When My Boyfriend's Childhood Best Friend Became Single

When My Boyfriend's Childhood Best Friend Became Single I waited for him at the diner all night. As the sky began to lighten, I finally received his text: "We're not working out. Let's break up." 1 On the day of our two-year anniversary, I sat in the diner, watching the snow fall and stop, over and over. But that familiar silhouette never appeared outside the window. He stood me up. As dawn broke, I pushed open the diner doors and was immediately choked by a flurry of snow, coughing uncontrollably. Two text messages sat unread on my phone. One was from him: "We're not working out. Let's break up." The other was from his childhood best friend, my roommate, Audrey: "Harper, I don't think I want to give him to you anymore." A thick layer of snow blanketed the ground. Every step left a deep footprint, only to be quickly buried by fresh snow. I looked up, feeling the freezing temperature as my breath plumed into white mist. This winter felt exceptionally cold. I met Liam in the summer. I was carrying two ice cream cones across the basketball court to find my roommate when a stray ball flew straight at me. At the last second, a strong arm yanked me into a warm chest. It happened so fast I only caught a glimpse of his sharp jawline. The ice cream hit the asphalt, melting rapidly in the heat. From a distance, my roommate Audrey's voice rang out: "Harper—!" Then, a crisp, clear voice echoed right above my head: "Harper Ellis?" I looked up. That was my first time meeting him. Between his handsome features and the way his white t-shirt fluttered in the breeze, he had a fatal attraction to me. His name was Liam Wright. Audrey's childhood best friend, the boy next door. Because of Audrey, I ended up seeing him a lot. Whenever we hung out, the three of us were usually together. Over time, we got to know each other. He only knew my name initially because Audrey constantly brought me up in front of him. In the winter of our sophomore year, Liam and I got together. He was the one who confessed, though it hardly counted as a real confession. That night, walking out of the library, I checked my phone. Half an hour earlier, Audrey had posted a photo on Instagram: "Hello, Carter." It was a picture of a guy's back. I knew who he was. A senior Audrey had been crushing on for ages. I put my phone away and kept walking, keeping my head down until I reached my dorm. Standing there in the freezing cold, wearing only a thin jacket, was Liam. He held a single rose in one hand and his phone in the other, his knuckles white from gripping it so tightly. I called out his name in surprise. He turned around, his eyes slightly red. Before I could say another word, he pulled me into a tight embrace, his voice hoarse. "Harper, let's give us a try." Truthfully, Audrey had been trying her hardest to set us up long before that. Otherwise, Liam wouldn't have brought me along every time he asked her to hang out. Once, when she got drunk, she hugged my arm and whined: "Harper, please just date him. I'm begging you. Otherwise he's always bothering me, it's so annoying." Right then, Liam pushed the door open and walked in. He was completely drenched. A torrential downpour was raging outside, but because of one phone call from Audrey, he had rushed over without a second thought. I don't know if he heard what she said. I only watched him lean down, scoop the drunk Audrey into his arms, and let out a helpless sigh. "Audrey, stop messing around." I grabbed Audrey's purse and followed quietly behind them. I watched him carefully place her into the passenger seat and tuck a blanket around her. After standing there in a daze for a long time, Liam told me to get in the car. As the heater slowly warmed the interior, I kept my eyes lowered, my peripheral vision fixed on his long, clean fingers gripping the steering wheel. Did I agree to date Liam because I didn't like him? No. I liked him a lot. I liked him so much that even knowing he only asked me out to get back at Audrey, I still said yes. 2 Liam's social media was incredibly bare. He only had two posts. One was a picture of a stray cat, and the other was just a single line of text: One step away. The day after we got together, he made his third post: Harper Ellis. My girlfriend. Audrey quickly commented: Omg, wishing you guys the best! Liam and I had our first official date at the movies. We bought tickets for a cheesy new rom-com. Not long after we sat down, Audrey and her new boyfriend showed up and sat directly in the row in front of us. The movie was boring and cliché—just the usual plot of the main couple missing their timing and not ending up together. But Audrey bawled her eyes out. She always seemed to get moved to tears easily. I remember one night before Liam and I were dating. A guy was confessing his love to a girl outside our dorm building. He arranged candles into a heart, scattered rose petals on the ground, and played the guitar while saying "I love you." The girl he was confessing to hadn't even come downstairs yet, but Audrey, who was watching from the balcony, was streaming tears. She hugged me and cried about how touching it was, and how great that guy was. I patted her back