I always went to him when things got bad. At one point he had been my saving grace, always pulling me out of my darkest times. His house was like my second home. If I wasn’t at my house, I was always at his. I could show up unannounced and let myself in. Neither of his parents cared and I was like their second daughter. I had an exceptionally hard day and all I wanted to do was go and see him.

 I drove 20 minutes to his house only to see an unfamiliar car parked right behind his. Who’s car is it? I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, as it could’ve been his sister or one of his brothers just coming over for a visit. We had been together for three years and I had no reason not to trust him. I let myself in like I usually did, knowing he couldn’t hear me. I slowly opened his bedroom door, excited to see him. I opened the door to see him and some other girl sleeping in his bed, in the spot I had just been in yesterday. “What is wrong with you?” I said softly, my voice cracking and my eyes welling up with tears. He woke up and just stared at me, his face slowly turning a bright shade of red. I saw the girl laid in bed next to him flinch and grab a tighter grip of my boyfriend's arm, but her eyes remained closed the whole time, still pretending to be asleep. I looked at her face for a while. It was also turning a bright shade of red, but I noticed she had looked really familiar, I just wasn’t able to put my finger on it. She slowly opened her eyes and looked at me. “It’s not what it looks like,” she tried to tell me. I wasn’t buying a single second of it. I stormed out the door and drove home, expecting him to follow me out with an explanation. Lucky for him, he did. 

As I was trying to gather myself together before pulling out of his driveway, he ran to my car and got in the passenger seat. The one time I don’t lock the damn doors. I looked over at him, tears visibly running down my face. He reached over to wipe them away, but I pushed his hand away before he could touch me. “No,” I managed to get out, my voice soft and shaking. I no longer wanted anything to do with him. There wasn’t much to explain on his part at all, as I had just walked in on him with his little side girl. He was my first and only boyfriend, and I had never experienced heartbreak in a way even close to this. Three years down the drain just like that. 

The girl from his room shamefully made her way outside to her car where we both were, thinking I wouldn’t see her. In the daylight I was able to get a better look at her face. “Makayla, are you kidding me?” It was my childhood best friend who I had fallen out with last year. We still talked, but not as often as we had before. “I’m so sorry,” she tried to tell me, acting wholeheartedly upset and like she didn’t want to ruin the little relationship the two of us had left.

“Save it,” I told her. “And for you? Get out of my car, we can talk later but definitely not now,” I told my now ex-boyfriend. I could see tears welling up in his eyes, like he knew he messed up. I put my car in reverse, slowly backing out of his driveway. I didn’t want either of them to see I was crying and I was able to hold myself together to talk to them, but as I pulled out onto the main road, tears streamed down my face and they wouldn’t stop. 

I looked at my phone when I pulled in my driveway and saw I had one missed call and one text. “Can we talk?”