His Ex Humiliated Me Publicly… But What My Best Friend Revealed That Night Left Me Speechless…

I swear the night started out normal.

I didn’t wake up that morning thinking, Tonight your entire life will split into Before and After. I was just trying to find a dress that didn’t make me look like I’d tried too hard for a casual Thursday happy hour.

But that’s how this stuff always happens, right? You’re worried about whether your eyeliner is even, meanwhile the universe is behind you with a sledgehammer.

My name is Lauren Parker. I’m twenty-eight, I live in Portland, Oregon, I drink way too much cold brew, and I used to think I knew how to tell when people were lying to me.

I was wrong.

1. The Night It All Blew Up

“Babe, you ready?” Jason’s voice floated down the hallway as I fought with my hair in the bathroom mirror.

“One sec!” I called back, pinning down an annoying flyaway. “Do I look like I’m trying too hard?”

He appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame with that half-smirk that had gotten him out of more trouble than he deserved.

“Trying too hard for what?” he asked.

“For your work happy hour.” I gestured at myself. “I don’t want to look like I think it’s a gala.”

He crossed the tile in two strides, slid his hands around my waist, and kissed my bare shoulder. “You look perfect. Seriously. Also, it’s a launch party, not just happy hour. The marketing team’s been working on this for months. Everyone’s gonna be overdressed.”

I met his eyes in the mirror. “Even… her?”

He rolled his eyes and groaned. “Can we not do this tonight?”

“She’s going to be there, isn’t she?”

“Probably,” he said. “She still works there. But she’s just another coworker. We broke up three years ago. You know that.”

“I know,” I said, forcing a smile. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

He watched me for a second, like he was trying to gauge if I meant it. I didn’t, not really. But I’d been with Jason for almost a year now. I’d pretended to be fine with a lot of things.

“Come on,” he said finally. “We’re gonna be late. Chloe’s already there saving us a table.”

That made me smile for real. My best friend, human emotional support blanket, and hobby-level drama detective, Chloe Henderson, had insisted on coming. “I want to check out the tech-bro zoo,” she’d said over FaceTime, popping a chip into her mouth. “Also, someone has to make sure you don’t accidentally get recruited into a pyramid scheme.”

I grabbed my purse. “Okay. Let’s go.”

The event was at this industrial-chic place in the Pearl District, all exposed brick and Edison bulbs and drinks that cost as much as my internet bill. A huge banner with the company’s new brand name hung over the bar: STAXIS in neon white.

“Could they scream ‘we’re a tech startup’ any louder?” Chloe muttered when we walked in. She wore high-waisted jeans, a black crop top, and a red leather jacket that gave her the energy of a woman who showed up to ruin the right man’s life.

“Be nice,” I said, bumping her hip with mine. “Jason likes it here.”

“Jason likes kombucha on tap and unlimited LaCroix,” she said. “His judgment is compromised.”

Jason laughed and kissed the side of my head. “Wow, I’m just getting roasted from all directions tonight, huh?”

“You knew who you were dating,” I said.

He put his arm around my shoulders. “I did. Very intentionally.”

I let myself melt into him for a moment, breathing in the familiar scent of his cologne. For a second, it was just us in the room.

Then I saw her.

She was across the room, near the bar, laughing with a cluster of people from Jason’s team. I recognized her instantly, even though I’d only ever seen her in photos on social media and in an unfortunate tagged Facebook memory.

Her name was Alyssa.

Tall, long dark waves, a perfectly symmetrical face that looked like it had been fined-tuned by an algorithm. She wore a sleek black jumpsuit and red lipstick that was somehow bold and effortless at the same time.

She was the kind of woman who didn’t just walk into a room; the room rearranged itself around her.

“Is that her?” Chloe murmured in my ear, following my gaze.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. My stomach tightened. “That’s her.”

Jason’s arm stiffened around me. “You don’t have to be weird,” he said under his breath. “It’s just my ex.”

“I’m not being weird,” I lied.

Chloe hummed. “I’m gonna go get drinks,” she announced. “What do we want? Lauren wants a gin and tonic. Jason wants something that sounds like a machine learning algorithm. I want tequila.”

“An old fashioned, please,” Jason said.

“Tequila soda with lime,” I added.

“You got it.” She disappeared into the crowd.

Jason touched my chin gently. “You sure you’re okay?”

I plastered on the smile I reserved for awkward small-talk and airport security. “Totally fine. Let’s mingle.”

We made the rounds. Jason introduced me to his coworkers; I tried to remember names and job titles and who worked on what team. People were friendly, loud, already a little buzzed. I laughed at jokes I barely understood about APIs and cloud clusters and something called containerization.

Every time I glanced over, Alyssa was still there. She floated between groups, laughing, tossing her hair back. She looked like she belonged in this world. Like she’d built it.

I was starting to feel like an extra in someone else’s movie.

“Here.” Chloe reappeared, handing me my drink.

“Bless you.” I took a long sip, feeling the burn at the back of my throat.

“Relax,” she said. “You’re the current girlfriend. She’s the past. Math is math.”

“Tell that to my brain,” I muttered.

But as the night went on, I did start to relax. A little. The room buzzed with music and clinking glasses; there was a speech from one of the founders; someone rang a bell when they announced new client numbers. Jason beamed, proud of his team. He grabbed my hand during the speech and squeezed it.

“For those of you who are new to Staxis, or joining us as plus-ones,” the CEO said into the mic, “we’re not just building a product. We’re building a family.”

Chloe leaned in. “If a startup CEO ever calls you ‘family,’ ask for a raise or a lawyer.”

I choked on my drink.

The crowd laughed and cheered. The energy rose. Someone turned the music up. A few people started dancing.

I let myself breathe. Maybe this was going to be okay.

Then I heard my name.

“Lauren?”

I turned.

Alyssa was standing right behind me.

2. Public Humiliation, Courtesy of the Ex

Up close, she was even more intimidating. Not because she looked perfect—though she did—but because she radiated this terrifying calm, like nothing could knock her off balance.

“Hi,” I said, forcing my voice not to wobble. “You must be Alyssa.”

She smiled, lips curving like she knew a secret I didn’t. “And you’re Lauren. Jason’s new girl.”

“Girlfriend,” I corrected, because suddenly that word felt important. “Yeah.”

“Right.” She glanced at Jason, who’d just walked up with a fresh drink. “Hey, J.”

Jason froze. “Hey, Alyssa.”

Chloe stepped a little closer to me, her body language casual, her eyes sharp.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” I said, hoping that if I kept this light and polite, it would stay that way.

“Have you?” Alyssa asked, cocking her head. “I hope only good things.”

I choked out a laugh. “Well, you know how ex stories go.”

“Oh, I do,” she said softly. “I really, really do.”

Jason cleared his throat. “We don’t have to do this right now,” he said.

Alyssa ignored him.

“You work in design, right?” she asked me. “Jason mentioned you’re at Lumen Studio.”

“Yeah,” I said, surprised. “I’m an art director.”

“Nice. I’ve seen your stuff on Instagram. You’re really talented.”

I blinked. “Thank you.”

That was… unexpectedly kind.

“So,” she continued, tilting her head, “how long have you guys been together now? Eight months? Nine?”

“Almost a year,” I said. “Our first date was last November.”

Her smile shifted, like a knife sliding between ribs.

“Oh,” she said. “Last November.”

A strange tension snapped into the air.

Jason’s jaw tightened. “Alyssa,” he warned.

“What?” she asked, all innocence. “We’re just talking.”

Chloe’s hand brushed my elbow, subtle reassurance.

“Anyway,” Alyssa continued, “I’m happy for you guys. Really. Jason’s great. As long as you don’t mind the… overlap.”

The word hit me like a slap.

I stared at her. “The what?”

She laughed, too loudly, like she wanted people to hear. “Oh my God, he didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?” My voice had dropped. The music around us hummed; the chatter blurred into white noise.

“Alyssa,” Jason said sharply. “Drop it.”

She turned to him, eyes suddenly hard. “Why? You didn’t seem to mind the overlap when it was happening.”

“What overlap?” I repeated, my skin buzzing.

Alyssa looked at me. Really looked at me. And in that moment, I didn’t see a flawless ex. I saw someone deeply, deeply pissed off.

“Jason and I,” she said slowly, enunciating each word like she wanted to nail it into my skull, “were still seeing each other when you two started dating.”

The world tilted under my feet.

