My great friend Kyle has an older sister named Kelly. When Kyle and I first became friends, Kelly was kind of a non-entity. She was never really around and they had the rather typical brother/sister incompatibilities. On top of that, she had a boyfriend/fiance of several years (since she was 13 and he 17) that had the inclination to dominate her social life.

Once she moved away to go to college (and broke the engagement off), though, they naturally became closer. Whenever she was in town, she would often join us for our jaunts to IHOP or whatever else. The same was true whenever we would go to Ephesus. She and I traded instant messages somewhat regularly and formed a loose friendship even apart from her brother.

She excelled at being free from the ex-fiance. She was very attractive with a very engaging personality to a certain kind of guy (the kind of guys that inevitably choose to live in college towns). She dated a lot. At one point she was dating a member of a hot local band. I use the word “member” loosely. While the band played, he stood on stage and juggled and swallowed flames. He seemed right up her alley. He was also big into polyamory, which she was uncertain about at first but she seemed to revel in the freedom for a while until she got together with some other musician-sort.

She and I would sometimes get together when I’d go back to Delosa, but around the time I moved to Estacado she moved to Cascadia. It seemed that she had met the guy of her dreams and she left a $70k/year job on a lark because he wanted to move to Zaulem to… well no particular reason. He just thought that would be a better place to be and he wanted her to go with him. Kyle was distressed at the degree to which she was willing to making such important life decisions on a man’s account, but I argued that she had become a pretty independent person.

I saw her again at Kyle’s wedding (Kyle was, by that point, living in Estacado). I was greatly looking forward to seeing her again. It’d been too long. There was also the matter that she had a job with the technology giant Mindstorm. Since I knew Mindstorm wouldn’t be interested in me, I was actually more interested with the placement agency that she’d hooked up with and hoped that said agency might be able to help me get a job somewhere. I figured that we’d have plenty of time to talk about it between the wedding, reception, and all that.

When I saw her at the wedding, I suddenly understood Kyle’s concern. She was never more than five feet away from him. She waved “hi” across the room but there was no customary hug and she and I never talked. In fact, she spent 90% of the time talking just to him. She started to try to introduce him around but he started become agitated with something and they basically ended up talking by themselves in the corner with him wearing a “Do not disturb” look on his face. It was the first time she’d seen her family in over six months and the first time she’d seen a lot of the guests in years. But it was apparently more important to him that she keep him entertained.

It was all quite sad.

Since finding out she works on the same floor in the same building as I do, part of me wants to go over and say “hi”, though I have this odd feeling that her boyfriend might not approve (not that I would have posed any threat even when I was single, much less now that I’m not) or that it would be inappropriate somehow. Maybe he isn’t the bad guy at all and she was just ready to move on to a different phase in her life.

Eh. I’d rather blame him.