I CALLED HIS BEST FRIEND’S NUMBER — BUT ANOTHER WOMAN PICKED UP AND TOLD ME HIS BIGGEST LIE

CHAPTER 1 — THE CALL THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

If you had asked me six months ago what the most humiliating moment of my life was, I would’ve probably told you about that one time in high school when I tripped down the bleachers in front of the entire junior class.

But that moment has nothing—absolutely nothing—on what happened the night I dialed my boyfriend’s best friend’s number.

That night I discovered a secret so big, so twisted, it nearly cracked me open from the inside out.

My name is Harper Lane, I’m twenty-eight years old, and until two months ago, I genuinely believed I was one of those lucky people who had stumbled into true love without even trying. I had a stable job as a paralegal in downtown Seattle, a cozy little apartment in Capitol Hill, and a boyfriend whose smile could stop my heart mid-beat.

His name was Evan McClain.

Handsome, charming, maddeningly confident, and put together in that expensive-sneakers-and-worn-leather-jacket kind of way that made other women glance twice when we walked past. He had the kind of laugh that melted people. A stupidly warm, stupidly addictive laugh.

I thought I knew everything about him.

But you know that saying?

You never know someone until you see who they are when they think you aren’t looking.

Well… the night I called his best friend proved that saying painfully, violently true.

It was a cold Friday night—colder than usual for March. Seattle had been drowning in rain for days, and the sky had that thick gray heaviness that felt like a warning.

Evan was supposed to be home by eight. We’d made plans. Dinner, cheap wine, maybe a movie. Nothing fancy, but with him, the mundane always felt soft around the edges.

Eight came.
Eight-thirty.
Nine.

He didn’t answer my texts. My calls went to voicemail.

A pit opened in my stomach. Not jealousy—gut fear. That particular instinct only comes when you already subconsciously know something is wrong.

After pacing my apartment like a caged cat for almost an hour, I grabbed my phone again and hit the contact I never really used but had saved just in case.

“Caleb Turner — Evan’s Best Friend.”

Caleb was the person Evan always claimed was “like a brother to him.” They shared everything. According to Evan, there was no one in the world he trusted more.

I pressed CALL.

It rang twice.

Then a woman answered.

A woman whose voice I had never heard before.

“Hello?” she said sharply, almost breathless. “Who is this?”

I froze.
This wasn’t Caleb.
And the background noise—muffled, chaotic—did not sound like any quiet evening setting.

“I— I’m looking for Caleb,” I stammered. “Is he there?”

Silence.

Then the woman exhaled a humorless laugh, the kind that tightened every muscle in my spine.

“You must be her,” she said.

Her?

“What are you talking about?” I asked, my throat drying instantly.

“You’re Harper, right?” she said, her tone cutting like glass.

My pulse thrashed. “Yes. Who are you?”

Another silence. Longer this time. And when she finally answered, it shattered the world I knew.

“My name is Lily,” she said. “And Evan is here with me.”

My heartbeat stopped.

“What?” I whispered.

“And I think,” she continued, her voice turning venomous, “you should know the truth about the man you’re dating.”

And then she told me the lie.

The biggest lie.

The kind of lie that changes the trajectory of your entire life.

CHAPTER 2 — THE WOMAN ON THE PHONE

“Evan’s been living with me,” Lily said coldly, “for the past three months.”

I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because shock does weird things to your brain.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “He stays with me four nights a week. He—”

“He stays with me three,” she snapped. “And believe me, honey, he’s mastered balancing both lives.”

The floor beneath me seemed to tilt.

I swallowed hard. “If you’re trying to mess with me, it’s not going to work—”

“Mess with you?” she snorted bitterly. “Trust me, ruining your feelings isn’t my goal. I just found out about you today.”

My stomach plummeted.

“You… found out about me?”

“Oh, don’t sound so shocked.” Her voice softened for half a second before sharpening again. “He’s good at hiding things. Really good.”

I pressed a trembling hand to my forehead. “Where is he right now?”

“With Caleb,” she said. “They’re in the garage. Fixing a motorcycle or pretending to, at least.”

Her tone dripped resentment.

My mind raced. “Put him on the phone.”

“Baby,” she said with a twisted little laugh, “you don’t want me to do that. Because the second he hears your voice, he’ll know I told you. And then everything will explode.”

Good, I wanted to say. Let it explode. Let him choke on the consequences.

But instead, I whispered, “Why are you telling me this?”

The line went quiet.