“That’s not true,” Jason said immediately. “We’d broken up—”

“You were sleeping at my apartment twice a week,” Alyssa snapped. Conversations around us were starting to quiet. People were looking over. “You told me you ‘weren’t ready’ to define things. Then suddenly there’s a girl on your Instagram and you’ve been dating for ‘months.’”

My mouth had gone dry. “Is this some kind of joke?”

Alyssa’s gaze cut to me. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

“You’re remembering it wrong,” Jason insisted. “We were on a break—”

“Oh my God,” Chloe muttered under her breath. “He did not just pull a Friends reference in the middle of a public meltdown.”

Alyssa took a step closer to me. “How long did he tell you we’d been broken up when you guys got together?”

“A few months,” I said automatically, my brain flipping through old conversations. “You’d moved out. You weren’t living together anymore—”

“Yeah,” Alyssa said, a bitter laugh scraping her throat. “I moved out in October, and you two went on your ‘first date’ in November. And Jason—” she looked at him, eyes blazing “—was in my bed until mid-December.”

The sentence landed like a grenade.

I heard ringing in my ears. The room blurred out of focus, edges going soft.

“That’s not—” Jason started.

“Dude,” someone behind us said quietly. “What?”

“I’m lying?” Alyssa demanded. Her cheeks were flushed, her breathing sharp. “Tell me I’m lying, Jason. Tell your little friends I’m crazy. You’re good at that.”

“You know I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said, holding his hands out, palms up, like that made anything better. “We were ending things, it was complicated—”

“Complicated?” she repeated. “You told me you weren’t ready to be in anything serious. Then two weeks later, you’re posting this one—” she pointed at me “—with a caption about finally ‘finding your person.’”

My stomach twisted. I remembered that caption. It had made me cry, in a good way. Or what I’d thought was a good way.

“Wait,” I said slowly. “So you and Jason were… what? Together? Not together? What were you?”

Alyssa’s laugh cracked. “That’s the thing, Lauren. I didn’t know. I thought we were working it out. He told me he just needed space. That he wasn’t ready. That he didn’t want to ‘rush into anything.’”

Jason closed his eyes for a second. “We were breaking up. You know we were breaking up. It just wasn’t… official yet.”

“When did you tell me it was official?” she shot back. “January? Right after New Year’s? Three months after she existed?”

A few people gasped. Someone’s phone was definitely out. My cheeks burned.

“Is that true?” I asked Jason, my voice shaking. “Were you still… with her when we started dating?”

“It wasn’t like that,” he said quickly. “We were over. We were just having trouble letting go. It was messy. You know that. Adult relationships are messy.”

Something in me snapped at the condescension in his tone.

“Did you sleep with her after our third date?” I demanded.

He hesitated. Just a fraction of a second.

But that was the answer.

“Oh my God.” I stepped back.

“Wow,” Chloe said softly. “Okay. A pause would like to enter the chat.”

“You’re twisting this,” Jason said, reaching toward me. I stepped away. “It was complicated. I was trying to figure things out. I didn’t want to lose either of you—” He stopped, realizing too late what he’d just said.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“There it is,” Chloe said.

Voices around us swelled. People were openly watching now. Alyssa stood stiff, arms crossed, breathing hard.

“You didn’t want to lose either of us,” I repeated, my voice flat. “So you lied to both of us.”

“I didn’t lie,” he insisted. “I just… didn’t tell you everything. I didn’t want to scare you off.”

“The overlap scared me off,” I snapped. “Not the truth.”

“I found out about you by accident,” Alyssa said, her voice quieter now, tired. “He left his phone on the counter. A notification popped up. A selfie, from you. In the dress you wore on your first date, probably. I asked who you were. He said you were ‘just a friend.’”

My stomach lurched. I remembered that selfie. I’d sent it before I got in the Uber.

“I asked him if he was seeing anyone else,” she continued. “He said no.”

Jason scrubbed his hands over his face like he could erase himself. “I was scared,” he said. “We’d been together forever. I didn’t know how to do the whole breakup thing cleanly. I didn’t want to hurt you, Alyssa. And with you—” he looked at me, desperate “—I didn’t want to mess it up. I was falling for you. I just… didn’t know how to let go of what I had with her.”

“So you kept both,” Chloe said. “Like a coward.”

“Okay, I think we should take this somewhere else, away from everyone—” he started.

“Why?” Alyssa asked. “You weren’t worried about privacy when you were lying to us.”

“Because this is my job,” he snapped. “These are my coworkers. You’re making a scene.”

“Oh, I’m making a scene?” she laughed. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you’d told the truth from the start.”

He was sweating now. “Can we please talk about this tomorrow? Or literally any other time?”

I stared at him, at the man I’d loved for almost a year, and something inside me broke.

“Tomorrow?” I said, my voice low. “So I can go home with you tonight, knowing you did this? Knowing you had me and her at the same time? Let me post another cute couple picture and keep the timeline nice and clean?”

“Lauren—”

“No.” My hands were trembling, but my voice was steady. “You don’t get to control the narrative anymore.”

Chloe’s hand squeezed my arm, proud.

I looked at Alyssa. For a second, I could see past my own humiliation and into hers. Different flavors of the same betrayal.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “For what he did. To both of us.”

She blinked, caught off guard. For a moment, her face softened.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I do now.”

I turned back to Jason.

“We’re done,” I said.

His eyes widened. “Lauren, come on. Don’t be dramatic.”

That word—dramatic—did something ugly to me.

“Dramatic?” I repeated. “You lied to me. You lied to her. You let us exist in parallel universes so you could feel safe while you figured your shit out. That’s not complicated. That’s selfish.”

“Okay, wow,” he said tightly. “You know what? Fine. Be mad. But you’re not perfect either. You conveniently forgot to mention your little thing with—”

“Don’t,” Chloe cut in sharply. “Do not try to drag her down with you.”

“Stay out of it,” he snapped at her.

“Make me,” she said.

He exhaled, threw his hands up. “I can’t do this right now.”

“You already did it,” I said. “We’re just finally watching the playback.”

The room felt too loud, too bright. My humiliation was a physical thing, crawling over my skin. People would talk about this tomorrow. Screenshots. Texts. “Did you hear what happened to Jason and his ex and his girlfriend?”

But beneath the embarrassment was something else: clarity.

“I’m going home,” I announced. “Chloe?”

“I got you,” she said immediately.

“Lauren, wait,” Jason pleaded, reaching for me.

I stepped back. “Don’t touch me.”

His face crumpled. “Can we please talk about this? Just us?”

“You already had both of us at once,” I said. “You don’t get us in the same night again.”

I turned and walked away, my heart pounding so loudly it drowned out everything else. Chloe fell into step beside me. At the door, I risked one last glance back.

Alyssa was staring at Jason like she didn’t recognize him.

Maybe she didn’t.

I wasn’t sure I did either.

3. The Car Ride: Static and Silence

The cold air hit me like a slap when we stepped outside. It was one of those brisk Portland nights where the sky was clear and sharp, and the streetlights made everything look a little too honest.

Chloe unlocked her car with a chirp. “Shotgun,” I muttered automatically, then laughed, the sound half-hysterical.

“Get in,” she said gently.

I slid into the passenger seat and buckled up with shaky hands. My thoughts were static—no fully formed sentences, just flashes: Alyssa’s face, Jason’s hesitation, that word: overlap.

Chloe started the car and pulled away from the curb.

We drove in silence for a few blocks, the city lights streaking past. My phone buzzed once, twice, again and again—texts, probably, from Jason, maybe from mutual friends who’d witnessed the spectacle.

I turned the screen face down in my lap.

“You okay?” Chloe asked finally, her voice soft.

I laughed again, but it broke in the middle. “Define ‘okay.’”

She nodded. “Fair.”

“I feel like my brain is buffering,” I said. “Like it keeps trying to load a reality where that didn’t just happen, and the page won’t refresh.”

“That tracks.”

I stared out the window. People walked along the sidewalks, laughing, talking, holding hands. Their lives seemed simple from this distance. Small and normal and unshattered.

“Do you think she told the truth?” I asked quietly.

Chloe glanced at me. “Do you?”

I swallowed. “She didn’t hesitate. Not once. Her story was too specific to be some random lie. And he… he hesitated. Just enough.”

“That’s what I saw too,” she said.

I nodded slowly. “Cool. Awesome. Love that for me.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, you know,” she added. “He did.”

