I was in my bedroom waiting for Alex to come home, we agreed to have coffee before class because we had so much to catch up with. When he arrived, I prepared everything and closed the door behind us. I told him about my feelings for Oliver and he had exactly the same reaction as Leela.

"I can understand how it happened," he said after I finished my explanation, "I don't see it, but I can understand."

"I'm waiting for the perfect moment to tell Darcy" I said.

"There's no perfect moment, just say it."

I noticed his mood was low that afternoon and got concerned about it. "What about you?" I asked, finishing the Oliver topic. "What's going on in that mind of yours?"

He took a deep breath and tried to find the courage to speak in the bottom of his heart while glancing at his lap in fear. "I feel fine. I really feel fine. But..."

"Something is off?" I completed.

I grinned and looked up. "I don't feel like myself right now."

"And why is that?"

"I don't know," he seemed really desperate, "that's the worst part. I have no idea why. All I know is that the only person who made me feel like myself was..." I sighed in anticipation of his obvious answer, "...Nicole."

"This is horrible, what you're saying, but who am I to blame you?" I tried to empathize. "I am no one to speak of making the wise decision. I clearly never do it."

He laughed softly and, when I looked into his eyes, tears started to fall from them. "I adore Leela, I swear I do. I really like being with her." My heart broke with every word he said, just imagining how my friend would feel if she heard all this. "But I love Nicole."

Tears threatened to leave my eyes too as a lump in my throat appeared, these were horrible news to me. "Leela doesn't deserve this, Alex" I sighed, "you need to talk to her and tell her the truth. Please, I don't want her to suffer." He could sense the desperation in my voice.

As if I wasn't carrying enough weight on my conscience already, now I was carrying this. I knew that one of my best friends was being lied to and used, but once again, Alex was also one of my best friends. I was caught in the middle, in the worst possible scenario. What was I supposed to do? Who was I supposed to protect?

After we finished talking, we agreed that I was going to wait and stay quiet and Alex was going to talk to Leela as soon as exams were over. He promised.

I texted Darcy as soon as I could. "I need to talk to you", I simply said.

For days I meditated and planned carefully how I was going to say it to her. One afternoon she came home, we had snacks and watched football, then, on the way to the bus stop, I took the chance and started speaking as we walked.

"I've been wanting to talk to you for a while now" I shyly said.

"I know," she said calmly, "I was waiting for you to speak since you sent me that text, but since you weren't starting any conversations I just let it go. I figured you would talk to me when you were ready."

"I appreciate that," I said. I took a deep breath and began, "something's been happening to me, for a while now. I've gotten... confused."

"Confused..." she repeated.

"With someone."

She chuckled at my nervousness, she was clearly having fun with my suffering. It seemed as if she knew what I wanted to say, but wanted me to say it.

Finally, I gave up and sighed. "With Oliver."

She started laughing shamelessly, "I knew it!" she said. I started laughing too, but nervously. She wasn't mad? "I know you so I noticed easily. I don't understand why you were so scared to tell me, I'm not mad. I don't care!"

"I know you're with Elliot now, but still, he was someone important to you. You suffered a lot" I expressed my guilt.

She sighed as she pondered of the past few months, "yes but, I'm over it now. I feel like now I can be really friends with Oliver, and you're right, I'm very much fine with Elliot" she smiled.

"I'm not going to do anything that bothers you, Darcy" I said, "if you tell me right now that this doesn't sit right with you, I won't go on with it."

She stopped and hugged me as we arrived to the bus stop, "I don't care! Get confused all you want, use him all you want, do what you want. You don't have to worry about me" she reassured with a smile on her face.

I felt like pounds and pounds of weight were lifted from my shoulders. That night I walked home with a relieved smile on my face and quickly told Leela and Alex about it. I felt happy. I didn't know what Oli felt or how he would react if I told him my feelings, nothing was said, but at least the possibilities of hurting and losing Darcy were off the table. I was free to try and fail if I wanted to.

Several days passed, I still talked to Alex regularly because he felt the need to talk about Nicole with me, but it was really heavy on my chest hiding all this things from Leela. I went to his house one afternoon and went on a different street than I usually do; I ran into her on the way. When I arrived I confronted him about it.

"What you're doing is horrible, Alex" I said in clear disappointment.

"I know it is, I'm very aware of that" he confessed.

We kept talking about other things to avoid getting into a fight, I chose to believe him when he said he would talk to Leela and come clean, but this was something else. He was seeing Nicole behind her back, cheating. It was too much.

