AITA for not buying my friend Cane's? A group of my friends, Chris, Mark, Stevie, and I, had plans to go to a haunted house together. Earlier that day, Mark mentioned maybe going to Cane’s, but he also said he wasn’t sure what time he’d actually arrive at Chris and Stevie’s apartment. Based on what he told us, we all assumed he’d be getting there right around the time we were planning to leave for the haunted house.
I got to the apartment about two hours early just to hang out. While we were there, we decided to go to Cane’s. We didn’t get anything for Mark, mainly because we genuinely didn’t think he’d be there in time to eat. The plan was pretty tight, and we figured we’d be heading out soon after getting back.
The Cane’s in the area had just opened, so the line was insanely long. We didn’t get back to the apartment until around 8 PM, which was right when Mark showed up. He seemed a little off, but honestly, he often came across that way, so none of us thought too much of it at the time. We were all just acting normal, even eating when we got back. Looking back, we didn’t realize in the moment that we had overlooked anything.
Stevie did offer him some of her food. She’s just genuinely a very kind person like that. Aside from that, nothing really stood out to us as being a bigger issue at the time.
We then went to the haunted house. Throughout the night, Mark kept saying he was hungry, but he never directly said he was upset or asked to stop for food. After we got back, he left pretty quickly.
Later, he sent messages saying we were selfish for not getting him food and that he was really upset.
There was already some tension in the group, mainly because Mark never really seemed to enjoy hanging out with us and always had some complaint about what we were doing. He also didn’t like Stevie at all, even though Stevie had never really done anything to Mark to warrant this feeling. He would go out of his way to exclude her or be rude. So there was already some tension in the group.
I fully acknowledge that we could have been more thoughtful and checked in about food. But I also think our attitude toward the situation reflects his behavior toward us previously. For context on Mark as a person, I feel I should also mention that he uses ChatGPT for therapy, and we're pretty sure he's falling into the Christian/Republican pipeline. He also has continuously brought up the situation on social media, even after the rest of us had fully moved on.