Boyfriend Scolds Me for Rivaling His Childhood Friend, But He's Male

When the acceptance letters went out, the childhood friend who'd repeated a year got into the same university as me.

The day before the semester started, I got my boyfriend and my best friend together to play a game. My boyfriend picked a marksman, and the second he did, my best friend locked in support, then typed:

"Big bro, protect me, okay?"

"Big bro, I'm dying, save me!"

"Big bro's so good!"

"You're so mean, how come you never come help me?"

I couldn't help it. I opened my mic and snapped, "Can you be normal for once? Do you have to make it this gross?"

To my surprise, my boyfriend took his side. "Do you really have to be so hostile toward him?"

"It's the twenty-first century, and you're a college girl with a real education. Is all your brain does compete with other women?"

What? Compete with other women?

I froze.

But my best friend is a guy.

Even after the game flashed "defeat," my head was still a fog.

What? Female competition? Me and Roderick Harding?

He's a guy, six foot two. What exactly would I be competing with him over?

The most we've ever competed over in all these years was who ranked first in our grade back in high school.

But before I could say anything, I realized Saul Dickerson had just kicked me out of the room.

The anger flared up all at once.

It's always like this. I never do anything wrong, and yet Saul flies off the handle for no reason, then goes cold on me, ignoring my calls, ignoring my texts, keeping a stone face even when we pass each other in class, refusing to answer no matter what I say.

Then, when I finally can't take it and bring up breaking up, he comes crawling back, coaxing me, begging me not to, saying he was just too angry and he'll change next time for sure.

And I'm sentimental and soft-hearted, so I forgive him.

And the next time it's the exact same thing.

Around and around until I'm worn out.

It's just a relationship. How is it more exhausting than the whole year leading up to the SATs?

I found Saul's chat and typed:

"What now?"

He sent back a single question mark.

What kind of attitude is that?

I got angrier, but I held my temper and replied, "Is there anything you can't just say normally? You have to be like this?"

He fired back instantly:

"Doreen Finch, you actually have the nerve to interrogate me?"

"He called me big bro a couple of times, that's all, and you cursed him out that viciously. What's wrong with me saying something to you?"

I was done being gentle. The words I typed weren't soft or tactful anymore.

"Me cursing out my best friend is none of your damn business!"

A whole string came rattling back:

"How is it none of my business? You only went off on him because of me, didn't you? I can't figure out what's going through your head every day. What's so satisfying about this kind of jealousy?"

"He's your best friend! I don't know where you got this rotten temper. You grew up with him and you can't even learn from him. If you were half as gentle, half as understanding as he is, I'd count my blessings!"

"I just talk to someone else a little and you throw a fit. You're so controlling. Being with you leaves no room to have any friends at all. We might as well just break up!"

Roderick? Gentle? Understanding?

I could not connect any of those words together.

But I'd been blinded by rage long before this, with no time to think through the details buried in Saul's words, and I fired back, furious:

"Fine, let's break up! I've had enough of you anyway!"

The moment I sent it I went straight down the line, blocked and deleted, then threw my phone onto the bed.

"Bzzt, bzzt"

My phone buzzed twice, a text popping up out of nowhere.

Reluctantly, I picked it up, and saw the message was from the other star of tonight's little drama, my childhood friendRoderick Harding.

He'd sent me a screenshot of a chat.

I knew the other profile photo all too well; it was the couple photo Saul had switched to specially after we got together. But the contents of the chat turned my stomach.

"Hey, you still there?"

"Don't be upset, I already went off on Doreen Finch for you. That's just how she isuseless and hot-tempered on top of it."

"We've been together almost a year now, and honestly, this whole time with her has worn me out."

"Every single day I have to read her mind, come up with new ways to keep her happy, and she still takes it as her cue to push further."

"If only she had half your gentleness, half your sense."

"You two literally grew up together, so how are you this different? It can't have been easy for you either, putting up with Doreen Finch's awful temper all this time. Being her best friend must've been such a thankless job."

"Hey, you still there? Want to play again sometime?"

""

Roderick's messages kept popping up one after another:

"Something's off about your boyfriend."

"A man knows a man besthe is one hundred percent trying to hit on me."

"Does a normal guy talk to his girlfriend's childhood friend like this? Something's obviously wrong!"

Looking at Roderick's ragdoll-cat profile photo and his in-game handle, "Strawberry Coconut," it hit me all at once.

This whole time I'd just assumed Saul knew my childhood friend was a guy, so it had never even crossed my mind to think otherwise.

So my boyfriend had taken my childhood friend for a girland was trying to flirt with him?

It was so absurd I sat there for the longest time and still couldn't wrap my head around it.

I sat on the bed, going back over every little moment.

Saul and I hadn't been together all that long.

