My Boyfriend And Best Friend Thought They Could Mock Me Behind My Back. So, I Decided To Become My Best Friend’s Stepmom. Was This Too Far?

The Aftermath

The next morning, I woke up in my bed. My phone was on the nightstand. I picked it up. 17 missed calls from Khloe. I scrolled through them. She’d called over and over starting at midnight, then 2:00 in the morning, then 4.

There was one text from Bruce. It just said we should talk when I was ready. My stomach dropped reading it.

I got up and walked to the kitchen. The apartment still smelled like turkey and stuffing. All the food was still out. Nobody had put it away. I felt sick looking at it. The dinner that never happened. I started putting containers in the fridge. My hands shook.

Three days went by. Khloe kept calling. I didn’t answer. My sister came over and helped me clean. She asked if I’d heard from Bruce. I showed her the text. She said I should meet him. She said I owed him that.

My phone rang while we were talking. Different name: Ariel from work. I answered. Ariel asked if I was okay. She said she heard what happened. I asked her how she knew. She said it was all over our friend group. Someone told someone who told someone else.

I realized Khloe or Ethan must be telling people, probably their version, making me look bad. Ariel said she just wanted to check on me. I thanked her and hung up.

I texted Bruce back. I said I was ready to talk if he was. He responded fast. He suggested coffee. We picked a place halfway between us.

I got there early, sat at a corner table, watched the door. Bruce walked in exactly on time. He looked bad. His eyes had dark circles under them. His hair wasn’t combed right. He looked like he hadn’t slept since Thanksgiving. He sat down across from me. We ordered coffee. Neither of us drank it.

The Explanation

Bruce said Khloe had been calling him constantly. He said she kept trying to explain, trying to apologize. He said he couldn’t even look at her right now. His voice was flat, empty. I didn’t know what to say.

Bruce leaned forward. He looked right at me. He asked me directly why I chose him for revenge. The question hung in the air. I could have lied but I didn’t. I told him the truth.

I said I engineered our first meeting. I said the apartment repairs were fake. I said I wore yoga pants on purpose. I said I made him lunch to keep him coming back.

Bruce listened. His jaw got tight. His hands gripped his coffee cup. I watched him process everything. Every dinner, every concert, every time I kissed him. He was seeing it all through new eyes. Seeing the manipulation, the calculation, the revenge.

I said I didn’t set out to hurt him. I said the first meeting was planned and the repairs were fake, but somewhere between his third visit and our 10th dinner I stopped thinking about revenge. I stopped counting how many times I made him laugh or how many stories he told me about his business.

Bruce stared at his coffee cup. He asked when I knew it changed. I told him it was the concert. The one where he sang along badly to every song and didn’t care who heard him. He looked happy, free. I realized I wanted to keep seeing that look on his face.

Bruce’s mouth got tight. He said Khloe showed up at his house two nights after Thanksgiving. She was crying so hard she could barely talk. She kept saying she fell in love with Ethan and didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

Bruce told me he sat there listening to his daughter make excuses and felt sick. He said loving someone doesn’t make cruelty okay. He said betraying your best friend for 8 months while crying on her shoulder isn’t love.

Khloe tried to explain that she and Ethan connected, that they understood each other. Bruce said he told her she needed to take responsibility for choosing to hurt me every single day for 8 months. Khloe left his house and hasn’t called him since.

I asked Bruce if there was any chance for us. Any way to start over without all the revenge and lies hanging over everything.

Bruce looked at me for a long time. He said he didn’t know. He said every time he thought about us now he wondered what was real and what was strategy. He said he needed time to figure out if he could trust me.

My chest felt tight hearing that. I realized I might lose him because of how this started. I left the coffee shop feeling worse than when I arrived.