Roasted Her for Years, Loved Her Always

My boyfriend, Wendell Lowe, has been complaining about my best friend, Carissa Chapman, for three years. He hates the fact that she's loud, uploads too many selfies on her social media feed, and doesn't bother looking at the price whenever she's ordering food at a restaurant. Every time a gathering is over, Wendell feels the need to talk smack about Carissa. "Don't invite her to the next gathering in the future. She's so annoying." I keep thinking that Wendell really dislikes Carissa. So when Carissa gets a new boyfriend, I quickly tell him the good news. "Carissa has a boyfriend now. She won't be bothering us anymore." But Wendell gets mad instead. "Who's the guy? Is it the IT guy from her social circle? Isn't he the one who pulls OT every day? Can he even spend time with her?" One week later, Carissa brings her new boyfriend, Gavin Ferguson, over to our gathering. Gavin keeps putting food on Carissa's plate, pouring her water, and dabbing the corner of her mouth for her. Wendell, on the other hand, looks extremely stormy the whole time. After the gathering is over, I comment, "Gavin is pretty decent. He's pretty caring toward Carissa." Suddenly, Wendell stops in his tracks. "He's just putting on an act. Carissa is the type who gets touched far too easily. She shouldn't be with a guy like him. "If anything, she needs to find someone who really understands her. Someone who knows that she's terrified of the dark, doesn't eat cilantro, and often smiles and says that she's fine whenever she's sad." The more Wendell speaks, the softer and shakier his voice becomes. Under the streetlight, I notice how damp his lashes are. A tear soon slides down his nose bridge. For the past three years, Wendell has been admonishing Carissa relentlessly. It turns out it isn't because he hates her. I turn on my heel and walk in the other direction. "You should seek her out. Don't take the detour this time." Chapter 1 Beneath the streetlamp, Wendell Lowe's tear hit his collar, bleeding into a small, dark circle. Gazing at that single tear, I suddenly realized that our three-year relationship had just been a long, hollow joke. I spun on my heel and walked away. "Stop wasting your time and go to her." Without looking back, I crossed the street and walked toward the intersection. Wendell's footsteps echoed behind me a moment later. "Tania." I didn't lose my stride. "Hold on, Tania." Still, I didn't slow down. "Goddamn it, stop!" His voice abruptly rose by an octave. I stopped in my tracks and turned around. There he was under the streetlight, his eyes red-rimmed. That single tear was still tracing his jawline, hanging off his chin. For the first time ever, he seemed to be panicking. "Don't read too much into what I just said, Tania." I plastered a smile on my face. "I'm not reading into anything. I just heard you loud and clear." His mouth hung open, but he was tongue-tied. "How do you know Carissa is afraid of the dark, Wendell?" Gritting his teeth, he lowered his head. "I…" "What?" "She mentioned it once." "Define 'once'." He fell silent. "Wendell." I stared him down. "I didn't know you and Carissa go way back." The street was so quiet that it felt as though we were the only people left in the world. A gust of wind caught a plastic bag by the curb, sending it rustling loudly across the pavement. The color drained from Wendell's face in an instant. He parted his lips, and for a long time, he couldn't find his voice. Drinking in the look on his face, all of a sudden, everything clicked. Without waiting for him to come clean, I turned on my heel and left. Chapter 2 The moment I reached the end of the street, I pulled out my phone and unlocked it. My best friend Carissa Chapman's latest post on my feed from an hour ago was a photo of her and her boyfriend, Gavin Ferguson, at dinner. She had the sweetest smile and a genuine sparkle in her eyes. The caption read, "He's so good to me." I stared at that photo for a long while. Carissa and I had been friends for a decade. I genuinely thought I knew her inside and out. On our first day of college, we'd moved into our dormitory together, and she'd claimed the top bunk. We used to skip our major classes just to go to the movies. When I'd gotten my heart broken, she was right there, weeping with me for three whole nights. I'd fallen in love with Wendell during my junior year. I'd confided in her, telling her I had a crush on an upperclassman. Her reaction at the time only hit me now. "What's his name?" "Wendell Lowe. He's a senior in the literature department," I'd answered. Carissa's face had fallen. Yet, she'd masked it with a smile almost instantly. "He seems like a nice guy. Go get him!" she'd told me. I hadn't thought much of it at the time. Looking back on it now, the look on her face was exactly like someone who had just been slapped. … I took a cab home. The second I crossed the threshold, I was so dead tired that I just crashed on the couch. Wendell and I had cohabited for a year. I was the one leaseholder for this apartment. The rent was 4,800 