The screenshot loaded slowly enough to make my heartbeat feel louder than the phone in my hand.
At the top was Evan’s name.
Below it was a message sent to Nick on the afternoon of the night Evan had stood in our kitchen and told me his friends thought I wasn’t special enough for him.
I read it once.
Then again.
“I’m going to tell Lauren you guys think I can do better.
Maybe she’ll finally try harder.”
For several seconds, I couldn’t move.
The bedroom was dark except for the pale light from my phone.
Evan’s side of the bed was empty, the blankets barely disturbed from where he had left hours earlier for guys’ night.
I scrolled down.
Nick had answered him almost immediately.
“Don’t put that on us.
I never said that.”
Another message followed from Evan.
“Relax.
She’ll know I’m joking.”
I stared at those words until they blurred.
Not because I was crying.
Because suddenly the last two weeks rearranged themselves in my head.
The calm delivery.
The shrug.
The way he’d said he was only telling me what his friends thought.
The way he had watched my face, waiting for something.
Jealousy, maybe.
Panic.
A desperate promise that I would become more interesting, more attentive, more grateful to have him.
He hadn’t been delivering someone else’s opinion.
He had manufactured a threat and borrowed his friends’ names to make it sound credible.
“Lauren?” Nick said through the phone.
I realized I had forgotten he was still there.
“Did any of you say it?” I asked.
My voice sounded unfamiliar.
“No.”
“Any of you?”
“No.
Lauren, I swear to you.
We never sat around talking about whether you were good enough for Evan.
He sent me that message, and I told him not to drag me into it.
I thought he dropped it.”
I closed my eyes.
“But he didn’t.”
“No.”
Behind Nick, someone asked him a question.
His reply was muffled.
A few seconds later he came back on the line.
“I’m sorry I said what happened tonight was because of you.
That’s not what I meant.
It was because we were talking about what he did to you.
That’s different.
This is on Evan.”
I pressed the phone against my ear.
“Tell me what happened.”
Nick was quiet for so long that I thought the call had dropped.
Then he began.
The guys had met at a crowded bar downtown.
