Track 7 Was Always the One: She Wasn’t My Best Friend

She wasn’t my best friend.
But she was my friend. The real kind.
The “we met in an AOL chatroom” kind.

I was probably in my 20s, talking like I had game. She was probably bored, looking for distraction, maybe adventure. She also thought I was too nice, which was code for “not exciting enough.” And me? I was running a numbers game. Volume over depth. Every “hey” was a lottery ticket.

Meet up once, didn’t see each other again but somehow we stayed in contact. Across usernames, screen names, sidekicks, Sidekicks with T9. Life just had a way of pulling us forward, sometimes apart, sometimes right back into each other’s inboxes. I got into music on the business end. She wanted to be a singer. We’d talk about dreams. But never us.

There was no big falling out. No almost. We just existed in that weird, persistent gray zone, too real to ghost, too undefined to claim.
But maybe that was our thing.

Then there was this girl. Not her, another one. One I was falling for way too hard, way too fast. The kind of fall you can feel in your chest and your calendar. I was always busy… but never too busy for her. You know the type. And my friend, the one from the chatroom, she noticed.

At first it was slick remarks. Light jabs. Comments like, “You really like her, huh?” with that tone. Then her friends chimed in. “You know she’s only acting like that because she’s in love with you, right?” I played it off. Because at the moment in time, unless it’s said outright, to me, it doesn’t exist. That was my rule. Or maybe I just didn’t want to look away from the flame I was already burning in. Then one night.

Boom!

She sends me a link. No caption. Just a song. RaVaughn – “Best Friend.”

Now listen.

If you’ve never heard “Best Friend” at 1:37 a.m. while half-drunk on the wrong girl, let me explain. It’s not a ballad. It’s a reveal.
It’s not “please love me.” It’s “you should’ve already.”
It’s the sound of someone done waiting.

RaVaughn’s voice doesn’t beg. It delivers. Clear, intentional, no ad-lib escape hatches.

“I want to be your best friend. If there’s nothing more…”
“I want to be the one who makes you feel it’s okay to let her go.”

It wasn’t just a song. It was a monologue.
And the thing that broke me? That was my move.

I was the one who spoke subtly loud with lyrics.
Who’d send tracks instead of paragraphs.
That was my trademark. My love language. And now she’d turned it on me.

I don’t know if she meant it, like meant it meant it, or if she was just casting her line to see what she could reel in. Maybe she was just trying to distract me from my impending doom. Maybe she thought that if she gave me my own medicine, I’d finally taste what she’d been feeling.

Or maybe…
She loved the version of me I was pouring into someone else. Maybe she was hurt she wasn’t getting that… from someone.

Or maybe She really did love me.
And I’m just too cynical, too slow, too nostalgic to believe I deserved that kind of timing especially if I wasn’t the one doing the chasing.

I didn’t reply right away. I didn’t know how. I just played it again. And again. Like how I’m doing now while writing this piece down memory lane.

She wasn’t my best friend. I doubt I was hers. But in that moment, it didn’t matter. She had found the perfect song. And she used it on me like a spell I forgot how to break.

Postlude

We don’t talk anymore. I’m married with kids, she has a son. We didn’t end. We just faded. But every time “Best Friend” comes on shuffle, I hear it different. Not as a love song. Not even as regret.

But as proof that sometimes, the best track on the album isn’t about what happened.

It’s about what didn’t.