“I know that logically,” I said. “But my body is convinced this is somehow my fault. Like, if I hadn’t posted that selfie, if I’d asked more questions, if I’d noticed some tiny red flag on our first date—”

“Lauren.” Her voice cut through my spiral like a clean slice. “You can’t retroactively fix someone else’s integrity. That’s not how it works.”

I pressed my palm to my forehead. “It’s just… humiliating. Everyone saw. His coworkers. His ex. Our friends.”

“They saw him,” she corrected. “They saw what he did.”

“Mmm.” I let my head fall back against the seat. “Can we skip to the part where I become emotionally evolved and detached and mysterious?”

“Sure,” she said. “Step one: eat pasta at my place. Step two: talk massive shit. Step three: cry while watching a reality show where someone else’s life is a bigger disaster than yours. Step four: I tell you the thing I was going to tell you later tonight anyway.”

I frowned. “What thing?”

She hesitated. It was subtle, but I caught it.

“Chloe.”

“Let’s get you home first,” she deflected. “Then we’ll talk.”

My stomach tightened. “You know I hate that. ‘We’ll talk.’ That’s a phrase straight from the depths of hell.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m not trying to torture you. I just don’t want to pile another thing on top of… whatever this is.” She gestured vaguely toward the night behind us.

“Is it about Jason?” I demanded. “Did you know something?”

Her grip tightened just slightly on the steering wheel.

“Not… exactly,” she said. “But it’s connected. Kind of. Look, I promise I’ll tell you. Tonight. Okay?”

I stared at her profile in the glow of the dashboard lights. I’d known her since freshman year of college. I trusted her more than anyone.

“Okay,” I said finally.

She exhaled. “Okay.”

We pulled up outside my apartment building fifteen minutes later. It was a converted brick warehouse with crappy insulation and great light. I loved it. Or I had, in the world Before.

“You wanna stay at my place tonight?” she asked. “I can grab your stuff, we can—”

“No,” I said. “I want my own bed. My own shower. My own ugly sweatpants.”

“Your wish is my command.”

We climbed the stairs in silence. My key jiggled in the lock; the familiar creak of the door greeted us. My apartment smelled faintly of vanilla and eucalyptus, the candles I lit out of habit.

Chloe closed the door behind us and leaned against it, studying me.

“Do you want tea, wine, or tequila?” she asked. “I can also combine two of those options, but I do not recommend it.”

“You’re supposed to offer ‘water’ first,” I said weakly. “Like a responsible adult.”

She snorted. “You’re not in a ‘responsible adult’ moment.”

“Fair.” I dropped my purse on the couch and kicked off my shoes. “Wine, please. The red. The one we bought because the label was pretty.”

“On it.”

She went to the kitchen. I made my way to the bathroom, catching my reflection in the mirror. My makeup was still mostly intact, except for the smudged mascara at the corners of my eyes.

I looked like myself. But I didn’t feel like myself. It was like my insides had shifted half an inch to the left.

I changed into an old oversized college sweatshirt and soft leggings. When I came back out, Chloe had already poured two generous glasses of wine and opened a bag of chips from my pantry.

“I’m feeding you carbs and alcohol,” she said. “This is my love language.”

I sank onto the couch. “Thank you.”

We clinked glasses and took long sips.

“So,” she said eventually. “Do you want to tell me how you’re feeling? Or do you want me to just start giving opinions unprompted like an aunt at Thanksgiving?”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “I feel stupid,” I said. “And angry. And… weirdly relieved? Is that messed up?”

“Not at all.”

“I think I’ve been low-key anxious about Alyssa since day one,” I admitted. “Not in a ‘she’s better than me’ way, but like… in a ‘she knows a version of him I don’t’ way. And tonight I realized that version was the same one lying to both of us.”

Chloe nodded slowly. “You saw behind the curtain.”

“Yeah,” I said, voice small. “And I didn’t like the wizard.”

“Good,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

I took another gulp of wine.

“So,” I said after a moment, “what’s the thing you were going to tell me?”

She went still.

“Chloe.”

She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at me, something like guilt flickering in her gaze.

“Okay,” she said. “I need you to remember that I love you. And that if I’d known all of this, I would’ve told you sooner. And that I was trying to figure out how to—”

“Please don’t preface,” I interrupted. “You’re scaring me.”

She exhaled. “Fine. I’ll just say it.”

She set her wineglass down carefully on the coffee table, like she was bracing for an earthquake.

“Jason didn’t just overlap you and Alyssa,” she said quietly. “He lied about something else. Something… bigger. And I didn’t tell you because I needed to be sure before I dropped it on you.”

I stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

She swallowed.

“He wasn’t just seeing Alyssa when you two started dating,” she said. “He was also… engaged.”

The room spun.

“What?” I whispered.

“To someone else,” she said. “And she doesn’t know about you. Or Alyssa.”

4. The Reveal

For a long moment, I was pretty sure I’d misheard her. My brain tried to rearrange her words into something that made sense.

“You’re joking,” I said finally, my voice faint. “You have to be joking.”

“I wish I was,” Chloe said. “Trust me.”

“A fiancée?” I repeated, my throat closing around the word. “He had a fiancée?”

She nodded. “Her name is Natalie. She lives in Seattle.”

I stared at her like she’d grown a second head. “How do you even know that?”

She hesitated. “Okay, so… remember when we were stalking Alyssa’s Instagram like six months ago?”

I groaned. “Yes. The night you said, ‘I need to see what level of hot we’re dealing with.’”

“Right,” she said. “Well, I went deeper down the rabbit hole than I told you. I clicked on someone she tagged in an old post. That girl had a bunch of pictures from a friend’s engagement party. And in the background of a few of them…”

She trailed off.

“Don’t,” I said. “Do not tell me—”

“Jason was there,” she said. “With his arm around this girl. Natalie. And in one of the photos, he’s wearing a ring. Not on his ring finger, but on a chain around his neck.”

Ice slid down my spine.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” I said weakly. “He could’ve just been—”

“They were tagged,” she said gently. “As #NatalieAndJason. There’s also a photo of just the two of them with the caption: ‘Can’t believe I get to marry my best friend.’ And the comments are full of people saying things like ‘the future Mrs. Brooks.’”

“Brooks,” I repeated numbly. “That’s his last name.”

“Yeah.”

“But he told me he’d never been engaged,” I said. “We had a whole conversation about it. I asked him if he’d ever gotten close to proposing to anyone and he said, ‘No, I’ve never met anyone who made me want to do that.’”

Chloe’s jaw tightened. “Yeah. That sentence aged like milk.”

I pressed my fingertips into my temples. “But maybe it’s old,” I said, desperate. “Maybe it was from years ago. Before Alyssa. Before me. Maybe—”

“It was posted eighteen months ago,” Chloe said quietly. “I checked the timestamp. And the engagement party pics were from… last August.”

I sat back hard against the couch cushions.

“Last August,” I repeated. “Last. August.”

“Yeah.”

“We started dating in November,” I said. “He told me he’d been single for ‘about a year.’”

“I know.”

“And he was still sleeping with Alyssa in December,” I added, my brain connecting dots faster than I could emotionally process them. “So that means that last August, he was engaged to Natalie, then supposedly ‘single for a year’ in November, and still tangled up with Alyssa in December.”

Chloe nodded.

“I feel like I’m trying to untangle Christmas lights that have been in a box since 1998,” I muttered.

“That’s a generous way to describe his love life.”

I took a shuddering breath. “Okay. You saw the engagement photos. But how do you know they’re still together? Maybe they broke up. Maybe—”

“I didn’t tell you this earlier because I didn’t have proof,” she said. “But I have it now.”

Her voice had shifted. There was steel in it.

“What did you do?” I asked slowly.

She bit her lip. “You know how I freelance sometimes for that travel blog? The one that’s owned by the same media company that runs all those lifestyle sites?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, they gave me access to a media database. It lets you look up people’s public-facing info—stuff they’ve put out there, social media, websites, that kind of thing. I was… bored one night. And I searched his name.”

I stared at her. “You ran a background check on my boyfriend?”

She winced. “Not a full background check. Just a… light stalking. Professional-grade stalking. And his LinkedIn, his professional profiles, all that stuff, they were normal. But then I found something else.”

“What?” I whispered.

“A wedding website.”

The air left my lungs in a whoosh.

“No.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes sad. “It was through one of those big wedding sites. You know, the ones with the templates and registries and countdown timers. It was under ‘Natalie Harper & Jason Brooks.’ And it had all the usual things. Their story. Their photos. Their wedding date.”

