[mythryl1969]

Soon after the explosive ending of Carmen and Esteban's marriage, my future ex wife and I had a conversation and she agreed that we should offer Esteban refuge. (Again, we didn't know how big of a prick he was to Carmen at the time.) So my GF and I moved into a larger apartment in the same complex, and invited Esteban to take one of the other bedrooms. I even helped him move out of his home with Carmen, which was VERY awkward...it was here where I got my first glimpse of exactly how poorly Esteban handled his anger. By this point in time both Carmen and Esteban were my friends and had been for several years...but Esteban was so outraged by the betrayal by Carmen that he couldn't stop making things absolutely miserable while we carried all of his stuff out of the house, and he fully expected me to do the same. Which I didn't...which foreshadowed a far more serious confrontation to come...but at the time he was so focused on being angry with Carmen that I guess he didn't have any left to dump on me.

Esteban lived with my GF and I for just over a year; during that time my GF and I became engaged. To make matters even more complicated, my GF was ALSO good friends with Carmen, and the two of them would hang out from time to time (but without me, because I did not want to undercut my loyalty to my friend Esteban). Eventually my GF and I married and we moved out into our own apartment, while Esteban remained in the apartment he had shared with us with a relative that moved in to help him with the rent.

It was in this uneasy state of affairs that my friendship with Esteban came to a shockingly abrupt end. One evening my (now wife's) brother and I went over to the old apartment to pick up some things I had left behind. Esteban was there with a new girlfriend and he had been drinking. As my brother in law and I gathered my belongings, Esteban cornered me and declared that it was time for me to order my wife to stop hanging out with Carmen because, amongst other things, Esteban was sure that eventually Carmen would somehow turn me away from him and on to 'her' side. Now, keep in mind...despite how hot Carmen was and how much I fantasized about her, it was Esteban's side that I had taken in this whole mess. I did not know why Carmen had given up on him - all I knew is that she had abandoned her marriage to him in what seemed the worst way possible; I had since that moment stood steadfastly by Esteban, even to the point of living with him alongside my GF for a year in order to help him get back on his feet. So I told him that his fears were unfounded, and that in any event I could not order my wife not to be friends with whomever she chose. It was at this moment that Esteban suddenly flew into a rage, told me that I had betrayed him, compared me to Fidel Castro betraying the Cuban people (which, if you know anything about Cuban expatriates, is a HUGE insult), declared me 'dead to him' and told me to get out of his life and never return. Lest you, the reader, think him fickle, know this: From that day forward he never again knowingly spoke to me. Every time I tried to reach out to him - even years later - he refused to even acknowledge me.

That ended up being the close of this chapter of the story. Carmen and my wife continued to be friends, but only casually; and within a year of that night, my wife and I moved hundreds of miles away for family reasons, and all contact with Carmen dwindled away to nothing.