"If anything goes well, I will leave the city in one or two years" I said as we talked about the future. He sighed as he took a sip of his coffee.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," he commented carelessly, "I'll probably go somewhere with Nicole."

I felt my chest sink and I was surprised with nauseas. I was disgusted at his carelessness. He hadn't even broken up with Leela yet, and he was already making plans with the other girl. Imagine meaning so little to someone, I felt sick.

Some days later, when the rain was pouring down with no mercy, a simple text changed the course of our day.

"are you guys there?"

Leela reached out to Darcy and I. "Yes", "what happened?" we both replied quickly.

"Alex is still fucking talking to Nicole"

The first thing I thought was that he finally told her. I knew Leela was at Sadie's apartment, so I waited for the rain to cease a little and I walked there. When I arrived, I encountered the saddest image I was hoping to never see.

Leela was laying on the ground, crying. Sadie did not know what to do.

"Babe," I said as I walked up to her, "come here." I held her in my arms as she cried, helplessly. "Tell me what happened."

"I saw the chats on his phone" she said. I felt my chest sink for a second time. So he didn't tell her.

"I thought he told you" I confessed.

"You think that asshole was going to admit it?" she yelled, furious.

"I can't believe it" was all that I could say. "I can't believe he is really that stupid."

Minutes later, Darcy arrived. She heard everything that happened and was fuming. I was overwhelmed with rage as I went through Leela's phone and saw all the messages Alex was sending her. 'I want to be with you, I don't want to break up, I love you, I was wrong', how was any of that true, when he had been planning to leave her to be with Nicole not so long ago? How could he be such a liar? I couldn't take it anymore and I told my friend everything, about what he had been saying to me, about the time I saw Nicole leaving his house, the texts I got to read between them for so many months; Leela couldn't be more broken.

"I just don't get it..." she said in tears, "when am I going to be enough?" she cried out. "I'm never enough for him, not even after all these months..." the lump in her throat got in the way. "They took pictures in his bathroom mirror. They probably slept in his bed too, the one I sleep in every day."

Her words pierced my heart every single time, I couldn't handle the pain in her eyes and her voice. I've never seen her this destroyed before. It's the fact that he got her into the house what makes me sick the most, because Leela practically lived with him. She slept with him every night, she took care of his cats when he was out of town, they had lunch and dinner daily. How sick is that? It was like he got her into Leela's space too, adding insult to injury.

It made me really upset and angry seeing her in so much pain because, if there's anyone in this world who doesn't know evil and only deserves happiness, that's Leela. It made me even sicker to see how shamelessly Alex lied to her. Deep inside my heart, I wanted to believe he wasn't bad, you always want to believe your friends are good people, but what Alex was doing wasn't honest. It was pure and entirely selfish, even evil, I dare say; he intended to continue using Leela and abusing her love for him. He had the chance to come clean and let her free, but he chose to lie and keep absorbing her for as long as he could. I was utterly disgusted and I felt like I didn't know the man on the other side of the phone.

At night, he asked Leela to go home with him to speak peacefully and she accepted. When he went to pick her up, I did not even glance at him. I wanted to spit on his face and yell 'go away, leave her alone'. She left with him, leaving Darcy and me standing there in the soft rain.

"Oliver passed his exam" she said while looking at her phone. I turned to her with a confused raised eyebrow. With everything that happened, I didn't even remember he had an exam that day, I completely forgot to text him.

Once again this ugly feeling invaded me. The jealousy. I could've talked to him earlier if I only remembered the exam, now he's talking to her, I thought.

"What are you going to do?" I asked distantly, I didn't want her to notice how jealous I was. It was embarrassing.

"I'm just going to wait here for the bus" she said as we arrived at the bus stop.

"Okay then," I reached out for a kiss goodbye, but still avoiding her eyes. "I'm just going to go home, I'm exhausted after today."

"Okay, let me know when you're there."

I kept walking under the rain, I was truly overwhelmed with feelings after everything that happened that day. The anger about Alex, the sadness about Leela, the jealousy about Darcy and Oliver, I was agitated.

As I walked past the school I started hesitating. Charlie's house was only a block away, after everything that happened the last month, it wasn't probably a good idea to go home and be alone with so many feelings and anxiety stuck on my chest. Plus, I knew that Oliver was probably there and I really needed to see him at that time.

'Is it okay, though?' I thought, 'I could've gone with Darcy. Is it okay that I waited for her to leave to go see Oliver?'