dollars a month. Wendell would wire me 2,000 dollars every month, and I covered the rest. Every single time, he'd say, "Renting is like flushing money down the toilet. Let's just split it for now. Once we buy a place, we'll be set. Just tough it out for a bit longer." I toughed it out for a year, but he never once brought up the topic of buying a house, and I never bothered to ask. I pulled open the drawer and dug out my ledger. I'd been bookkeeping since college. Carissa used to tease me all the time. "Why are you so stingy? You even log a single cup of coffee." "It's a force of habit when you grow up poor," I'd explain. I turned the pages to the entries for this past year. Money spent on Wendell: "March: His birthday. Cake and gift: 4,800 dollars." "May: His mother's birthday. Gold bracelet: 6,200 dollars." "July: His promotion. Suit: 8,900 dollars." "September: His company team-building trip. Tracksuit: 2,300 dollars." "Total: 22,200 dollars." Meanwhile, the only thing Wendell had ever bought me was a 99-dollar lipstick. He had casually grabbed it from a convenience store shelf on my birthday last year. The shade didn't suit my skin tone at all. When I'd brought it up, he'd clicked his tongue. "Why are you so picky? Carissa wears this shade all the time!" I thought it was weird at the moment, but he brushed it off, saying he just remembered seeing it on Carissa's social media. Now that I thought about it... Why on earth did he bring up Carissa out of the blue back then? I closed my ledger, pulled up WhatsApp, and found my chat with Carissa. The last time we had spoken was a week ago. Carissa: "What are you up to, Tania?" I: "I'm working overtime." Carissa: "What about Wendell?" I: "He's on a business trip." Carissa: "Oh. In that case, you should go to bed early." My eyes locked onto that "Oh." It had never crossed my mind until now, but every single time Carissa asked where Wendell was, she would follow it up with an "Oh" and then go radio silent. It was as if she were confirming something. A chill ran down my spine. I pulled up Wendell's WhatsApp. He didn't have a passcode. He never set a passcode because he knew I wouldn't snoop through his phone. For the longest time, I thought it was a sign of his trust in me. But now, I realized he didn't set a passcode because his chat history with Carissa wasn't on WhatsApp. I scoured his WhatsApp from top to bottom, but there was nothing. It was clean as a whistle. His chat history with Carissa only contained a 200-dollar transaction on New Year's. There wasn't a single word of conversation. It was too spotless. Uncannily so. I switched over to his X. He never used X. I clicked on his following list, which consisted of exactly 12 accounts. Eleven of them were colleagues from our company. The 12th was a strange alternative account with a green leaf for a profile picture and the handle "@youthfulreverie". I clicked on the account. The profile only had a single post, dated three years ago. It read, "But you're the one I like." There were zero comments underneath, but it had exactly one like. When I clicked to see who had liked it, I realized that it was Carissa's alternative account, and I froze. Chapter 3 Carissa's alternative account handle was "@traceless_wind", and she'd only ever posted two things. The first one was from seven years ago. "Tania just told me she likes Wendell. I didn't say a thing, but wasn't I the one who knew him first? I was merely vetting him, waiting to see if he would confess to me a second time!" There were no comments below it. The second one was from three years ago, posted on the exact same day as Wendell's tweet. @traceless_wind: "Stop it, Wendell. Tania's my best friend. We can never be together." @youthfulreverie: "I'm only dating her to punish you. Have you ever regretted your choice?" @traceless_wind: "I have, but Tania's my best friend. I can't do this to her." Gaping at their exchange, I felt as though I had been submerged in freezing water. Seven years. Wendell and Carissa had known each other for seven years and had been pining for each other for just as long. Meanwhile, I had been a tool from the very beginning—a tool for Wendell to punish Carissa and a tool for Carissa to prove she was a "good friend". With trembling fingers, I dug deeper. The last activity on that alternative account was three months ago. Carissa had left a comment on one of Wendell's tweets. He had already deleted his post, but her reply was still there. @traceless_wind: "How many times do I have to tell you, Wendell? Tania's my best friend. Stop pestering me! I'm going to marry my boyfriend, so you should treat Tanya well, too." My hands were literally trembling when I read that. Boyfriend? Carissa didn't have a boyfriend back then. She only told me about her and Gavin last week. Who the hell was she referring to three months ago? I pulled up Carissa's social media and started scrolling backward, all the way to three months ago. Everything she had posted at the time was the kind of content a single woman would share. Carissa: "I love eating barbecue