I was in my second-year of university, and had just broken up with my longterm boyfriend. Heartbroken and numb to pretty much everything, I was keen to figure out what university hookup culture was all about, given I’d been dating my man since year 13.
The unlucky guy who caught my attention actually happened to be my childhood best friend who I’d completely lost track of for about 10 years, but my mum had told me he was also in Dunedin for uni. Let’s call him Finn.
Finn and I chatted back and forth for the majority of the year, but things got increasingly flirty once I was single and ready to mingle. Long story short, we ended up having “sex”, which was really shit and took place on a polyester blanket that was such a sensory nightmare it made my teeth hurt. Neither of us really had a good time. Finn just seemed nervous and sweaty, my heart wasn’t in it (it wasn’t really anywhere, to be fair) and neither of us came. Being single was fucking awful, and I wasn’t getting over my ex. I had basically just transferred all of my relationship feelings that I had with my ex onto Finn, which, looking back, was a really shitty thing to do.
We fucked like one other time when we were drunk at a party, which was as satisfying as the first time. A bit depressed, and being warned repeatedly by my friends that he seemed quite into me when I was incredibly emotionally unavailable, I was decidedly vulnerable when my ex texted me that he wanted to talk. I obliged, and was pretty keen to give things another go with him. Retrospectively, it was completely understandable that Finn wasn’t too pleased with this, given I’d been seeing him every other day and acting as his manic pixie dream girl.
There was a brief period where I was still talking to both Finn (but getting increasingly dry) and my ex before I decided what I wanted. Finn definitely knew that something was up, and I eventually told him that I had decided to start seeing my ex again. We didn’t really talk again after that, and I remember thinking that he took the entire thing pretty well.
A day or two later, I was invited to a party. I was friends with one of Finn’s flatmates, who was also invited to that party. Finn’s flatmate and I set off for the party, had some drinks, and did whatever. Classic Friday night on the lolly waters. It was on a dusty Saturday that I braved the walk to my car to go grab a Powerade, only to pull out from the curb and realise I had a flat tyre. That’s fine – I had wanted to spend an extra $200 that week. I got one of my mates to switch in the spare tyre, and set off to Bridgestone.
I returned to Bridgestone later that day to collect my car and see whether the tyre could be patched up or not. Concerned, the kind gentleman told me that my tyre had been stabbed with a knife around 20 times. He asked me whether I knew of who would do this, given it seems like whoever had done it had done so intentionally.
While I always like to think the best of people, my mind couldn’t help but drift to Finn, given he had a very fair enough reason to be mad at me, knew what my car looked like, and knew I would be out on Friday night with his flatmate – leaving my vehicle defenceless. I honestly kind of forgot about the whole saga, given Finn had promptly dropped out of uni, moved back to Wellington, shaved his head and started the gym after I broke things off with him. Around a year later, I texted him asking if he had stabbed my tyre, which he denied. Guess we’ll never know.