When she finally spoke, her voice cracked.

“Because I loved him,” she said. “And I’m starting to think you did too.”

Past tense.

Loved.

My chest tightened. “Lily… what exactly was he to you?”

She inhaled sharply, like steadying herself.

“He wasn’t my boyfriend,” she said. “He was my fiancé.”

The words sliced me open.

I didn’t breathe. I couldn’t.

Fiancé.

Fiancé.

The man who kissed my forehead every morning. The man who talked about taking trips with me. The man who said he wanted to show me the Grand Canyon “someday soon.”

The man whose clothes sat in my dresser.
Whose toothbrush was in my bathroom.
Whose laughter still echoed in my living room.

My legs felt weak.

“Tell me everything,” I whispered. “Please.”

And she did.

God help me—she did.

CHAPTER 3 — THE DOUBLE LIFE

According to Lily, she and Evan had been together for almost two years.

Two years.

My relationship with him had only been eight months.

That meant he’d been cheating on her long before he had ever met me.

They lived together in a rental house in Ballard—something he’d never mentioned to me. He always claimed Caleb lived there.

Every Tuesday and Thursday night, he told her he was working overtime at his job as a project manager for a tech company. That was when he was actually with me.

And every weekend he said he was “hanging with Caleb,” he was often with her.

It was a rotation. A schedule. A rehearsed performance.

He had handled it like a man living two separate, carefully curated existences.

“I found a picture of you,” Lily said. “On his phone. He saves everything in hidden folders, you know. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone.”

A film of nausea coated my mouth.
I remembered taking that selfie.
At the waterfront.
In his jacket.

He’d kissed me right after.

“Why are you with him?” I whispered, my voice cracking.

“Because I thought he was my future,” she said softly. “And because I didn’t know he had a whole second life with you.”

Her breathing hitched.

“He proposed to me in January. We were planning a wedding for next summer.”

My throat closed.

January.

He and I had gone away for a weekend in January.
To a cabin.
Where he told me I made him “feel calm for the first time in years.”

Every memory felt poisoned now.

“He told me,” she continued weakly, “that his ex hurt him. That he was scared but trying to heal. He said I was the only person who made him feel safe.”

My breath faltered. “He told me the exact same thing.”

She exhaled shakily. “Figures.”

The room around me blurred. My pulse hammered in my palms, my ears, my throat.

I wanted to scream.
Cry.
Break something.

But instead, I whispered:

“What do we do?”

Her reply was immediate—

“We end him.”

CHAPTER 4 — THE PLAN

We met the next night.

A woman I’d never seen before.
A woman who shared the same betrayal carved into her bones.

Lily was tall, with deep brown skin, sharp cheekbones, and a presence that demanded space even when she stood perfectly still. She wore a denim jacket over a black tank top and ripped jeans, her hair tied in a high, controlled bun.

Her hands shook, but her eyes were steel.

“You’re Harper,” she said quietly when I walked into the dimly lit café in Fremont.

“Yes.”

She nodded once, swallowing hard. “Sit. We have a lot to go through.”

We sat.

And for the next two hours, we pieced together Evan’s lies like forensic detectives working a crime scene.

We compared dates.
Excuses.
Trips.
Random unexplained gaps.

Every detail aligned.
A perfect puzzle of deceit.

“He split holidays between us,” she said.

“And he claimed his mom was sick,” I added.

“He said that to me too,” she said bitterly.

We discovered he had even duplicated gifts. The necklace he’d given me for Christmas? He’d given her a similar one two months prior.

“He probably orders them in bulk,” she muttered.

Then came the question neither of us wanted to say out loud.

“Do we confront him?” I asked.

She looked at me with fiery, exhausted eyes.

“Oh, we’re not just confronting him,” she said. “We’re going to destroy the lie he built.”

After another beat of silence, she leaned in.

“I have an idea. But it’s going to take both of us.”

I nodded.
I didn’t need to know more.

Whatever she wanted to do, I was in.

CHAPTER 5 — THE TRAP

Saturday night.

Evan believed I was at a “girls’ spa night” with coworkers.

He believed Lily was visiting family in Portland.

In reality, we were standing in the living room of the house he shared with Lily—the house I’d never known existed.

It was tidy, decorated with dark woods and soft grays. Masculine, but with enough feminine touches to show another person clearly lived there.

Family photos.
A calendar with dual handwriting.
Wedding magazines.

Wedding magazines.

