How to say cute in tagalogc

hello, i’m not sure if this is the right place to do this, but i’m 20f and my guy best friend is 19m. we have been friends since we were in 6th grade, but we didn’t get super close until we were freshmen in high school. we talk everyday and facetime almost every night, and hang out whenever we get the chance. i’m starting to develop feelings for him but i’m scared to tell him in fear that he doesn’t feel the same way and it would ruin our friendship. there are times where i feel he might feel the same way, like he will randomly ask me how i like to be asked out, he’ll say he wants to go on vacation just the two of us, he even has told me that if i ever died he wouldn’t know how to live on and function and about how heart broken he would be. he has sent me instagram reels that are like “send this to someone you think is cute” or “send this to someone who you want to go on an ice cream date with” and stuff like that. we are a little flirty with each other, but im not sure if it’s something that he actually means or if it’s just joking around cus we’re both single so why not? anyway, i need advice 1. do i ask him out? do i confess my feelings towards him? and 2. by what i said, does it seem he may have feelings?

I look at you from across the room, Instantly feel the urge to talk to you. One more thing I'm thinking about, Why am I not sitting next to you? I'm so jealous of that blonde girl, Cute blue dress with white ribbons.
I can't help it, I feel this way deeply, I know I should be grateful, not angry. I get to live in the same town, get to call you ever since lockdown, get to see the same purple sky As you, every single cold night.
You're literally a rockstar, Carrying around your guitar. And when you start playing, I immediately start shaking. Shivers running down my spine, I can't believe it, this is real life!
I can't help it I'm taking pictures, I can't help it I'm screaming every word, I can't help it if you're like this, You're unbelievable, actually...
I love the way your curly hair looks, It's giving 1950s yearbooks. Imagine if we had lived then, Would have we still met? No social media to stalk you, No close friends story I could post To which you'd react and call, Not knowing I only let YOU, see it all.
All the bad you've been put through, I wanna hit the people who've hurt you. I'll literally fight them one by one, Then hide their stuff in my backyard. And don't worry the cops won't find me or if they do, it will still be worth it.
I can tell you this one thing for sure, I won't let you cry for no more. I don't want any tears running down, On your cheeks, through your dimples. (Unless of course they're happy tears)
Everytime I write in my journal, I can't help but feel fortunate To write down your name, 'cuz Girl, you never fail to amaze me!
School bells ring, classes end, I go up to you and you pull me in. We say goodbye, see you next week, The weekend's here, oh how great! It of course makes me happy. But I can't help overthinking. Did I do something wrong? What if my spell comes off? Which I've only used a few times before, When I wanted to make you call.
You always put a smile on my face, I love how you smell and the roses in you hair. The adorable way you laugh, Whild I tell you my silly poems. Gosh, I love hanging out with you! I know you'll shine eternally.
You always make me feel great, Because you're just so amazing. Why are you so nice to me? Like actually, why do I deserve this? I don't, not at all, I know that, It unfortunately might soon end...
Until then, I want you to know, I love you with all my heart, I will forever and ever do, Because I've never seen anyone like you.

Their wings were not clipped. I quickly realizing they’re not inside house and just ….? I don’t think I’ve really processed the fact that they’re gone. I’m just numb. Tears do start streaming down my face when I look at their pictures, but I am not feeling anything.
Anyway, I don’t know why but I just don’t see anything working to get them back. Like they can fly very well, who’s to say they’re somewhere around (we went to check). Even if they were, how will we ever catch them? They were not 100% domesticated so they will fly away if you try.
Reading stories in this subreddit that their escaped lovebird was found a day after, 1 week after or even 8 months (?) is just .. I just don’t understand how that’s even possible to be so lucky.
Any advice on like what to do? Like how do I navigate this whole thing? How did you deal with the pain of losing two dear pets that improved my life immensely the last four years and made me happy every fucking time I would see them. I was truly obsessed. I would constantly stop whatever I’m doing just take a moment and look at them. They were soooooo cute and funny.
Any advice on how to approach this situation? Keep looking for them even though it just feels so delusional? Online I did share pictures of my birds. How do I deal with the idea that they probably won’t survive the wild, and that it was my fault that their life is cut short? Any other stuff that I should take into account? :(

