Boyfriend’s Friend Convinced Him I Was Too Dumb For Him Because I Was Just A Lab Tech

She claimed the plagiarism findings were impossible and that she’d never stolen anything in her life. I nodded and made sympathetic sounds while my hands gripped my knees under the desk.

Every time she looked up at me with those red, swollen eyes, I had to fight to keep my face concerned instead of satisfied. This was exactly what I’d wanted, what I’d carefully planned and worked toward for weeks.

But sitting here watching her world collapse felt different from what I’d expected. Not bad different, just strange.

She wiped her nose with a tissue and started going through the review board’s findings again. She pointed at her computer screen like I could help her find some error in their logic.

I leaned forward and looked at the document she was showing me, the same document I’d written myself, and pretended to read it for the first time. She asked if I saw anything wrong with their conclusions and I told her it looked pretty thorough.

Her face crumpled again and she put her head back in her hands. My phone buzzed in my pocket while Melissa was still crying.

I pulled it out and saw Nathan’s name on the screen. The message asked if Melissa had said anything about who might have reported her.

I stared at the words for a long moment, feeling something cold settle in my stomach. He had no idea he was texting his girlfriend asking for information while I sat across from his friend whose career I’d just destroyed.

I typed back that she was too upset to talk coherently, which wasn’t a lie. I suggested he give her some space while the investigation continued.

He sent back a worried face emoji and said he’d check in with her tomorrow. I put my phone away and looked at Melissa, who was now staring blankly at her computer screen.

She asked if I thought Nathan would still want to be friends with her after this. I told her of course he would, that this didn’t change who she was as a person.

The words felt hollow coming out of my mouth, but she seemed to take comfort in them. She thanked me for coming over and said she didn’t know what she’d do without support right now.

I stayed for another 20 minutes, making tea and listening to her talk about her research and how many years of work were now completely wasted. When I finally left, she hugged me at the door and told me I was a good friend.

The next week passed in a weird blur. Nathan kept texting me updates about Melissa, how she wasn’t answering his calls or messages and how worried he was about her.

He said she’d always been proud and this must be killing her. I agreed and said maybe she just needed time to process everything.

We were sitting on his couch on Wednesday night when he brought it up again. He asked if I thought he should drive over to her apartment and check on her.

I told him that might make things worse and that she was probably too embarrassed to face anyone from her old life right now. He nodded but kept checking his phone like she might suddenly respond.

On Thursday he asked if I’d heard from her and I said no. Friday he wondered out loud if maybe he should have seen the signs that something was wrong with her research.

I bit my tongue and reminded him that he wasn’t a theoretical physicist and that he couldn’t have known. He seemed relieved by this and dropped the subject.

By Saturday he was asking me repeatedly if I thought she’d be okay. He wondered if academic fraud was something people recovered from or if her career was really over.

I had to sit there and pretend I was equally concerned about her well-being. I nodded and said supportive things while inside I felt this weird mix of triumph and guilt.

The guilt surprised me. I’d expected to feel purely satisfied, but instead, I kept seeing her face in that tiny office.

Monday morning I went back to work at the research lab and tried to focus on my actual job. Cara found me in the break room around 10:00, pouring my third cup of coffee.

She leaned against the counter and asked if I was okay. I told her I was fine, but she kept looking at me with this concerned expression.

She said I seemed different lately, more confident but also more guarded, like I was holding something back. I laughed it off and said work had just been stressful.

She asked if everything was okay with Nathan and I felt my smile freeze on my face. The question hit different than I’d expected because suddenly I was thinking about what all of this had revealed about my relationship.

Nathan had believed Melissa over me. He’d questioned my intelligence, my competence, and my ability to understand basic concepts in my own field.

He’d done it so easily and so quickly, like two years of knowing me counted for nothing compared to a few weeks of Melissa’s comments. I realized I hadn’t actually processed any of that yet.

I’d been so focused on destroying Melissa that I hadn’t stopped to think about what it meant that Nathan was so ready to believe I was too dumb for him. Cara was still waiting for an answer, so I told her things with Nathan were complicated right now.

That night Nathan came over to my apartment with takeout. We ate on the couch and watched some documentary about deep sea creatures.

Halfway through he paused it and turned to me with this serious expression. He said he’d been thinking a lot about what Melissa had said regarding our intellectual compatibility.

My stomach dropped but I kept my face neutral. He continued, saying he was starting to wonder if maybe he’d been unfair to me.

I asked what he meant by unfair. He shifted uncomfortably and said some of the things Melissa had pointed out about me struggling with abstract concepts might not actually be true.

Maybe he’d just been seeing what she wanted him to see. I felt anger rising in my chest like heat.

He was only questioning his behavior now because Melissa had disappeared and couldn’t reinforce her narrative anymore. It wasn’t because he’d recognized the problem himself or realized how insulting his behavior had been, but because his source of information was gone.

I asked him if he actually believed I struggled with abstract concepts. He hesitated and said he didn’t know, that Melissa had been convincing.

The anger got hotter. I asked if he remembered our conversation about consciousness and Mars exploration.

He nodded. I asked if that had seemed surface level to him at the time, before Melissa told him it was.

He looked uncomfortable and admitted it hadn’t. I set my food down and stood up.

Nathan asked where I was going and I told him:

“Nowhere i just needed to move.”

I walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot below. The decision formed in my mind, fully shaped like it had been waiting there all along.

I turned around and told him I needed to tell him something. He put down his food too and sat forward.

I explained calmly how I’d reviewed Melissa’s research for Dr. Harrison and how I’d found the plagiarism. I detailed how I documented everything that led to her getting kicked out of the PhD program.