This is a true story. Names and identifying details have been changed for privacy of all involved.

It started like any other Friday night—a blur of music and laughter drifting up from my old roommate’s new apartment, one floor below mine. We weren’t exactly friends anymore. Not enemies, not strangers—just somewhere in that limbo where you still call each other best friend out of habit, hoping the word might keep the bond alive.

I showed up to the party because that’s what I’d always done. Float through the room, smile at familiar faces, sip something that burned just enough, and listen to conversations I wasn’t invested in. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t me anymore. After a while, my bones felt tired, and the music felt louder than my head could hold. Time to go.

The hallway outside was still. My footsteps echoed, muffled bass chasing me as I reached the stairwell. That’s when I felt her.

The first shove was so sudden it rattled my spine. Then came her hands—nails, fists, raw fury tangled in my hair. I didn’t have time to understand, only to react. Shove. Block. Get free. I was able to get my legs free and kick her off me.

I bolted up the stairs, heart pounding, door slamming, deadbolt turning. My whole apartment felt smaller with the adrenaline filling it.

Later, I’d learn her reason—if you can call it that. She thought I was sleeping with her boytoy. I wasn’t.

The irony? The girl she’d been glued to all night—the one laughing in her ear, glitter shimmering under the kitchen lights—that was the one he was sleeping with.

She didn’t know. Nobody did.

So I sat there in the dark, listening as the hallway outside settled into silence, as if the night itself was trying to patch over what had just cracked wide open. But that was the night the thin thread between us finally snapped.

Some threads aren’t worth knotting back together.