My mouth was dry. “What’s the date?”

She hesitated. “It was supposed to be next May.”

“Next May,” I repeated. “As in… six months from now.”

“Yeah.”

I stared at her. “And you’re just telling me this now?”

She flinched. “I didn’t want to drop it on you unless I knew it was still active. The last update when I first found it was from months ago. It could’ve been canceled. They could’ve broken up. I didn’t want to blow up your relationship based on something that might already be over. So I… bookmarked it. I checked in every few weeks.”

“And?” I whispered.

“And…” she exhaled. “They updated it last week.”

The room seemed to tilt.

“What did they update?” I asked, my voice barely audible.

“The registry,” she said. “Added more items. And there was a new photo from this summer. Them at Mount Rainier. The caption said, ‘Engagement shoot take two. Seven months to go.’”

I closed my eyes. “Oh my God.”

“I was going to tell you tonight,” she said quickly. “I swear. I told myself if he did anything even mildly sus at this party, I was just gonna pull the ripcord and show you everything. Then… all of that happened.” She gestured toward the door, toward the memory of Alyssa’s voice.

“So while he was introducing me to his coworkers as his girlfriend,” I said slowly, “he was still engaged to someone else in a different city. And sleeping with his ex.”

“Yeah,” she said. “He’s been running a whole multiverse of relationships.”

I laughed, but it came out broken. “Jesus Christ.”

“I wanted to have screenshots, dates, everything lined up when I told you,” she said. “I didn’t want him to be able to gaslight you. He’s… good at that.”

“You think I needed evidence?” I asked hollowly. “I just watched him implode his own reputation in front of fifty people with one sentence.”

“I know,” she said. “But I know you, too. You would’ve given him the benefit of the doubt. You would’ve wanted to believe him. And this is not a situation where I was willing to risk that.”

A hot, stinging feeling pressed behind my eyes.

“So you’ve known for weeks,” I said, “that my boyfriend might be engaged to someone else. And you didn’t tell me.”

She looked gutted. “I suspected. I wasn’t sure.”

“You saw a whole wedding website,” I said.

“It could’ve been old,” she insisted. “People forget to take those down. They drag their feet on canceling things. Names linger. I needed current proof. That’s why I checked again after the long weekend. And when I saw they’d updated it, that’s when I decided. I was going to tell you tonight. At the party. After we’d had at least one drink and—”

“So my entire relationship was a ticking bomb to you,” I said, my voice shaking. “And you were just… waiting for the right moment to detonate it.”

“That’s not fair,” she said quietly. “I was trying to protect you from being devastated over something that might have already ended.”

“The devastation feels pretty current,” I snapped.

She nodded, swallowing hard. “Yeah. I know.”

Silence hung heavy between us.

“I get why you’re mad at me,” she said softly. “You’re allowed to be. I deserve that. But I need you to know, Lauren… I didn’t tell you because I wanted to be absolutely sure before I took away your happy story. I know what he meant to you. I know how hard it is for you to trust people after your last breakup. I didn’t want to be wrong. And I didn’t want him to twist anything I said.”

I stared at my hands.

“Show me,” I said finally.

She blinked. “What?”

“Show me the website.”

She hesitated for half a second, then reached for her bag, grabbed her phone, and tapped rapidly. After a moment, she turned the screen toward me.

It was all there.

A white background. A photo of Jason and a petite brunette with glasses, both laughing, arms around each other’s shoulders. A header banner: NATALIE & JASON in elegant serif font. Below that, a date: May 24th. Location: Seattle, WA.

I scrolled with numb fingers.

Our Story: We met at a friend’s birthday party in Capitol Hill. Jason made some terrible pun about data science and dogs, and I knew I was in trouble…

I stopped reading.

My eyes snagged on the photos. Jason kissing Natalie’s cheek. Jason lifting her up in front of a lake. Jason with his arms around her, pressed to his chest, his face soft in a way I recognized all too well.

I’d seen that face. A mirror version of it. Directed at me.

“Scroll up,” Chloe said quietly. “Check the ‘Updates’ section.”

I did.

There it was, a post from eight days ago.

We finally picked our songs for the ceremony! Also, updated our registry with some kitchen stuff since we’re finally replacing Jason’s bachelor-era pots and pans, haha! Can’t believe we’re less than seven months out…

My stomach lurched.

“Seven months,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” she said.

I clicked to the registry tab. It was full of things that implied a future, a shared home: a stand mixer, a couch, a set of matching luggage.

“He doesn’t even cook,” I muttered.

“He burns toast,” she agreed.

We sat in silence for another long moment.

“How did you not murder him on sight tonight?” I asked finally.

“I thought about it,” she said seriously. “But orange isn’t my color.”

Despite everything, I let out a strangled laugh.

“I’m so sorry,” she added, her voice thick. “I should’ve told you sooner. I just…”

She trailed off, looking away.

“What?” I asked.

She bit her lip, hesitating.

“Say it,” I said. “Tonight is apparently the night everyone tells me everything.”

She laughed once, humorlessly. “Okay. The truth? I was scared.”

“Of what?” I asked, bewildered.

“Of losing you,” she said simply. “Again.”

The word hung between us.

“Again?” I repeated.

She looked down at her hands.

“Do you remember sophomore year?” she asked quietly. “When you were dating Mark?”

I frowned, thrown by the sudden tangent. “Yeah. Of course. Why?”

“You stopped talking to me for four months,” she said. “He didn’t like me. He thought I was a bad influence. He told you I was jealous and dramatic and always in your business. And when I tried to tell you I thought he was cheating, you… chose him. You blocked my number. You stopped answering my texts. I found out he’d actually cheated on you because you called me at three in the morning after you caught him. That was the first time I’d heard your voice in months.”

The memory hit me like a cold wave. The late-night phone call. The way my voice had broken. The relief and hurt in her response.

“I was twenty,” I said, choking on old shame. “I was an idiot.”

“You were in love,” she said. “And you were stubborn. And I get it. But it… hurt. A lot more than I let on.”

My chest tightened. “You forgave me.”

“I did,” she said. “But I haven’t forgotten what it felt like. And when I found that wedding website… all I could think was, If I tell her and she chooses him over me again, I don’t know if I can survive losing her twice.”

Tears pricked my eyes.

“So I waited,” she continued. “I gathered proof. I told myself I’d make it so undeniable that even you couldn’t… talk yourself out of it. I was trying to protect both of us. And I’m so, so sorry that the timing ended up being… like this.” She gestured helplessly.

I stared at her, my best friend, the person who knew where all my bodies were buried. I saw how scared she’d been to risk what we had.

“I would’ve believed you,” I said hoarsely.

“Maybe,” she replied. “But I remembered twenty-year-old you. And I panicked.”

I let that sit for a moment.

Then I said, “Okay. So, to recap: my boyfriend is actually a lying, cheating, engagement-hoarding catastrophe, and my best friend is… an overprotective, deeply traumatized raccoon who has been single-handedly doing investigative journalism on my love life.”

She sniffed. “That’s… not inaccurate.”

I sighed.

“And you’re mad,” she added quietly. “Which I deserve.”

“I’m hurt,” I corrected. “But I also… get it. Kind of. You watched me nuke our friendship once for a guy I’d known for six weeks. Jason was a bigger investment. If you were gonna drop a bomb, you wanted the coordinates to be precise.”

She nodded, eyes shiny.

“So I’m not going to pretend I’m not upset we didn’t have this conversation earlier,” I said. “I am. But also… if I’m being honest? If you’d told me about the website six months ago, I probably would’ve demanded to see if it was still active. I would’ve found some way to rationalize it.”

Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you for not hating me.”

“I could never hate you,” I said. “Mildly resent you, sure. But not hate.”

She laughed weakly.

I leaned back, feeling exhaustion press down on me.

“What do I even do with this?” I muttered. “Like, what is the next move? Do I call him? Do I call her? Do I hire a skywriter? What’s the etiquette for discovering your boyfriend is actually someone else’s fiancé and your relationship was basically an unpaid internship?”

Chloe winced. “Oof. Too soon for that level of accuracy.”

I rubbed my face. “He’s engaged, Chloe. Engaged. To a woman who thinks she’s marrying her best friend. I can’t just… sit on that.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve been wrestling with that in my head for weeks.”

“We have to tell her,” I said. “She deserves to know.”

