Sharing Is Caring – Chapter 3 – Rules That Immediately Get Broken
We wrote the rules on a napkin. This should have been my first indication that they were not going to hold up under any real-world conditions, because nothing important has ever been successfully governed by a brunch napkin, but Lesley insisted, and Lesley insisting is a force roughly equivalent to weather.
“Rule one,” she said, pen poised like she was drafting a treaty. “No feelings.”
“Obviously.”
“I’m serious. Write it down.”
“You write it down. It’s your napkin.”
“It’s our napkin, Jean. This is a joint venture.”
I wrote NO FEELINGS in block letters, underlined it twice for emphasis, which felt appropriately legally binding for a document that would later be balled up and thrown away with our egg white omelets.
“Rule two,” Lesley said. “We tell each other. Every time. No exceptions.”
“Define ‘tell.'”
“Like – a heads up. A courtesy text. ‘Hey, seeing Sam Thursday.’ Nothing dramatic.”
“So we’re co-parenting a man.”
“We’re co-managing a man. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. Co-parenting implies emotional investment. This is logistics.”
I wrote ADVANCE NOTICE – NO EXCEPTIONS beneath the first rule.
“Rule three,” I said, feeling emboldened. “No comparing.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means neither of us asks the other how it went. In detail. Ever.”
Lesley considered this with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice. “Partial detail.”
“No detail.”
“General vibes only.”
“Lesley.”
“Fine. General vibes only. That’s my counteroffer.”
“Accepted, under protest.”
I wrote NO DETAILED COMPARISONS (GENERAL VIBES OK), which in hindsight is possibly the single most doomed clause ever committed to paper.
“Rule four,” Lesley said. “If either of us wants out, we’re out. No guilt, no negotiation.”
“Agreed.”
“And rule five.” She looked up from the napkin, suddenly serious. “We don’t let this touch us. You and me. Whatever happens with him, it doesn’t get anywhere near us.”
I looked at her – my best friend of fifteen years, the person who’d held my hair back through two bad breakups and one memorable food poisoning incident in Cancún – and felt, for one small unguarded second, the actual weight of what we were agreeing to.
“Deal,” I said.
We shook on it. Over a napkin. Like idiots.
The napkin lasted four days.
Day one violation: I saw Sam again.
In our defense, that wasn’t technically against the rules.
What happened afterward was.
Lesley texted me at 11 p.m.
Lesley: how’d it go
Me: general vibes only
Lesley: yes. give me the general vibes
Me: he’s better at listening than I expected
Lesley: better how
Me: THAT IS NO LONGER A GENERAL VIBE
I did not answer beyond that, mostly because I was laughing too hard to type.
Day two violation: I forgot the advance-notice rule entirely, showing up at Lesley’s building on a Wednesday to return a jacket she’d left at my place. Sam’s car was already outside.
I recognized it immediately.
That bothered me for reasons I chose not to investigate.
I stood on the sidewalk for ninety seconds deciding whether knocking counted as an ambush.
“You could’ve texted,” Lesley said, opening the door in a bathrobe, entirely unbothered.
“I didn’t know he’d be here.”
“He’s always here on Wednesdays now.”
“Since when?”
“Since it became a thing.”
“When did it become a thing, Lesley, we had a napkin.”
“The napkin didn’t account for Wednesdays specifically.”
I did not have a rebuttal for that, mostly because it was, technically, true.
Day three violation: Sam texted me first, unprompted, no occasion, just a genuinely funny video of a dog failing spectacularly to catch a frisbee.
I sent it to Lesley immediately, delighted, only to receive back a single word – same -followed by a screenshot proving he’d sent her the identical video four minutes earlier.
I stared at the screenshot longer than the situation deserved.
Me: he sent us the same dog video
Lesley: efficient
Me: is it though
Lesley: he’s a busy man, Jean. He can’t write two different captions for every dog.
Me: he didn’t write ANY caption
Lesley: even more efficient
By day four, the rules existed only as a memory and a slightly stained napkin somewhere at the bottom of my bag, and the two of us sat across from each other over wine doing a post-mortem on exactly how thoroughly we’d failed our own treaty within a single work week.
“We’re bad at this,” I said.
“We’re excellent at this,” Lesley said. “We’re bad at following our own rules, which is different.”
“Is it?”
“Completely different category of failure.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“Well, I do, and I wrote the napkin, so I get final say on interpretation.”
“You did not write the napkin. I wrote the napkin. You dictated it.”
“Executive vision versus manual labor. Both essential.”
I laughed and topped off both our glasses.
Four rules down in four days.
“At least we haven’t broken the important one,” I said.
Lesley lifted her glass.
“Never.”
We clinked.
Neither of us bothered saying which one we meant.