That was definitely a shady move and I was well aware of that, but I really did need to be with him at the moment. I texted Charlie to check if he was at home and when I got a 'yes', I started walking in that direction.

"Hey, you good?" he asked concerned as he opened the door.

"You have no idea all the shit that happened today" I said with a sigh.

We walked upstairs and, as I expected, I found Oliver sitting in the living room.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" he said cheerfully. I couldn't help but rushing to sit beside him and I lay my head on his shoulder. He quickly supported his head on mine and looked down, concerned. "Are you okay?" he inquired.

"No," I simply said. I stayed there for quite a while, then sat straight and began talking. "Leela found out Alex is still seeing his ex."

Both boys' smiles faded, I guess they were so used to me being dramatic over anything that they didn't expect this time to be something serious. "What happened?" Oli asked.

"The idiot sent her a screenshot of the songs he was listening to, but didn't notice the whole chat standing behind it" they chuckled at the words, we all agreed that Alex couldn't be any more stupid. It was unbelievable.

We kept talking about the matter for a little while and then we moved on to another subject as our heads started to hurt. I told them about my relapse of June; Charlie wasn't that surprised because he had noticed something wrong with me, but he couldn't really put a finger on it. Oliver, on the other hand, was shocked. He asked me a lot of questions while looking at me as if I was a broken thing, but I assured him I was doing better now.

Days passed as we checked on Leela regularly, she was in pieces. As soon as she stopped working or doing anything that distracted her, she started crying. She was questioning herself constantly as if it were her who did something wrong, she wondered what was so wrong about her for all of this to happen. She always knew Alex and her were very different, they talked about it from the start, but she couldn't understand why he decided to go on with their relationship despite these differences, only to do this later. And she clearly didn't understand why he was still insisting on being with her, even after she found out.

It is strange, the view some man have on women. We are supposed to be everything they dream of and more, if they make mistakes, we must forgive them and love them unconditionally. We must stay loyal, even if our loyalty isn't reciprocated. We must believe their words even when their actions say otherwise, we must always be there, no matter what.

Leela loved Alex with all her heart, she was willing to do anything for him, and he took a good amount of advantage of that. For an empty man who couldn't be filled with all the pleasures in the world to find an everlasting fountain of love providing, was like finding the gold at the end of the rainbow. For Alex nothing was enough, not even his so beloved Nicole, otherwise he would be with her. He wanted to have everything and Leela was so broken inside that she held on to the hope that he would fix her, if she could fix him first.

Darcy and I didn't want to leave her alone for a minute but, eventually, we had to, and that was the moment he struck. He got her alone and allured her with all his sweet talking, promises and I love you's. All she wanted was to be needed, I don't think she cared whether he loved her or not, or if he wanted the other girl more, as long as he continued needing her. She wanted to be the only source of that love he needed to feel big, because what a man wants the most is to feel big, bigger than the others. The more the woman loves him, the more she's willing to turn down others for him; the more he wins.

I believe he hated the idea of not having her love all to himself anymore, I believe it was greed. Was he going to finally respect her and give her her rightful place beside him? Probably not, but they both had what the other was seeking. He made her feel needed and she made him feel big.

Days passed and Nicole never left Alex's life but, at some point, Leela stopped listening. I believe my friend left that day and, even until this day, I'm still waiting for her return. She rejected any information about his constant betrayals, she started neglecting her own pride by ignoring the warnings, and she put a wall between us.

Leela slowly stopped telling us things, sharing thoughts or feelings, she wasn't sharing anything at all with me and Darcy. She built a fort where only she and Alex could get in. It was heartbreaking and it made me angry, I didn't have the patience or empathy to understand what was going on in her head, I was just disappointed and disgusted by my friend being a fool because it was her choice. She knew everything she needed to know, but she chose to be the fool. I distanced myself from her and she could notice the exact moment I stopped reaching out to her but, what broke her the most, was on a cold and windy evening when the boys and I were sitting for an exam. After we finished, we went to Charlie's place.

"I'll go in a minute, I'm going to wait for Nicole" Alex said as if it didn't mean anything.

With all my anger I grabbed my phone, I knew Darcy was with Leela at that time so I sent her a text.

'tell ur friend her boyfriend here stayed behind to wait for the other'

After my rage dissipated I noticed how awful I was, but I didn't expect Darcy to actually deliver the message. When she did, Leela finally believed she was truly alone.

Finally, Leela chose to stay with him anyway. She chose to be blind and, sadly, she was willing to get rid of anything or anyone that got in the way.

I just never thought that would include me.