alone. It's the best!" Carissa: "Got rejected by another blind date today, boohoo." Carissa: "Watching other couples show off their love is making me so jealous." It was all an act. When on earth did she and Gavin even become a thing? Could it be that… Gavin wasn't her actual boyfriend? All of a sudden, I remembered the day Carissa brought Gavin to dinner. Gavin barely said a word the entire night. He only mechanically placed food on her plate, refilled her glass, and wiped the corner of her mouth. He was like an actor who was hired specifically to put on a show. My heart missed a beat. I opened a search tab and entered his name. Carissa had previously tagged his workplace in a post. It was a tech firm where he supposedly worked as a programmer. I searched that company, but no such person existed. I looked up Gavin's contact number next. It was a newly registered number, activated just a month ago. My blood ran cold. Carissa had hired an actor to play her boyfriend. But why? Why the hell would she stage a relationship right in front of me? I scrolled through her recent posts. The very first time she flaunted her relationship was last week. The dinner when she introduced Gavin to us was also last week. All of a sudden, the scales fell from my eyes. She had brought Gavin to dinner so Wendell would see him. She'd done that to provoke him, to drive him over the edge, and to force him to break up with me. Carissa was using her fake relationship to force my boyfriend's hand. She wanted Wendell, but she didn't want the infamy of stealing her best friend's man, so she put on this performance. She wanted Wendell to take the initiative to break up with me. Then, she could reluctantly accept him, keeping her reputation flawless. Meanwhile, I was expected to thank her for "being considerate of me". I guffawed and burst into tears. Ten years. For ten long years, Carissa and I had been friends. Yet, she had been playing me for a fool for seven of them. This final stroke of hers was the most lethal. I stared at her feed. I had actually liked that photo of her and Gavin being all lovey-dovey. At the time, I was genuinely happy for her. I had told Wendell, "Carissa's finally found someone." I had even comforted Wendell, telling him, "Don't read too much into it." I locked my phone and took a deep breath, thinking, "Carissa, I've been playing my part for a decade, but the curtain falls here." Rising from the couch, I flung open the wardrobe and hauled out a suitcase. I began to pack my clothes, my skincare products, my laptop, and my savings book holding three years' worth of my salary. I crammed them in, one by one. When I got to the third drawer, I spotted a small red box. I opened it. It was the ring Wendell had given me last Valentine's Day. I had mistaken it for an engagement ring. I had been so excited that my hands were shaking that day. Yet, when I'd opened it, it was just a plain silver band. There was no diamond. He had smiled and said, "Let's not get caught up in superficial things. I'll make it up to you when we're better off." I had been deeply touched. I'd genuinely believed he wanted to build a life with me. I hurled the ring into the trash. It hit the bottom with a harsh clink. The sound reverberated through the room, snapping like a tightly wound string inside my heart. I was only halfway done when the rattle of keys came from the front door. Wendell was back. He pushed the door open and walked in with a takeout bag. Noticing me kneeling on the floor, packing my things, he froze. "What do you think you're doing, Tania?" Chapter 4 I didn't look up. I just continued stuffing my clothes into the suitcase. Wendell tossed the takeout onto the coffee table. "I asked you a question. Why are you giving me the cold shoulder?" I straightened up and looked him in the eye. "I'm not. I'm moving out." His brows immediately knitted together. "Is this about last night? I already told you there's nothing going on between Carissa and me. We're just friends." I chuckled. I turned on my heel and continued packing. Wendell walked over and yanked me by the arm. "Listen to me, Tania!" I wrenched my arm out of his grasp. "Let go of me, Wendell!" He didn't release his hold. Panic flared in his eyes. "Carissa called me earlier and told me she broke up with Gavin." I stiffened. Wendell continued, "Carissa cried in a cafe all afternoon. She said Gavin doesn't love her at all. It was all an act." I snickered. It was indeed an act. That much was true, but he didn't know the half of it. Wendell wasn't aware that Gavin was hired by Carissa. He genuinely believed she had been dumped. He genuinely thought she was pitiful. I looked at his anxious face. He added, "Don't go, Tania. Let's put our issues aside for a second. Carissa's in a really bad place right now, and she needs a friend. You're her best friend. Go grab dinner with her. She has no one in her corner at the moment." I'd heard enough. I hurled the clothes in my hand onto the floor. "Wendell." He was caught off guard. "Yeah?" "I'm moving out right now, and I'm breaking up with you!"