Best friend for a reason
878 Words
Natalie’s apartment building was nicer than mine, not even close. There was a doorman in the lobby, an elevator that actually worked, and hallways that smelled like expensive candles instead of old cooking and mildew. Her place was on the eighth floor, a one bedroom with actual rooms instead of one sad space pretending to be everything.
I stood outside her door for a full minute before I knocked, trying to steady my breathing and to prepare myself for whatever version of Natalie I was about to get. The disappointed one from the phone call, the broken one from the party, or maybe, hopefully, the real one, my best friend who knew me better than anyone.
I knocked quite a few times before the door opened. Natalie stood there in her yoga pants and a crop top, her blonde hair up in a messy bun. She looked perfect, like she always did. Not a single sign that the last two days had affected her at all.
“Hey,” she said, stepping back to let me in.
“Hey.”
I walked into her apartment and immediately felt pitiful. Everything was so put together, the cream colored couch with throw pillows arranged just so, the coffee table with fashion magazines fanned out, the kitchen with marble countertops and a wine rack full of expensive bottles, the art on the walls and plants that were actually alive.
This was what normal looked like, what success looked like, what my life used to look like before it all became a memory.
“You want something to drink?” Natalie asked, already walking toward the kitchen. Her voice was casual, like I’d just stopped by for a regular visit.
“Water’s fine.”
She filled a glass from her fancy fridge with the built-in filter and handed it to me. I took it but didn’t drink, I just held it between my hands like I needed something to do with them.
“So,” Natalie sat down on her couch, curling her legs under her. “What did you want to talk about?”
I stayed standing. “Everything.” I uttered after mustering the courage.
“Ivy, we already talked about this on the phone.”
“No, we didn’t. You talked to me and then hung up.” I set the water down on her coffee table, too agitated to sit. “I need you to really listen to me, Nat. Please.”
She sighed, looking at me with something that might have been pity. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“Those photos were not real. I have never cheated on Ethan. I have never even looked at another man that way. I don’t know who that guy in the pictures was, but I have never met him in my entire life.”
“Ivy…”
“Let me finish.” My voice cracked.
“Someone made those photos, photoshopped them or used AI or whatever. Someone wanted to destroy my marriage and they succeeded. And everyone just believed it without question, without even giving me a chance to defend myself.”
Natalie was quiet, she was studying me, but I couldn’t read her expression.
“You’re my best friend,” I continued, feeling the tears start again. God, I was so tired of crying. “We’ve known each other for eight years. You’ve seen me with Ethan. You know how much I loved him. How much I love him.” The present tense felt wrong, but I couldn’t help it. I had to correct myself in order to not make her think otherwise.
“Do you really think I would throw that away? That I would hurt him just like that?”
“The photos looked really real, Ivy.”
“I know they did. But they weren’t. I swear to you, they weren’t.”
She picked at a thread on one of her throw pillows, not looking at me. The silence stretched out, and it was killing me, I needed her to say something, anything at all. “When you called me yesterday,” I said quietly, “you sounded like you already hated me. Like you’d already made up your mind.”
“I was in shock,” she said. “We all were. I mean, we literally watched a slideshow of you f*****g someone else.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“But it looked like you.”
“But it wasn’t.” I moved closer, desperate for her to see the truth in my face.
“Natalie, please. I need someone to believe me. Everyone else has already decided I’m guilty. My parents won’t even talk to me. I got fired from my dad’s company. Ethan threw all my stuff on the lawn and told me I had until tonight to leave. I’m living in a studio apartment in Queens with no furniture because I spent all my savings just to have a place to sleep.” My voice broke completely. “I have nothing left. Nothing except the truth. And I need my best friend to believe me.”
Natalie finally looked up at me, maybe my words had gotten to her this time, and I could see something shift in her eyes.
- Writer