She nodded. “I agree.”

“How?” I asked. “What do we do, slide into her DMs like ‘hey queen, hate to break it to you but your fiancé is living a triple life, high-five emoji’?”

Chloe blew out a breath. “We could message her through the wedding site. There’s a contact form.”

My stomach flipped. “Oh my God.”

“Or,” she added carefully, “we could give him one chance. To tell the truth. To her. We can confront him, show him we know everything, and give him a deadline. If he doesn’t come clean… we do it for him.”

I thought about that. My instinct screamed to skip the middleman, to go straight to Natalie with everything.

But another part of me—the part that had once loved him, that still remembered the way he laughed, the way he’d memorized my coffee order—whispered that as much as I wanted to burn him to the ground, I didn’t want to become him.

I didn’t want to be the one who blindsided a stranger in Seattle with a grenade of truth when she hadn’t even had a chance yet to hear it from the person who owed it to her most.

“He doesn’t deserve the grace,” I said slowly. “But she does. She deserves a version of this that isn’t… a random DM from a stranger.”

Chloe nodded. “So we confront him.”

“We?” I asked.

She lifted her chin. “Did you think I’d let you do this alone?”

Emotion swelled in my chest. “You didn’t sign up for a three-person breakup.”

“I’ve had season tickets to your emotional roller coasters for ten years,” she said. “I’m not getting off now.”

I laughed, watery.

“Okay,” I said. “We meet him. Tomorrow. Somewhere public but not his turf. We tell him we know about Alyssa and Natalie and the wedding and everything. We tell him he has forty-eight hours to tell Natalie the truth. And if he doesn’t, we will.”

Chloe considered that.

“Twenty-four,” she countered.

“Forty-eight,” I insisted. “I’m not doing him a favor. I’m giving her time. To process. To ask questions. To get context. I remember what it felt like to find out about Mark from a screenshot. It was like my entire life had happened without me. If I can give her even a slightly better version of this, I want to.”

She sighed. “Fine. Forty-eight.”

“And if he lies… again,” I added. “If he tries to twist it or blame us or stall… then we go nuclear.”

“Nuclear it is,” she said.

I took a deep breath.

I felt weirdly… calmer now. Not okay. Not remotely okay. But there was a plan. A direction to point my anger.

“And Chloe?” I said softly.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” I said. “For telling me. For digging. For… loving me enough to risk pissing me off.”

She smiled sadly. “Always.”

I leaned over and hugged her, hard. She hugged me back just as tightly.

“Tomorrow,” I said into her shoulder. “We blow up his little multiverse.”

“Tomorrow,” she agreed.

5. Confrontation

Jason texted me twelve times overnight.

I didn’t answer.

He called twice around midnight. I turned my phone off and lay awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling, replaying the night over and over like a highlight reel of bad decisions.

In the morning, my eyes were puffy, my head pounding. The sky outside my window was gray.

Chloe arrived at nine with coffee and a look of determination.

“You ready to commit a little emotional arson?” she asked, handing me a to-go cup.

“As I’ll ever be,” I said.

We’d agreed to meet Jason at a coffee shop halfway between my place and his office. I picked the location: neutral territory, not too crowded, not too intimate. A place where people went to write screenplays and have breakups. The tables were strategically spaced, the music a little too loud.

He was already there when we walked in, sitting at a table near the window. He looked like he hadn’t slept either. His hair was messy, his eyes bloodshot. When he saw me, he stood up so fast his chair scraped against the floor.

“Lauren,” he said, relief flooding his voice. “Thank God. I’ve been calling you. I—”

He noticed Chloe behind me.

“Oh,” he said. “You brought backup.”

“We come as a set,” Chloe said dryly.

We sat. I placed my phone on the table, facedown. He did the same.

“Do you want anything?” he asked, gesturing toward the counter. “Coffee? Tea? I can—”

“We’re good,” I said.

He swallowed, sat back down.

For a moment, none of us spoke. The sounds of milk steaming and cups clinking filled the silence.

“Look,” he said finally. “About last night—”

“We’re not here to talk about last night,” I cut in.

He frowned. “What?”

“We’re here to talk about all the nights before that,” I said. “The ones you conveniently edited when you told me your story.”

He looked confused, then wary. “What are you talking about?”

“Alyssa,” I said. “For starters.”

He looked away, jaw clenched. “I told you, it was complicated. We were on our way out when you and I—”

“You were sleeping with her after our third date,” I said. “You lied to her about me. You lied to me about her. That’s not complicated, Jason. That’s cheating.”

His eyes flashed. “It’s not that simple.”

Chloe made a noise. “If you say ‘adult relationships are messy’ again, I will launch myself into the sun.”

He shot her a glare. “Can we have this conversation privately?”

“No,” I said. “We cannot.”

He dragged a hand through his hair. “Fine. Yes. Things overlapped with Alyssa. I should’ve handled it better. I’ve been beating myself up about that all night. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I hurt you, and I’m sorry I hurt her. I panicked. I didn’t know how to let go of something long-term and start something new. I get it if you need time, but—”

“This isn’t about time,” I interrupted. “It’s about the truth. And Alyssa is not the only person you overlapped.”

His brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”

I looked at Chloe. She gave the tiniest nod.

“It means,” I said slowly, “that your relationship timeline doesn’t just include me and Alyssa.”

His shoulders tensed.

“Jason,” I asked, “who is Natalie?”

The color drained from his face.

For a moment, I thought he might actually faint.

“I—” He swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Try again,” Chloe said.

He looked at her, then at me, his eyes darting between us like a trapped animal.

“Did Alyssa tell you something?” he demanded, defensive. “She doesn’t know—”

“She didn’t tell us anything,” I said. “We found out on our own. About the engagement party. About the wedding website. About May twenty-fourth and Seattle and the registry and the engagement shoot at Mount Rainier.”

His mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

“I…” He exhaled shakily. “I can explain.”

I laughed—a short, sharp sound. “Of course you can.”

“It’s not what you think,” he said quickly. “It’s not like I’ve been—”

“Engaged?” Chloe supplied. “That’s literally what you’ve been.”

“Technically,” he said.

“Technically?” I repeated.

“It’s complicated,” he said, the words sounding thin even to him.

“I swear to God,” Chloe hissed, “if you say that phrase one more time—”

“How long, Jason?” I asked, cutting across them. “How long have you been engaged to her?”

He stared at the table.

“Eighteen months,” he muttered.

“Louder,” I said.

“Eighteen months,” he repeated, slightly louder.

I felt physically ill.

“And when did you and I start dating?” I asked.

“November,” he said weakly. “Last year.”

“So you were engaged before we met,” I said. “And you stayed engaged the entire time we were together.”

He flinched. “It’s not that simple.”

I slammed my palm lightly on the table. The cups rattled. A few people glanced over.

“Stop saying that,” I said, my voice shaking. “Stop hiding behind ‘complicated’ like it’s a moral shield. You asked another woman to marry you. You promised her a future. And while she was picking out songs for your wedding, you were posting photos of us on Instagram with captions about ‘your person.’ You were sleeping with your ex. You were lying to all three of us. That’s not complicated. That’s monstrous.”

He winced like I’d slapped him.

“I never meant for it to go this far,” he said. “I—”

“How far did you plan for it to go?” Chloe asked. “Were you going to juggle three women indefinitely? Or did you have some kind of eventual rotating scheme in mind?”

He glared at her. “This isn’t your relationship.”

“It stopped being just your relationship when you turned it into a small-town census,” she shot back.

“Jason,” I said. “Look at me.”

He did.

“Does Natalie know about me?” I asked. “About Alyssa?”

His eyes flickered. That was all the answer I needed.

“No,” I said. “Of course she doesn’t. Because then she might stop planning your little future together. She might stop adding pots and pans to your registry.”

He closed his eyes. “You weren’t supposed to find out like this.”

“How was I supposed to find out?” I asked. “At your wedding? Because surprise, I’m not great with surprises.”

He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to end things,” he said. “With both of you. I was going to break up with you—”

“Wow,” Chloe said. “You’re really nailing the damage control.”

“—before the wedding,” he finished, shooting her a glare. “I just… kept putting it off. I didn’t want to hurt you, Lauren. I didn’t want to be the bad guy.”

“You are the bad guy,” I said. “That’s not optional. That’s not something you get to opt out of by procrastinating.”

