  in this situation, you'll never really know where you stand. I know I didn't. Once you have the relevant information-- once you know that there is another girl-- it is no longer the romance you had the smallest hopes it might be. You know that it's not a love story you'll one day tell children. You know, with sad resignation, that it's not a love story.

I suppose she wanted to know the same things that I had initially been curious to know. What's she like? Is she prettier than I am? I suppose it mattered less to me because I didn't see him as territory I was looking to claim. Is there something about her that makes her, somehow, the better choice? This is perhaps the only answer I really have.

The other girl would always be the clear choice.

She had stayed.