gently, stayed silent for a moment, and asked quietly, "Isn't Liam great too?" Her crying stopped instantly. She wiped her tears and sighed. "He's great, but it's just annoying. We grew up together, how could I ever like him that way? Besides, even if we don't date, he's always going to be good to me." Her capacity to be moved seemed totally immune to Liam. Or maybe, as the saying goes, the one who is truly loved has nothing to fear. After the movie, we all went to dinner. At the table, Audrey and her boyfriend fed each other bites of food non-stop. Liam kept his head down, pushing a piece of lettuce around his plate. He barely ate a thing. Before we parted ways, Audrey mentioned they were going to a friend's birthday party. Liam seemed to hold back for a long time before finally saying, "Don't drink too much." Audrey frowned in annoyance. Leaning against her boyfriend, she looked at me. "Harper, he's so annoying. Tell him to stop acting like my dad." Before I could say anything, Liam grabbed my wrist and pulled me away. The walk was silent. I thought of a million things to say, but finally stopped in front of a grocery store and looked at him. "Liam, let me make you some homemade spaghetti." In my apartment, Liam ate the pasta politely, a faint smile on his lips. "You don't look like someone who cooks." "Honestly, I didn't know how it would turn out either. This is the first time in my memory I've ever made spaghetti bolognese." His smile deepened. "Really? It's really good." Looking at his handsome face, I felt my ears burn. His gloomy mood from the evening improved significantly. It was from that night on that he truly started stepping into his role as my boyfriend. Every morning, he would wait outside my dorm with breakfast, rain or shine. He walked me to class, bought me gifts for every holiday, took me out on weekends, and occasionally planned little surprises. Once, we hiked up a mountain to watch the sunrise. Sitting at the peak, smelling the pine trees as the first ray of sunlight broke the horizon, he suddenly leaned in and kissed my cheek. His eyes were incredibly gentle when he said, "Harper, I like you." For a long time, I didn't think it was possible for Liam to like me. After all, I had seen what he looked like when he liked Audrey. Audrey and I were total opposites. She was the bright, emotional, head-turning beauty. I wasn't nearly as pretty, and I was quiet. Put simply, I was boring. But when Liam said I like you, I just felt a sudden pang of melancholy in my chest, and an urge to cry. It felt like I had waited years to hear those words, even though we hadn't even been together for a year. Somehow, I always felt our quiet, peaceful happiness was just a fragile bubble. One day, it was going to pop. And Audrey was the needle. 3 Two months into her relationship, Audrey and her boyfriend started fighting constantly. It started with small things, like the shade of her lipstick, and escalated until it landed someone in the hospital. One time, Liam and I were out for dinner. It was a new restaurant offering half-price meals for couples, so I dragged him there. But right as the food arrived, Liam got a call from Audrey. By the time we rushed over, Audrey was sitting in a private karaoke room, drinking and crying. The reason? Her boyfriend was too busy lately, and they fought about not seeing each other enough. I originally thought once he comforted her, that would be the end of it. I didn't realize that phone call was just the beginning. Audrey started complaining to him all the time. Her boyfriend wasn't considerate enough, wasn't gentle enough, his apologies weren't sincere, he texted other girls. She always ended it with one sentence: "He's nothing compared to you, Liam." Her issues with her boyfriend snowballed, and the number of times she called Liam skyrocketed. It got to the point where I felt like the third wheel. I remember it was my birthday. It was pouring rain outside. Liam lit the candles on my cake and told me to make a wish. Just as I closed my eyes, a frantic ringtone shattered the silence. It took me a moment to realize it was the custom ringtone Liam had assigned to Audrey. He hadn't changed it since we started dating. Audrey's crying echoed loudly in the quiet room. Liam stood up so fast he knocked a ceramic plate onto the floor, shattering it. Through the speaker, Audrey sobbed that she had been dumped and left on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere. The heater was on, but my fingertips went ice cold. Liam gently coaxed her over the phone: "Don't panic. Send me your location." Liam's voice was always soft, but for some reason, he sounded exceptionally tender when he was comforting Audrey. Right as he opened the door to leave, I called his name. He seemed to finally remember I was still in the room. He looked uncomfortable. "The rain is too heavy, it's not safe out there. I'm going to go find Audrey." That was probably the one and only time I ever acted selfishly during our relationship. I grabbed his sleeve. "What if I don't want you to go?" It had been too many times. Even treating her like a little sister, they had crossed the line. He gently pried my fingers off his sleeve. His voice was low. "I'm sorry, Harper. I can't let anything happen to her." Then came the sound of the door closing. On my twenty-first birthday, I sat alone in front of a melted cake for a long time. Eventually, my head started pounding so violently that I passed out. A waiter found me and called an ambulance. The headaches were a lingering side effect of a car crash I had years ago. After finishing my IV drip in the middle of the night, I pulled out my phone. I had called Liam repeatedly. No one answered. 