u/celesteMMJ

This happened back in 2022.

I (18F at the time) moved out for the first time with my best friend (20F). I’ll call her “Liz.”

We rented a house together in April 2022. We were both single. Liz was casually seeing multiple guys, while I was still in an on-again, off-again toxic relationship with my ex.

One of the guys she was seeing, “James,” was around all the time. He helped us move into the house, came clubbing with us, and was over almost every day. He was funny, outgoing, and easy to get along with, so we became good friends.

One night I was home alone after a huge fight with my ex. James came over, we drank together, vented about our relationships, and one thing led to another. We ended up sleeping together.

The next day I told him he needed to stay away from me because I wasn’t okay with him sleeping with both of us. He stayed away for about a week, but Liz started wondering why he wasn’t coming around anymore since he’d practically been at our house every day. Eventually he started coming back over, and although we tried to keep our distance, we both realized there were genuine feelings developing.

To make things even messier, my ex still came over sometimes, so the four of us would hang out together. What made it even more awkward was that my ex had cheated on me with Liz about a year earlier while we were still together.

A little while later, I realized I had genuine feelings for James. I planned to tell Liz while we were glamping together, but before I could, she said she needed to tell me something first.

She told me she was pregnant.

I asked who the father was, and she said James.

Before this, I had asked her multiple times if she actually had feelings for James because I didn’t want to cross any lines. Every single time she told me no. Even after telling me she was pregnant, I asked again, and she still insisted she didn’t have feelings for him.

After hearing she was pregnant, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her how I felt about James.

In September 2022, I moved out because I felt overwhelmed with guilt and didn’t know how to face her anymore. I let her and her cousin keep all of the furniture and even the rental bond because I felt so bad. After I moved out, James and I quietly started seeing each other.

Not long after, James met up with Liz to discuss the pregnancy and he asked for a paternity test because he wasn’t the only guy she was sleeping with at the time. The conversation became a huge argument. At the end of fight, he told her that we were together.

She completely lost it.

I wasn’t there, but afterwards she told James she wanted nothing to do with him and didn’t want him involved with the baby.

After giving her some space, I tried everything to repair our friendship. I called her, texted her, and even went to her house, but she refused all contact.

The only time she came to see me was to drop off some of my belongings. My brother told me she wanted to talk, but I was extremely sick that day and could barely stand up, so I said I couldn’t.

Fast forward to today: James and I are still together, and it’s the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in.

Liz has since moved on and is raising the child with her new partner. The child looks exactly like James, but James still has no relationship with his son. His own father abandoned him when he was a baby, so he always said he’d never do that to his own child. Unfortunately, Liz still refuses to let him see his son, and we haven’t been able to afford taking the matter to court.

Ironically, Liz and I now work for the same company. We’re on different shifts, so we only see each other occasionally, but when we do, we don’t speak. After all these years, she still wants nothing to do with me.

I know this whole situation is incredibly messy. I know sleeping with someone my best friend was seeing was wrong. But they were never in a relationship, and every time I asked if she had feelings for him, she told me she didn’t. On the other hand, she had previously slept with my boyfriend while we were together.

So… AITA?