Delilah Explains... Best Friends Part 3

So I've told you about how I met my best friends, Lauren and Ryan. I've known Ryan since I was a toddler and Lauren since I was eleven but the three of us didn't become a threesome (not that in that sense, I hasten to add. I love my friends dearly but I wouldn't want to see either of them naked) until I was 14. Lauren and Ryan had met a few times (usually over the garden fence) but they'd never spent any real time together. I hung out with either Lauren or Ryan but never both - until my sister's 18th birthday party.

Clara was having a party in the function room above our local pub and Mum said I could invite a friend or two to keep me company (I think even Mum knew that Clara's friends were a bunch of up-their-own-arses stuck-up cows but she'd never say it out loud). So I invited Lauren and Ryan and the rest, as they say, is history. From then, the three of us would hang out together all the time, which was much easier for me as I no longer had to juggle my time between the two.

So the three of us are great friends but I'm still sort of in the middle. We all hang out or go to the pub or in town together and we regularly meet up at the café on the main road for breakfast, but I'm the glue that keeps us all together. I'll spend time alone with Lauren or with Ryan but they never spend time alone together. I would never walk into my local pub and find them chatting in a corner or phone Lauren and hear Ryan in the background. They might text each other or even talk on the phone to make plans for the evening but I don't think the two of them have ever met up without me.

I don't mind being in the middle. It's quite a nice place to be.



There are some things I only do with Lauren: our twice-weekly walks on the treadmill so Lauren can flutter her eyelashes at one of the fitness instructors, girly nights in watching Bridget Jones's Diary or Dirty Dancing or You've Got Mail (or all three) and shopping trips in town.

And there are things I only do with Ryan: hanging out in Ryan's bedroom, pretending we're 15 again by listening to early 2000s music and complaining about our mums (Ryan thinks mine is the best mum you could possibly wish for. We both think his mum is a nightmare), babysitting his niece (Ryan's little sister had a child before either of us. I'm not sure how to feel about this fact) and watching Ryan's students run around on a muddy field with a ball and a bunch of students from a rival school (Lauren has never been excluded from this activity - quite the opposite - but she refuses to stand in the cold on a Saturday morning watching a field full of spotty boys. She left those days behind when we left school, apparently).

And there are things that the three of us do together: the pub quiz on a Sunday (we never win. Not even close), other non-quiz nights in the pub, nights out in town and breakfast at the café on the main road. The café breakfast usually follows a heavy pub or town session. You can't beat a belly-buster breakfast when you're hungover.