4 Audrey was heartbroken and locked herself in her room for days. When Liam came to the hospital the next morning, he had faint dark circles under his eyes. He held my hand and apologized. I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep. After I was discharged, Liam took meticulous care of me. He brought me meals, walked me to every class, and basically spent every free second he had by my side. I guess he was putting all his time into me to fix what he broke. Once during gym class, my period came early. The cramps were so bad I couldn't stand. I don't know who texted him, but Liam sprinted over, sweating, and carried me to the campus clinic. He prepared everything perfectly—heating pads, hot tea, painkillers. I knew he was trying hard to repair the crack in our relationship. Audrey was in a terrible mood, so she kept finding excuses to hang out with us. At first, it was just grabbing lunch together. Soon, she tagged along on every date. She would always loop her arm through mine confidently and say: "Harper, I'm not stealing Liam from you. I don't even like him." "I just see him as a brother. If I liked him, I wouldn't have set you two up!" Sometimes, if Liam bought me a gift but didn't get her one, she would get mad and pout: "Liam, you're choosing a girl over your best friend." "What? I'm the one who set you two up, and you forgot about me already?" "Liam, we grew up together." For a long time, the three of us maintained this bizarre, delicate dynamic, right until Audrey started dating again. The guy was a junior from the business school. He was the total opposite of her ex. Her ex was flashy and passionate, but didn't know how to compromise or take care of people. This new guy, with his clean-cut, quiet demeanor, put Audrey first in absolutely everything. I don't know if Audrey noticed, but this guy was exactly like Liam. Or rather, he was exactly like the version of Liam who had absolutely zero boundaries when it came to her. The day Audrey announced her new relationship, Liam accidentally dropped the handmade ceramic mug I had given him for his birthday. It shattered. A shard sliced his index finger, leaving a deep cut. It was hard to say if the cut hurt because of Audrey, or because of the mug I made him. But because of Audrey's new romance, the tension between Liam and me finally eased. One night, Liam and I were eating at a dive bar off-campus. Suddenly, a huge commotion broke out outside. I wasn't naturally curious and hated crowds, and so did Liam. But the next second, a scream ripped through the air. It was Audrey. Without a second of hesitation, Liam bolted outside. I ran after him. The street in front of the bar was pure chaos. A massive brawl had broken out, and Audrey was right in the middle of it. Later, I saw someone raise a hand to hit Audrey. Liam grabbed a beer bottle and smashed it over the guy's head. Everything descended into madness. Crying, glass shattering, screaming, and blood. So much blood. The last thing I heard before I lost consciousness was: "Someone passed out! Someone passed out—!" The person who passed out was me. Seeing that scene, my head had started throbbing with an agonizing pain. It was too much to bear, and I blacked out. When I opened my eyes again, I was in the hospital. Liam's face was bruised purple, and his arm was bandaged. Seeing me awake, he called my name in a hoarse voice. "Harper." I was never a crier. Even when I was deeply wronged, I would just grit my teeth and push through it. But for the first time, I couldn't hold back the tears in front of Liam. I didn't make a sound. The tears just rolled down my temples into the pillow. I had been so terrified. I had screamed his name, over and over, but in that moment, the only person in his eyes was Audrey. I couldn't explain exactly why I was crying, but it felt like a dull knife was sawing at my heart. 5 Liam explained that Audrey's friends had gotten into a dispute with another group, neither side backed down, and a fight broke out. Audrey wasn't hurt, but she was a wreck. Her eyes were red and swollen when she came to see me at the hospital. During the fight, her new boyfriend hadn't protected her; in fact, he was the first one to run away. After that, Audrey and her boyfriend were constantly on-and-off, with no clear end in sight. On the day Liam got the stitches removed from his arm, I stared at the jagged scar and asked, "Liam, does it hurt?" Maybe because my voice was so unnervingly calm, he panicked, pulling me into his arms. "I'm sorry, Harper. I grew up with her. I can't just leave her alone." "Harper, don't mention breaking up. Please, never bring up breaking up, okay?" In the end, he was the one who brought it up. On our two-year anniversary. Audrey and her boyfriend had