“I didn’t want to call off the wedding,” he said, voice cracking. “Her family has put so much into it. Her parents paid the deposit on the venue. Everyone’s excited. I kept thinking, ‘I’ll figure it out. I’ll fix it. I’ll make it clean.’ And then… time just kept moving.”

Chloe looked like she might actually launch herself across the table. “You kept an entire human being engaged to you because you were scared of disappointing her parents?”

“That’s not fair,” he said. “I love her.”

The words hit me like a slap.

“You love her,” I repeated, numb.

“Yes,” he said, eyes earnest. “I do. I’ve known her for years. She’s been there for me through everything. I just—”

“What about me?” I asked quietly. “Do you love me?”

He hesitated. The universe seemed to hold its breath.

“I care about you,” he said finally. “A lot. You know that.”

Something inside me went cold.

“That’s not what I asked,” I said.

He swallowed. “I—I don’t know. Maybe. In a different way.”

I sat back.

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you for your honesty. Belated as it is.”

“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said, desperate. “Or Alyssa. Or Natalie. I just—”

“You wanted to feel wanted from every direction,” Chloe snapped. “You wanted to avoid making a hard choice. So you made a thousand tiny cowardly ones instead.”

“You’re not helping,” he said through his teeth.

“I’m not here to help you,” she replied. “I’m here to help her.”

“Jason,” I said. “Here’s what’s going to happen.”

He looked at me warily.

“You are going to tell Natalie the truth,” I said. “All of it. Not a sanitized version. Not some story about ‘a brief mistake’ or ‘emotional confusion.’ You’re going to tell her you cheated on her emotionally and physically. That you’ve been living a double life. Triple, if we count Alyssa. You’re going to give her the option to stay or to go, with full information.”

His face twisted. “I can’t just—”

“Yes,” I said. “You can. You will.”

“And if I don’t?” he asked, defiant.

“Then we will,” Chloe said calmly.

He stared at her. “You wouldn’t.”

“We would,” I said. “We have screenshots. We have dates. We have the website. We know where she works; we know her Instagram. We’re not going to smear you publicly. We’re not going to send a mass email to your coworkers. We’re going to do what you should’ve done from the start: tell the woman who agreed to marry you who you actually are.”

His jaw clenched. “I could say you’re lying. That you’re trying to sabotage me. That you’re bitter exes.”

“You could,” Chloe said. “But we have evidence. And your performance last night in front of half your office? That’s not exactly doing you any favors.”

He flinched.

“You have forty-eight hours,” I said. “To tell her. You can do it today, or tomorrow. In person, over the phone, I don’t care. But in forty-eight hours, we will reach out. And we’ll know if you’ve told the truth.”

“How?” he demanded. “You’re just going to stalk her until she posts something?”

“Or you can prove it,” Chloe said. “You can CC Lauren on the email where you confess. You can send her a screenshot of your text. You can put yourself on record.”

“That’s insane,” he said. “You’re asking me to… to ruin my entire life.”

“We’re asking you to stop ruining hers,” I said.

“She loves me,” he said, sounding almost childlike. “This will destroy her.”

“Not as much as marrying a stranger who lies like it’s breathing,” Chloe said. “Trust me, I’ve watched enough true crime to know.”

He sank back in his chair, looking suddenly exhausted. Ten years older.

“What do you get out of this?” he asked me quietly. “Why do you even care what happens with her? You could just… walk away.”

I looked at him, really looked at him. At the man I’d let into my bed, my life, my future plans.

“Because I know what it feels like to be the last one to know,” I said. “And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

He swallowed.

“And because,” I added, “this is how I get closure. Not by screaming. Not by breaking your stuff. By making sure the story doesn’t end with you getting away with it.”

He stared at the table again.

“Do you hate me?” he asked softly.

I thought about that.

“No,” I said finally. “I don’t.”

He looked up, surprised.

“I hate what you’ve done,” I said. “I hate the way you’ve lied, and manipulated, and made your fear everyone else’s problem. I hate that you turned loving you into a group project no one signed up for. But hate is… heavy. I don’t want to carry you anymore, Jason. Not in love. Not in hate. I want to set you down and walk away.”

His eyes shone. “I’m sorry.”

“I believe you,” I said. “I also don’t care. Your remorse doesn’t fix what you broke.”

He nodded, tears spilling over. “Okay.”

Chloe checked her phone.

“You have until Saturday at noon,” she said. “It’s Thursday now. Text me when you’ve done it. If I don’t hear from you by then, we reach out to her ourselves.”

He glared at her. “I never liked you.”

She smiled sweetly. “That means I’ve been doing my job.”

He looked back at me.

“Is there anything I can say,” he asked softly, “that would make you… consider forgiving me? Not getting back together. I know that ship has sailed. But just… forgiving me?”

I thought about it.

“If you do the right thing,” I said, “and tell the truth… someday, maybe, I’ll be able to think of you without wanting to scream. That’s the best I can offer you.”

He nodded, defeated.

“Okay.”

We stood. Chairs scraped. People glanced up, then back at their laptops.

“Goodbye, Jason,” I said.

“Bye,” he whispered. “Lauren… I—”

“Don’t,” I said gently. “Whatever you’re about to say, keep it for her. She’s the one who needs your honesty now.”

He closed his mouth, nodded.

Chloe and I walked out into the gray morning.

When the door closed behind us, I felt… lighter. Raw, but lighter.

“That,” Chloe said, exhaling, “was intense.”

“I need a nap,” I replied.

“We need pancakes,” she countered.

I smiled weakly. “You’re right.”

We started walking.

6. Fallout

Jason texted Chloe Friday night.

I told her. It’s done. Please don’t contact her. She doesn’t want to hear from you.

Chloe showed me the message when we were at my apartment, half-watching a cooking competition and half-scrolling through our phones.

“Do you believe him?” she asked.

“Not without proof,” I said.

Five minutes later, he sent a screenshot. It was a blurred-out iMessage conversation, only his side fully visible. Long blue paragraphs that, if they were real, contained at least some portion of the truth.

Chloe narrowed her eyes. “He could’ve faked this.”

“He could’ve,” I agreed. “But he at least knows we’re watching. That’s something.”

“Do you want to reach out to her anyway?” she asked. “Just in case?”

I stared at the screen.

“Yes,” I said honestly. “But I also… remember what you said. About how I might’ve reacted if someone had gone around me with Mark. I think… for now, we leave the ball in her court. If she wants to talk to us, she’ll find us. It’s not like we’re ghosts. We’re in his tagged photos like everyone else.”

Chloe nodded slowly. “Okay.”

The next few days were a blur of pain and petty logistics.

I blocked Jason on Instagram. I muted him on other platforms, not ready to see his face but also not ready to erase the record completely. I packed up the few things he’d left at my apartment—hoodies, a toothbrush, a book I’d recommended and he’d pretended to read—and put them in a paper bag by the door.

He texted once more, late Saturday.

Thank you for giving me the push to tell her. She called off the wedding. I hope someday you can forgive me.

I stared at the message for a long time.

Then I deleted it.

7. Rebuilding

The thing no one tells you about heartbreak is how boring it can be.

Sure, there are cinematic moments—the tearful confrontation, the dramatic exit, the night you drink too much wine and cry to sad playlists. But most of it is just… tedious. Waking up and realizing, again, that your future is different now. Canceling weekend plans. Untangling your Spotify algorithm.

Chloe was there for all of it.

She came with me when I went to get my stuff from Jason’s place. He wasn’t there; he’d left the key under the mat. The apartment felt hollow in his absence. I walked through each room, picking up pieces of myself—a mug, a sweater, a book—like evidence that I had once existed there.

“You’re not taking the French press?” Chloe asked, watching me.

“It’s his,” I said.

“He stole it from his old roommate,” she countered. “Finders keepers.”

I hesitated, then shoved it into the tote bag. “Fine.”

Back home, I cried over small things. The way the sunlight hit the plant he’d given me. The playlist we’d made together. A Post-it note he’d left on my fridge months ago: Good luck on your pitch today. You’re gonna crush it. – J.

I mourned the version of him I thought I knew. The one who’d shown up to my art show with flowers, who’d stayed up late helping me rehearse presentations, who’d brought me soup when I was sick. That man had been real, in moments. But he’d been built on a foundation of lies.

I also mourned the version of myself I’d been with him. The woman who believed she’d finally found something stable. The one who’d allowed herself to daydream about travel and shared grocery lists and maybe, someday, rings.

