My BFF Loved Him, I’ll Let Them Burn

My body got shaken hard, and I jolted awake. The creaky sound of a fan spinning overhead buzzed in my ears, with faint cicada chirps in the background. "Zoe, what am I supposed to do?" My bestie Maya Flynn's sobbing voice came from above me. I followed the sound, shot up from the bed, and put some distance between us. Maya was crying her eyes out, hair all messy, standing by my bedside. "I went to a hotel with him, and while he was in the shower, I found a bunch of girls' numbers in his phone. Zoe, what do I do?" I paused for a few seconds, letting my memory take me back to junior year. The scene in front of me matched perfectly with what I remembered. No way. Was I reborn? Maya wasn't getting her usual emotional dumping ground response, and she was getting pissy. "Zoe, what's up with you? I've been talking for ages and you haven't said a word. What's that supposed to mean? Are we even besties anymore?" She got even more worked up. "You always act like you care about me, but it's all fake!" They'd met through the Nearby Players feature on some game. Miles Troy went to some no-name trade school for auto repair down the road. Then Maya got all starry-eyed over his mad gaming skills. They'd stay up all night playing duo matches, and she'd be too wrecked to get up for class, so she'd make me cover for her. After too many times, the prof caught on, docked my attendance points, and I lost my shot at the scholarship. They'd been talking online for a week when Miles said he wanted to meet up. He picked a motel out in the part of town nobody drives through on purpose. Maya didn't hear a word I said. She was going to that motel with him and that was that. That night she found out she was one name on a long list. Then she came crying to me about it. Last time around I got worked up on her behalf. Ran him into the ground, told her to leave him. Then she turned around and tore me a new one, saying Miles was right. That I was just jealous she had such an amazing boyfriend, and that's why I kept trying to break them up. She didn't talk to me for a long time after that. I swallowed my rage, scooted closer to her. "You got it all wrong." I fought the urge to puke and took her hand, just like I used to when we'd have our little heart-to-hearts. Every time I looked at her face, I remembered how she clapped and cheered her boyfriend on while I was getting stabbed. The nausea hit me like a wave. "What if. What if you just misread it?" Maya shook her head hard. "No way! "I saw it with my own eyes. He even labeled them. Numbered backups, with height and bra size and everything." I frowned, thinking for a second. "Then what's his label for you?" Maya looked confused. "He's got me as Baby. Why?" I let out a fake sigh of relief and smiled. "So he's got a ton of backups. But none of them can hold a candle to you. You're his one and only exception." Her eyes lit up like I'd just handed her the answer to life. She practically bounced back to her own bed, grabbed her phone, and called Miles. Like hell I was gonna play the good friend and tell her to dump him this time around. If she loved him that much, they could stay stuck together forever. Maya ate that stuff up. Back in high school, she'd always have her nose buried in some cheesy romance novel, dreaming about finding her one true prince.