finally called it quits for good. It happened exactly one week before our anniversary. She was eerily calm about it this time. No crying, no screaming. She just sat with us at dinner and said flatly: "I broke up with him." I had a very strange premonition then. Audrey regretted it. And reality proved my intuition right. So, when I was stood up on our anniversary, and I finally got the breakup text, I wasn't that surprised. Just... tired. My eyes burned. I used to wonder why I fell so hard for Liam. I thought it was because the sunset was so beautiful that day at the basketball court, and his silhouette just perfectly caught my eye. I figured he would never know that the real first time I saw him was in the stairwell, the second day of freshman year. For some unknown reason, Audrey was sitting on the steps crying. Liam sat right beside her, coaxing her with endless, gentle patience. The evening light hit the side of his face, making his eyelashes glow. Staring at the text Liam sent me, I typed a single word: "Okay." Thinking back on it, I was exactly like the catalyst side-character in a romance novel about childhood sweethearts. Once the main characters finally realized they were meant to be, it was time for me to gracefully exit stage left. After standing out in the snow, I caught a terrible fever. I had bizarre, fragmented dreams. A highway covered in blood from a car crash. A boy's back as he rode a bicycle. A teenager in a white shirt whose face I could never clearly see. In the dream, a clear, somewhat lazy voice was rambling in my ear. I strained to listen and barely caught a few sentences: "Harper, how did your exam go?" "I'm here to see you, Harper!" "Harper Ellis, no taking it back!" "Harper. Harper... Harper..." When I opened my eyes to a blinding white ceiling, for a split second, I thought I was waking up from the car crash again. It was snowing outside the window, just like back then. During winter break of my junior year of high school, I was in a terrible car accident. When I woke up, I had lost a huge chunk of my memory. 6 Liam and I broke up on an ordinary snowy day. The next time I saw Audrey, she said, "Harper, thank you. You made me realize my true feelings." "I'm so sorry, Harper. Liam only dated you to make me jealous." "I was so stupid, trying so hard to push you two together. It's all my fault. Please don't hate me, okay?" As she said this, she clung intimately to Liam's arm. It was the first time I had seen him since the breakup. The sunlight hit his newly cut black hair. I suddenly noticed that in just a few days, he had lost weight. His normally gentle features looked sharp and exhausted. My eyes swept over the watch on his left wrist. I looked up at him slightly and asked: "When we were on the mountain watching the sunrise, did you mean what you said?" Honestly, I didn't even know what I was holding onto anymore. Was I hoping he really liked me? Did I still want to be with him? But when he looked at me so intently on that peak and said he liked me, I genuinely believed him. Two years is a long time. It's just a shame it could never outlast their twenty. He pressed his lips together. The hand by his side clenched into a loose fist. His voice was as beautiful as ever: "It was my fault. Don't blame Audrey. If you need anything to make up for it, just name it." I pulled a faint, mocking smile, my vision blurring. "Can I ask you to marry me?" He froze. I turned around and started walking away slowly, throwing an insult over my shoulder: "Can't do it, right? It's fine. You've never kept a single promise you made to me anyway. What's one more?" The watch on Liam's wrist was very old. After it broke a few times, I bought him a brand new one. He accepted it but never wore it, claiming he just needed to fix the old one and was too used to it to switch. Thinking back on it now, it wasn't the style of the watch he couldn't let go of. It was the person who gave it to him. A thin layer of snow covered the sidewalk. I stood at an intersection, watching the cars rush by, suddenly having no idea where to go. As I stepped off the curb, a deafening screech of tires and crashing metal erupted right behind me. The next second, I was yanked backward into an embrace that smelled of pine. I don't know how much time passed. The jarring noise had triggered flashes of my car crash, making my head pound in agony. As the pain slowly subsided, I clutched my head and looked up. I saw a face that looked remarkably like Liam's, but older, sharper, and far more refined. The man wore a black overcoat lightly dusted with snow. He had an incredible jawline and striking brow bones. His long, clean fingers gripped a transparent umbrella, shielding me from the snow, while his other arm was wrapped tightly around my waist. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his voice was completely hoarse: "Long time no see, Harper." His name was Caleb Wright. My... former math tutor. The summer before my senior year of high school, my dad brought home a college student to tutor me in math. His name was Caleb. Every Wednesday and Friday afternoon, he came over to help me study. Whenever my mom wasn't home, he would sneak me a vanilla ice cream cone. I had to beg him for it, of course, because my health was poor and my mom banned cold sweets. Caleb refused at first, but couldn't withstand my pleading. We compromised on half a cone as a reward for finishing my work. Though he went to college in a different city, he was only in my hometown that summer for fieldwork related to his thesis. Tutoring was just a way to make some extra cash. He didn't just teach me math; he ended up tutoring me in almost every subject. You could say my entire academic revival started with him. As the pages of my textbooks flipped, the summer ended. I started my senior year, and he went back to his university. My once aggressively average math grades skyrocketed, eventually becoming my best subject. Actually, Caleb was the one who told me all of this. I had forgotten everything about him, and everything that happened during that time. Later, just to confirm, I asked my mom. She confirmed that he had indeed tutored me. And yes, I really did love vanilla ice cream. The hand holding the umbrella tightened its grip. His deep, dark eyes looked at me from beneath his eyelashes. He seemed to force the words out: "You don't remember me?... It's fine. As long as you're okay. As long as you're safe." Looking at his suddenly dimmed eyes, and that face that looked so much like Liam's, I felt a knot of complex emotions. I opened my mouth and called out, "Mr. Wright," but he cut me off with a bitter smile. "You never used to call me Mr. Wright." "What did I call you?" "Caleb." 7 I used to attribute my feelings for Liam to perfect timing. The weather was nice, he appeared exactly when I needed him, and my heart skipped a beat. I couldn't find any other reason, right up until he drained every last drop of my affection. But my reason for avoiding Caleb now was crystal clear: he had a face just like Liam's. Technically speaking, Liam looked like him. I found out Caleb was Liam's older cousin during winter break. Caleb and I had added each other on social media. Initially, I didn't want to, but he looked down at me quietly and said softly: "We were tutor and student once. Not only did you forget me, but now you won't even add me as a friend?" My heart gave an inexplicable tremble, and I agreed. After adding him, I glanced at his profile. It was mostly work-related articles. The only personal posts were a few photos of the exact same potted Gardenia plant. For some reason, it made me think of Liam's profile. That photo of the cat and that single sentence. It was easy to guess the hidden meaning behind it. Audrey had once shown me a picture of the cat she and Liam co-parented—it was the exact same cat from his post. And "One step away" perfectly described the agonizing distance between best friends and lovers. A week after Caleb and I became online friends, he made a new post. It was very simple: They say seven years is a cycle. Beneath it was a comment: Cousin, did you find her? Congrats! My entire focus locked onto the word "Cousin." So that's why they looked so alike. Winter break vanished as quickly as a sparkler burning out. During that time, Caleb only sent me one message, right at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve: "Merry Christmas, Harper." I spun my phone in my hand, eventually turning it off. The next morning, I replied: "Merry Christmas, Caleb." Once we returned to campus, everyone was busy with internships and final projects. Graduation was looming, which meant endless farewell dinners and parties. It was during this time I realized the name "Liam" no longer stirred a single ripple in my heart. Because of our overlapping social circles, it was inevitable that Liam, Audrey, and I would end up at the same party. And it was at that party I witnessed Liam and Audrey fight for the first time. It escalated into physical violence. Piecing together their screaming match, the reason was simple: Audrey felt Liam had changed. She constantly tested him to see if he still loved her. Her method of testing him was hanging out with her ex-boyfriend, threatening Liam that they were going to get back together. Coincidentally, both of her ex-boyfriends were at this party. Finally, Liam said flatly: "Go ahead and get back together with him then!" "Liam, I knew it! You don't even love me anymore!" Audrey hysterically threw a beer bottle at him. A shard of glass grazed the corner of his eye, sending a stream of blood down his jaw. I stood quietly in the crowd, watching them go from arguing, to fighting, to breaking up. I avoided Liam's gaze when he looked my way, pulling out my phone and scrolling aimlessly. Audrey probably didn't understand that love is the one thing that cannot withstand constant testing. Liam drank heavily that night. When the party ended, I walked outside and saw Caleb. He was dressed in a sharp black suit, his expression totally entirely cold. Seeing me, his long legs stepped in my direction, but he was halted by Liam calling out, "Caleb." Caleb looked at the heavily intoxicated Liam being held up by his friends. He frowned and said coldly: "If it's not working, break up early!" His sharp gaze swept over the unusually quiet Audrey standing nearby, and then he walked straight toward me.

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