“You didn’t lose her,” Chloe reminded me one night, when I spiraled about “wasted time.” “She’s still here. She’s just… leveling up.”

“How?” I asked, nose stuffy. “I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But now you know what a truck feels like. Next time, you’ll cross the street differently.”

I laughed-sniffed.

We talked about trust. About patterns. About why I’d ignored small uneasinesses in my gut.

“There were moments,” I admitted, staring at the ceiling. “Late texts he didn’t answer. Trips to Seattle he was weirdly vague about. Times he flinched when I mentioned the future. I didn’t want to see what they meant. I interpreted them in the kindest possible way instead of the truest one.”

“That’s not a crime,” she said. “That’s optimism. You trusted someone you loved. That’s not on you. That’s on him.”

I went to therapy. For the first time in years, I sat across from a stranger and unpacked my patterns. Why I was drawn to men who made me feel chosen after I’d earned it, instead of men who chose me freely, from the start.

We talked about boundaries. About self-respect. About the difference between being understanding and being a doormat.

Work helped. Being busy, having deadlines, seeing my designs come to life—it reminded me that my value existed outside of this catastrophe. My coworkers didn’t know the whole story, but they knew enough to be kind.

“You doing okay?” my boss asked one afternoon, lingering at my desk.

“Getting there,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Also, the client loved your campaign tagline. They literally said it gave them chills.”

I smiled, for real.

Life, stubbornly, kept moving.

8. The Message

It happened three weeks later.

I was on my couch, laptop open, knee-deep in a pitch deck, when my phone buzzed with a DM request on Instagram.

The username wasn’t familiar.

Natalie Harper.

My heart stuttered.

“Chloe,” I called, my voice weirdly high. “Get in here.”

She appeared in the doorway, holding a mug. “What’s up?”

I turned the screen toward her.

“Oh, shit,” she breathed.

The message preview read: Hi. I hope this isn’t weird, but…

My palms were suddenly sweaty.

“What do I do?” I asked.

“You open it,” she said.

I dragged in a breath and tapped on the notification.

The message expanded.

Hi. I hope this isn’t weird, but I found your profile through Jason’s. I know this is kind of… out of nowhere. But I think we need to talk.

My stomach dropped.

There were more messages, sent one after another.

He told me… some things. About you. About Alyssa. About the timeline.

I broke off the engagement.

I’m not reaching out to yell at you. I know this is not on you. I just… have questions. And I think you might too.

If you’re willing, I’d like to meet. Or even just talk here.

I stared at the screen.

“Wow,” Chloe said softly. “She’s… calmer than I would be.”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whispered.

“You don’t have to,” Chloe said immediately. “You owe her nothing. You already did your part.”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s not about owing. It’s about… solidarity.”

“Then you answer,” she said.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I typed, erased, typed again.

Finally, I sent:

Hi, Natalie. You’re right. We probably do need to talk. I’m so, so sorry you’re going through this. I’m open to meeting. Somewhere public. Coffee?

She replied almost instantly.

Thank you for responding. I know this is a lot. I’m going to be in Portland next weekend (I was supposed to come down with him for a thing… that’s obviously not happening now). Could we meet then?

We set a time and place. The same coffee shop where I’d confronted Jason.

“That place is really getting a lot of business from your trauma,” Chloe remarked.

“Maybe I should ask for a loyalty card,” I said weakly.

The days leading up to the meeting were weird. I wasn’t nervous in the butterflies-before-a-date way, but in the walking-into-court-as-a-witness way. I knew I was about to help finalize a verdict.

On the day of, I wore a simple sweater and jeans. Nothing dramatic. I didn’t want to look like I was performing for her, or for the ghost of Jason.

“Do you want me to come?” Chloe asked as I put on my shoes.

“Yes,” I said. “But sit far away. I want to talk to her one-on-one. But I also want to know you’re there. Just in case she throws coffee at me.”

“She won’t,” Chloe said. “But I will absolutely be there, incognito. Like a trashy guardian angel.”

I smiled.

9. The Other Woman (Except We Both Were)

Natalie was already there when I walked in. She sat at a table near the back, hands wrapped around a mug, eyes distant.

She was pretty, but not in the flashy, Alyssa kind of way. She had dark curls pulled into a messy bun, glasses, and a sweater that looked hand-knit. She looked like the kind of person who remembered birthdays and sent postcards.

I recognized her from the wedding website photos. It made something twist in my chest.

I approached slowly.

“Natalie?” I said.

She looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed but clear.

“Lauren?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

We looked at each other for a moment, absorbing the fact that we both existed in three dimensions.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she replied.

We did an awkward little half-hug, then sat down.

“I feel like I should start by saying I’m sorry,” she blurted.

I blinked. “Why are you sorry?”

“For whatever he did,” she said. “For my part in… not knowing. I feel like I’ve been walking through a story I didn’t understand.”

“Me too,” I said. “But you don’t owe me an apology. He does. And he won’t get one from me, so the apology chain stops here.”

She let out a watery laugh.

We both ordered coffees we barely drank.

“So,” she said tentatively, “he told me… bits and pieces. That he’d been seeing you for about a year. That there was… overlap. That he lied. He said he already told you about me. I guess he did, if you made him. But I wanted to hear your version. If you’re okay with that.”

“I am,” I said. “And feel free to ask me anything. I won’t be offended. We’re both victims here. We’re allowed to be nosy.”

She smiled faintly.

We started trading timelines like war stories.

“I thought we’d been exclusive for years,” she said. “We met three and a half years ago. Started dating officially when the world went back to semi-normal after the initial lockdowns. He proposed at my parents’ cabin. It was… perfect. Or I thought it was.”

I swallowed.

“And last August,” I said softly, “you had your engagement party.”

She nodded. “Most of our friends were there. Some of his coworkers. His brother flew in. It was… a big deal. One of the happiest days of my life. We’d already booked the venue. Picked colors. We were talking about kids’ names.”

My chest ached.

“He told me,” she continued, “that he had some ‘complicated history’ with an ex. That she was still at his company but they were strictly professional now. He promised me there was nothing to worry about. That I was his future. That he’d never do anything to jeopardize us.”

I exhaled slowly. “He told me he’d never been engaged. That he’d never wanted to propose to anyone.”

She flinched.

“When he started going to Portland so often,” she said, “he said it was for work. He said they were doing some kind of office rotation. That he needed to be there to help with a transition. I believed him. I wanted to support his career. I loved seeing him so excited.”

“He did have an office here,” I said. “That part wasn’t a lie. But he used it as cover.”

“When did you meet?” she asked.

“Last fall,” I said. “We matched on an app. He said he was ‘new to the area.’ We went for drinks. He told me he’d been single for about a year. That his last relationship had ended amicably. He made it sound like he was this emotionally mature adult who just hadn’t found the right person yet.”

She snorted. “He loves that narrative.”

“He told me he was splitting his time between here and Seattle,” I added. “He said he had a friend up there he was helping with a startup. I thought it was weird he didn’t post much from there, but… he said he wasn’t big on social media.”

“He has an entire wedding hashtag,” she muttered.

“I know,” I said. “My best friend found the website.”

“Chloe,” she said. “He mentioned her. Said she was ‘overprotective.’”

“That’s how you know a friend is good,” I said. “If your sketchy boyfriend doesn’t like her.”

We laughed weakly.

She took a deep breath.

“When he told me about you,” she said, “he framed it like… a mistake. A one-time thing. He said he’d gotten drunk on a work trip, hooked up with an ex, and then messed around with someone new. He said he panicked and tried to juggle everything instead of owning up. He made it sound like a… like a midlife crisis.”

“He’s not even thirty,” I pointed out.

“I told him that,” she said. “He didn’t appreciate it.”

“Did he tell you about Alyssa?” I asked.

She nodded. “He called her ‘lingering baggage.’ I’d met her at a work event once. She seemed… intense. But not in a bad way. Just like she was done taking anyone’s shit. I remember thinking, ‘Huh. I wonder what happened there.’ I guess I got my answer.”

We sat in silence for a beat.

“I think the worst part,” she said quietly, “is that I still love him. Or I love who I thought he was. And that makes me feel… stupid. And ashamed. Like everyone can see that I chose wrong.”

“You’re not stupid,” I said firmly. “You loved someone you thought you knew. He’s the one who should be ashamed.”

She smiled weakly. “Thank you.”