Lily caught me looking and whispered, “He said he was excited. He said he couldn’t wait to marry me.”

I clenched my jaw.

We heard the garage door open.

Lily’s eyes hardened. “That’s him.”

I didn’t breathe.

We positioned ourselves where he couldn’t miss us—standing side by side like a united front of fury and heartbreak.

The door from the garage swung open.

He stepped in casually, keys dangling from his fingertips, his messy blond hair damp with mist, wearing that stupid leather jacket I used to love.

He froze mid-step.

“Harper?” he said, eyes widening.

Then—

“Lily—? What the—?”

His voice cracked. His face drained.

“You lied,” Lily said first. Her voice was deadly calm. “About everything.”

He stared at us, panic flickering through his expression like lightning.

“I— I can explain—”

I laughed. “Oh, Evan. You’re not explaining anything. You’re just going to listen.”

He took a step back. “Harper, you weren’t supposed to be—”

“No,” I snapped. “I wasn’t supposed to know. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

His throat bobbed. “I didn’t want to hurt either of you—”

“You proposed to me,” Lily said. Her voice trembled. “You promised me forever.”

“You told me you loved me,” I added. “Two nights ago.”

He put up his hands, his voice dipping into that slick charm he used when negotiating his way out of anything.

“I love you both—”

“Don’t.” Lily’s voice cracked like a whip. “Don’t you dare say that.”

I could see the moment he realized he had no way out.

His shoulders slumped.

His jaw clenched.

Then his face twisted with something I recognized too well—entitlement.

“You breaking into this house is insane,” he snapped. “You both are acting ridiculous—”

Lily stepped forward so fast he flinched.

“This is my house,” she hissed. “Get out.”

“What?” he scoffed.

“You heard me,” she said. “Get. Out.”

He looked at me, then at her, then back at me again—waiting for someone to soften, to fold, to give him a way to slither through.

Neither of us did.

“Fine,” he spat. “Keep it.”

He stormed toward the door, grabbed his keys, and threw one last glare over his shoulder.

“You two deserve each other.”

And then he walked out.

Just like that.
No apology.
No remorse.
No acknowledgment of the lives he’d shattered.

The door slammed.

The house fell silent.

Lily sank onto the couch, her face burying in her hands.

I sat beside her.

And for the first time since the call, we cried.

Together.

CHAPTER 6 — AFTER THE STORM

The days after were a blur.

Lily kicked him out officially.
I blocked him everywhere.
He tried calling for two days straight before giving up.

We both went through phases:

Anger.
Denial.
Sadness.
Confusion.
Rage again.

But something unexpected happened too.

We became friends.

Real ones.

There’s a strange kind of bond forged in shared heartbreak.

We got drinks.
We ranted for hours.
We found humor in ridiculous things he’d said or done.
We rebuilt ourselves—side by side.

One night, sitting on her couch with takeout and wine, Lily said:

“You know… I thought I was going to marry him.”

“I thought he was my future,” I admitted.

She clinked her glass against mine.

“Turns out he was just a speed bump.”

I laughed.
Really laughed.

Life slowly—painfully, beautifully—moved on.

CHAPTER 7 — THE UNEXPECTED ENDING

Two months later, I got a call.

From Caleb.

My stomach tightened as I answered.

“Hey, Harper,” he said quietly. “I just wanted to say… I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I asked.

“For not telling you. For not stepping in. For not stopping him.”
He paused.
“He fooled me too.”

I sighed. “It wasn’t your job to watch him.”

“No,” he said, “but I knew something was wrong. I should’ve done better.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

Then he added softly:

“He’s gone.”

My heart skipped. “Gone where?”

“He moved to Colorado. Said he needed a fresh start. Said Seattle had ‘too much drama.’”

I closed my eyes.

Coward.

“How are you doing?” Caleb asked gently.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Better than okay, actually.”

“That’s good.” He hesitated. “Do you… maybe want to grab coffee sometime? As friends? Or something more if you wanted.”

The question stunned me.

But instead of fear or confusion, I felt… calm.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I think I’d like that.”

When we hung up, I sat there smiling, blinking at how life sometimes loops in ways you never expect.

I didn’t know what would happen next.

If coffee would turn into something else.
If it wouldn’t.
If life would stay quiet for a while.

But I did know one thing—

Calling Caleb’s number that night had shattered my world…

…but it also led me somewhere better.

Somewhere honest.

Somewhere real.

And for the first time in months, I felt light again.

Alive again.

Free.

THE END