Freshman year, he chased me for three months. Back then I figured he was decent-looking, and he treated me pretty well, so I said yes to his confession.

But he was my first love, after all, and I'd put my whole heart into it.

For him, someone who'd never so much as held a needle, I followed online tutorials to learn how to knit a scarf. I kept track of everything he liked, and I got someone to bring back a limited-edition pair of sneakers for him from overseas.

I even stayed up all night with him watching the World Cup, a sport I couldn't follow at all, when I had class the next morning.

Everything I did for him, he looked right past. It didn't even measure up to some breezy little "big bro" from someone else.

How ironic.

Just then the doorbell rang. Through the video doorbell I saw the person standing outside was Roderick.

He'd clearly just come back from somewhere, a big bag in his left hand and an iced drink in his right.

It was my favorite.

Back when I first downloaded the game, I'd meant to use that name myself, but I typed a beat too slow and the guy next to me grabbed it first.

I hesitated for a while, then opened the door for him anyway.

"What? Did you come over just to gloat?"

Roderick looked at my red, puffy eyes, held it in for a good while, then came out with, "You actually cried?"

Nothing decent ever comes out of that mouth.

I smacked him on the shoulder. "Get lost!"

And went to shut the door, but he reacted fast, slipping inside in an instant.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Then his tone turned serious.

"But I still think you should hear me outa boyfriend like that, you're better off dumping him."

I snapped back at him, "Already did."

Hearing that, this heartless guy didn't comfort me at all. Instead his eyes crinkled up right away, that look of someone failing to hold back a grin.

I shot him a look. "What? My getting dumped makes you happy?"

Roderick waved his hands. "No, no, no! It's just I thought of something happy."

He handed me the snacks and the iced drink. "Consider it my apology. Don't be sadI'm counting on you to show me around campus tomorrow!"

"Enough with the 'you' this and that. You're two months older than me! If you hadn't insisted on repeating a year, you wouldn't be a year behind me."

"That's because I stepped in to save a kid and missed the English portion of the SATs, wasn't it? Without repeating, my scores wouldn't have even cracked six hundredhow was I supposed to get into the same school as you?"

"Get lost." I pushed away his fake pitiful face and shot back, "Enough talk, you should head home too. Get up early tomorrow and go check in at school."

Then something came to me, and I called after him. "Waitgo accept his friend request first, and just chat with him like this. Don't tell him you're a guy."

Trust a friend I'd grown up with to catch on instantly. "Sure. So you're planning to"

"That's right," I said, expressionless. "So from now on, you're the junior girl he's after."

Saul liked sweet, gentle girls, didn't he? Well, I was going to give him a huge surprise. He'd better not thank me too much.

After Roderick barged in and stirred everything up, my sour mood had mostly lifted.

Forget it. Whose youth doesn't run into a scumbag or two? A rotten guy like that wasn't worth a single one of my tears.

Classes started tomorrow. I needed to pack.

But like the old saying goes, nice people get walked all over.

I only wanted a clean split. I had no intention of blowing this up. But before I could even say a word, Saul couldn't hold himself back.

That very night, Saul's post popped up on my feed:

Some people weren't born with a princess's fate, but they sure have the princess act down. Whatever, it's fine now. I'm free. Nobody's holding me down anymore.

Fresh off fighting and breaking up with me, and he turns around and posts something like this. Even an idiot could tell who he was jabbing at.

I was about to type out five hundred words of pure rage when I spotted the comment underneath from my roommate Althea Lawrence: "Congrats on escaping the misery."

What was that supposed to mean?

My own roommate stabbing me in the back?

I'd always thought I treated her decently. I let her copy my homework, lent her my notes before finals, and never once forgot her share whenever I took everyone out for meals or iced drinks.

And now she actually thought my boyfriend had been suffering the whole time he was with me?

No. Maybe in her eyes, I was the outsider.

Althea and Saul went to high school together. Back when Saul was chasing me, he got my number from her in the first place.

But still, Althea and I had lived under the same roof for a year. She'd seen with her own eyes how much I'd poured into this relationship.

How could she say that about me?

I whipped out my phone to fire off a message and call her out, but one message after another kept popping up, from my other two roommates.

They'd seen Saul's post too, and they were both messaging to ask what was going on.

I gave them the rough version of everything, and once they heard it they were furious right along with me, comforting me on one hand and cursing Saul out on my behalf on the other. It made me feel a little better.

Looks like there are still more normal people in this world than not.

The next day, when the semester started, I was the last one to reach the dorm.

It was blazing hot, and I lugged my bags up the stairs myself since there was no elevator. By the time I got to the door, a thin film of sweat had soaked through my shirt, and the fabric clung to me, sticky and uncomfortable. I dropped my luggage inside and went straight to the bathroom to shower.

The moment I came out, I saw Althea helping herself to a jar of my face cream, smearing it on without a second thought.