“And for what it’s worth,” I added, “I’m not judging you. At all. I’m… in awe, honestly. Calling off a wedding? That’s huge. That’s brave.”

She shrugged, eyes shiny. “It didn’t feel brave. It felt like jumping out of a plane without checking if the parachute was packed properly.”

“You jumped,” I said. “That’s what matters. A lot of people would’ve stayed. Tried to salvage it. Pretended not to see.”

She looked at me. “Would you have?”

I thought about Jason. About the way he’d looked at me when I told him we were done. About the tiny, fragile part of me that still missed him, even after everything.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “If I’d found out about Alyssa and not you… maybe. Maybe I would’ve let him spin it. Tell me it was just ‘overlap.’ That it didn’t mean anything. I like to believe I would’ve left anyway, but… it would’ve taken longer. You calling off the wedding? That tells me I should be braver, too.”

We looked at each other. Two women connected only by the worst choice a man had ever made.

“I’m glad you left,” I said.

“Me too,” she said softly. “Even if it feels like I detonated my entire life.”

She glanced around, then leaned in.

“Can I ask you something kind of personal?” she said.

“After the month we’ve had?” I said. “Go for it.”

“Do you feel… stupid?” she asked. “Like, when you look back at all the little red flags. The trips, the phone stuff, the vague answers. Do you feel like you should’ve known?”

“Yes,” I said honestly. “All the time. But I also know that’s not fair. We’re not trained to interrogate every kind gesture for signs of malice. We want to believe people we love are telling the truth. That doesn’t make us idiots. It makes us… human.”

She nodded slowly. “My mom keeps saying, ‘At least you found out now, before the wedding.’ She means well. But it makes me feel like I should be… grateful. Like, ‘Yay, trauma, but it could’ve been worse.’”

“It’s okay to be grateful and pissed at the same time,” I said. “We’re women. We contain multitudes.”

She smiled through tears.

“Do you think he can change?” she asked quietly.

I thought about it.

“I think he can choose to,” I said. “If he actually wants to. If he goes to therapy and does the work and stops treating accountability like an optional subscription. But that’s not our problem anymore. We’re not his rehab facility.”

She laughed softly. “My therapist said almost the exact same thing.”

“She sounds smart,” I said.

“She is. She also strongly implied I should never date another software engineer.”

“Solid advice,” I said. “Expand your sample size.”

We talked for an hour. About our lives beyond him. Our careers. Our families. Our hobbies. Somewhere in the middle, I realized I genuinely liked her. If we’d met in any other context, we might have become friends.

It made me irrationally furious at him all over again. Not only had he hurt us individually; he’d stolen the version of reality where we met at a brunch, not in the wreckage of his lies.

When we finally stood up to leave, she hesitated.

“Can I… hug you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

We hugged. It wasn’t awkward. It felt… necessary. Like closing a loop.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For talking to me. For not… hating me.”

“I never hated you,” I said. “I didn’t know you. Now I do. And I’m really sorry it had to be like this.”

“Me too,” she said.

We pulled back.

“Do you think we’ll ever stop talking about him?” she asked, half-smiling.

“God, I hope so,” I said. “He doesn’t deserve free rent in our head forever.”

She nodded. “I’m going to therapy twice a week. And I signed up for a pottery class. I’m going to make an ugly bowl and call it ‘Closure.’”

I grinned. “Send me a picture.”

“I will,” she said.

We went our separate ways. As I walked toward the door, I caught a glimpse of Chloe at a corner table, hiding behind a laptop like a very obvious spy. She gave me a thumbs-up. I rolled my eyes and smiled.

Outside, the air felt a little lighter.

10. Aftermath and New Beginnings

Time didn’t magically heal everything.

There were still nights when I woke up from dreams where Jason was apologizing, promising, pleading. There were still songs on my playlists I couldn’t listen to without seeing his face.

But the sharp pain dulled over time. It became a background ache instead of a stabbing wound.

Chloe and I grew closer than ever. Surviving a shared villain does that.

“You know,” she said one night, curled up on my couch with takeout, “if you ever date another guy named Jason, I’m legally allowed to kidnap you.”

“That’s fair,” I said. “We can put it in writing.”

“Also,” she added, “I want you to know I’m working on my own trust issues. The whole ‘not telling you until it was perfect evidence’ thing? My therapist says that’s me trying to control the narrative because I’m scared of messy confrontation.”

“Your therapist is right,” I said. “As usual.”

“I’m going to try to be more upfront next time,” she said. “Even if it means you get mad at me sooner. You’re allowed to have feelings. I don’t have to constantly pre-edit them for you.”

I smiled. “Look at us. Growing.”

“Trauma-bonding, but make it healing,” she said.

We clinked chopsticks.

As for dating… I didn’t jump back in. I deleted the apps for a while. I focused on myself—on work, on friends, on rediscovering what made me happy when I wasn’t curating my life around someone else’s schedule.

Months passed.

One afternoon at the office, my coworker Maya leaned over the divider between our desks.

“Hey,” she said. “My cousin’s in town next weekend. He’s single. You’re single. He’s not a tech bro. He works in a bookstore. He owns, like, three flannels. Interested?”

Old me might have said no immediately. New me paused.

“I’m not looking for anything serious,” I said.

“Great,” she said. “Neither is he. He just got out of a long relationship. He mainly wants someone to make fun of people at the farmer’s market with.”

“That,” I said, “I can do.”

The date was… nice. Low-stakes. We walked through stalls of produce and handmade candles. We tried weird cheeses. We joke-rated strangers’ tote bags.

He was kind. Thoughtful. He listened more than he talked. When I mentioned my last relationship had ended badly, he didn’t press. He just said, “I’m sorry that happened,” and changed the subject to something light.

At the end of the afternoon, he asked if I wanted to do it again sometime.

“Yes,” I said. “I think I would.”

I didn’t feel lightning. I didn’t see my future flash before my eyes. I just felt… safe. And for the first time in a long time, that was enough.

That night, I told Chloe about it.

“Bookstore guy, huh?” she said. “That’s promising.”

“We people, not plot twists,” I said. “I think I’m done with the latter.”

“Proud of you,” she said.

I smiled.

11. What My Best Friend Really Gave Me

Sometimes, late at night, I think back to that first party. To Alyssa’s voice ringing out over the music. To the way my stomach dropped, the heat in my cheeks.

For a long time, that memory lived in my head as The Night I Was Humiliated.

But as the months passed, it shifted.

Yes, I’d been humiliated. Yes, I’d felt exposed, raw, foolish.

But it was also the night the truth started to unravel. The night my illusions cracked open wide enough for light to get in.

And it was the night my best friend decided to finally show me the whole picture, even though she was terrified I’d hate her for it.

“What my best friend revealed that night” wasn’t just the fact that my boyfriend was living a triple life. It was that she loved me enough to risk our friendship to keep me from living in ignorance.

She revealed the pattern. The website. The engagement. The version of myself that had chosen men over boundaries before—and the version she believed I could become instead.

She held up a mirror and said, gently, You deserve better than this. And then she stood beside me while I did the hard thing.

Sometimes love doesn’t look like cheerleading. Sometimes it looks like evidence and uncomfortable truths and sitting on a couch at three in the morning saying, We are going to get through this. Together.

Jason blew up my fantasy of the perfect boyfriend.

Chloe handed me the tools to build something better: a life where my self-worth isn’t tied to someone else’s promises, where my friendships are strong enough to withstand hard conversations, where my gut feelings are not inconveniences but warnings.

If you’d told me, that night in the bar, that one day I’d look back and feel grateful… I would’ve laughed in your face.

But I am. Not grateful for the lies, or the pain, or the wasted time.

Grateful that I found out.

Grateful that my best friend chose me. Again.

Grateful that when the truth finally came crashing down, I wasn’t alone under the rubble.

A few months later, on a random Tuesday, I got a DM from Natalie.

It was a picture of a lopsided ceramic bowl. The glaze was uneven. The shape was a little off.

Closure, she’d captioned it. Not perfect, but mine.

I smiled, took a screenshot, and sent it to Chloe.

Look, I texted. We’re all making bowls now.

She replied with a selfie of her holding a half-finished painting.

Healing, but make it mixed media, she wrote.

I laughed out loud.

My life wasn’t what I’d pictured when I first took Jason’s hand and walked into that launch party. It was messier. Less linear. Full of cracks and patched-up places.

But it was honest.

And for the first time in a long time, that felt like enough.

THE END