Thinking of what she'd posted under Saul's feed the day before, I felt my temper flare all at once.

How could anyone be so shameless? Trashing me behind my back and still with the nerve to use my things?

"Althea, who said you could touch my stuff?" I stormed over and snatched the jar out of her hand. "You don't have your own face cream? You always have to use somebody else's."

"And weren't you the one who called me a sea of misery? Aren't you afraid using my things will make you miserable to death?"

She froze, hand suspended in midair, then rolled her eyes.

"Why are you being so stingy? Saul bought all this for you anyway. What's the harm in me using a little?"

Her voice climbed higher, and her expression grew more self-righteous by the second.

"And am I wrong? With that rotten temper of yours, Saul, a real rich kid, put up with you and dated you a whole year. You should be grateful! Spending someone else's money, using things someone else bought for you, and still throwing fits at people. Who do you think you are?"

"If I hadn't given him your number back then, you wouldn't even have landed a boyfriend that good! You never once thanked me, and now look at you, causing drama until you drove him off, and here you are yelling at me instead?"

"If you ask me, a woman should be more generous, less controlling. Suck up to me now and maybe I'll put in a word for him, get you two back together sooner. Because if the day comes when he really wants nothing to do with you, it'll be too late to regret it!"

I was livid. I never imagined that was how she saw things.

"Who said he bought this for me?"

She looked at me with contempt. "What else? This cream is five thousand dollars a jar. You think you could afford that?"

"You take me for an idiot, don't you? Buying you girls a few iced drinks now and then, playing the part, and you actually think I believed you were some rich man's daughter? A real heiress wouldn't come cram herself into a dump like this!"

Turns out there's a point past which anger just makes you want to laugh.

Who says a girl with money can't live in a dorm?

After I started college, my dad did buy me a place near campus. But our school is huge, I never learned to drive, and walking from off-campus to the lecture halls takes forever. On top of that, I'd never lived in a dorm before and wanted to try it out, so I skipped the apartment and crammed into this cramped four-person room.

Who knew my first time in a dorm would land me a roommate like this.

Listening to Althea's grand little speech, I found I didn't even want to argue back anymore.

What is there to explain to a pig?

Smirking, I dropped the jar of cream into the trash.

"Five-thousand-dollar cream, so what. Once something dirty has touched it, it's not clean anymore. No point keeping it."

"Some things, if I decide I don't want them, I just don't want them. Same goes for the cream. Same goes for men."

Althea's face flushed red. She jabbed a finger at me, her voice so shrill it made my ears ache. "Doreen, what's that supposed to mean! Who exactly are you insulting in your roundabout little way!"

"Whoever takes it personally is the one I'm insulting."

"You!" Althea choked. After a moment she spat out viciously,

"Hmph! Either way, Saul already dumped you. Without that rich boyfriend backing you up, let's see how long you can keep strutting around!"

I laughed, mocking. "Why is Saul always on your lips, day in and day out? You're more invested in him than I am, and I'm the ex. Are you thinking that now that I'm finally out of the way, you can move in on him?"

At that, Althea's face flushed crimson in an instant, her voice shrill enough to give me a headache.

"Doreen, you've got sex on the brain, so you think everyone else does too. Don't go assuming everyone spends all day orbiting some guy like you do. He and I are just friends. I just can't stand you playing the saint while acting the opposite. I feel sorry for Saul, that's all."

Just then my other two roommates came back in. Hearing that, they immediately stepped in. "Althea, ease off. If there's a problem, deal with the problem, don't attack the person."

"Right, how could you talk about Dorrie like that?"

Seeing that no one was taking her side, Althea's tears fell on cue. "Doreen started it, and you're all defending her. I knew it, you're all in this together, ganging up to freeze me out! You're teaming up to isolate me!"

With that she stormed off, slamming the door so hard the whole hall shook, and heads poked out of the neighboring rooms to gawk.

"You're still clinging to him, but Saul is nothing but a clown," I said to her retreating back, my meaning heavy. "We'll see who ends up regretting it."

Meanwhile, Roderick was sending me his chat logs with Saul every single day.

Saul kept calling the girl he thought he was chatting up "little sis" this, "little sis" that, until I nearly broke out in goosebumps from head to toe.

Little sis, little sis, which college are you in?

What's your name, little sis?

I remember Doreen mentioning once that your surname's Harding, so I'll just call you Rory.

Saw your feed. That pink Lamborghini, was it your dad's reward for getting in? Gorgeous. Really suits you.

Followed by a whole string of puking emojis Roderick had sent.

"What's the plan? If you're going to expose him, do it fast, I can't take it anymore. You have no idea, reading his disgusting lines every day, I can't even eat."

"Soon," I replied. "Play along with him a few more days. The night orientation training ends, go meet him in person."