I knew him for 13 years. 13 years and now hes gone.
I'm gonna be cringe on main i dont care but my heart is shattered today and my soul is heavy. me and my best friend (gonna call him Ted) have been through everything together we've know each other since primary school and im turning 21 this year.
I remember sitting by the pond with the tag poles in i remember us playing with our teddy cat and dog and making them go through all sorts of drama, we loved a bit of drama. I always found it hard in school to make friends I was always a floater and I still am now, making friends are hard. i dont think the autism helps, i dont really fit in anywhere but i felt like i did with him.
we lost touch for a year or two after primary but due to an unfortunate event we got back in touch i wish the reason we reconnected was different but i wont get into that. we became so close we we're inseparable we would draw together we would tag each other in dumb little drawing about our characters or of each other we would call on discord almost every night. he had so many stresses in his life growing up, i wish i couldve taken that all away.
we are both very mentally ill. we both stopped each other from hurting ourselfs im gonna be honest we grew an unhealthy attachment from one another i know he didnt like being away from me and sometimes when i was in college (my college was in a different town) i would have panic attacks because i was too far away from him and was scared he was gonna hurt himself and i couldnt stop him. we were there for each other though through thick and thin but everyone has a limit eventually.
Ted first took a break from me when i was having a psychotic episode and was talking gibberish and he though id hurt myself, at the time he didnt know i was psychotic and Ted had a big stress in his life at the time, a huge one. I'm not gonna get into what his stress was but it was relating to his dad so i see now why he wanted space from me but at the time i was heartbroke i was already psychotic so it mad it worse. but after we both calmed down we reconnected and it was like nothing new.
Ted introduced me to his friend (gonna call him ed) and us three became very close :)
fast forward to 2020 I have my first proper job in a local bar and through my coworker i meet the most beautiful person to walk this earth. our cute meet and story up to eventual relationship is a story for someplace else but I'm lucky to be dating them now however, this did cause some issue.
my other half met Ted and they got on ! YES LETS GO !! however, my other half says gypsy and Ted thinks its a slur. (please dont aruge about that idc) Also my other half didnt use to boycott mcdonalds and my friend didnt like that. PLEASE NOTE since then my partner has boycotted them but Ted didnt know that so he told Ed that my partner doesnt boycott. we had an argument, Ted had an episode and he was mean, after he said he needed space to get better so i gave him that and we started talking again after a while.
But now Ed feels uncomfrotable around me and he told me his parents were getting suspicious of him having online friends so he cant talk to me anymore, so i didnt message. fast forward to now im getting confused because i ask ted how ed is doing and ted says hes going good... but i thought ed wasnt allowed online friends so how do u know?
ted admitted that Ed just didnt want to talk to me because he was uncomfortable with me not because of his parents. wow thanks Ed good to know you care that much, oh well we were drifting anyway.
Why would Ted go behind my back and talk about me i didnt think hed do that although i didnt think he would say mean things during his episode but he did but i forgave him for that but part of me cant forgive him for this i dont know why
maybe because of how i was treated by my step dad or treated at school or treated online but Ted causing a friend to leave me felt like a different sort of hurt. But apart from him and my partner there is no one that close with me. I have friends who i drink with do drugs with but after that they dont really want much to do with me and my other friends are in uni who dont really have time to talk to me which i understand so without Ted i have my partner and their friends. how sad.
I told him i need space indefinitely i dont wanna lose this friendship but i feel i already have. im gonna miss him.
here is sit now stoned as i write this,I know it was my doing i said i wanted space because I do I started my message with "idk if we should be friends" i was the one who did this because it just hurts being around him i dont know why
TLTR: I no longer friends with my friend of 13 years
edit: im sitting here eyes red and watery and i see his gamer tag pop up, hes playing video games while im sitting here a mess

This is something that's really starting to piss me off. I already have a very passive social media presence - my facebook timeline is only things that other people have tagged me in, and I very rarely post stories on Instagram/Snapchat. Last time was probably a month or two ago? And they weren't even about people, usually a funny meme or something. I've posted him on Snapchat a couple times, only because he told me he wanted me to. All of my friends know about him, and I've brought him around the family several times too (even though I haven't told them we're in a committed relationship yet, but they all pretty much know based on what I've heard). I'm not embarrassed of him, and I don't mind when he posts me on his, but posting my life and business online just has never been my thing; I'm just naturally reserved and private, and I'd say I'm just a lurker, somebody who likes to see what the people I've met in life are up to. He'll scroll on Instagram and tell me "how cute it is to see all these gay men posting about their SO's" and how "he wants that." I literally just have no desire to post not just him, but anything online. And as I type this out, I'm starting to feel huge resentment for him for caring so much about something that's just so artificial and ridiculous to me. As if being an active poster on social media is some sort of "requirement" for our relationship or for him to feel satisfied in his relationship. I've told my therapist how I feel about this, and she says that different people have different feelings on social media, and she always reassures me after our sessions but it still bothers me when he passively implies that I'm somehow "wrong" for not wanting to post my business for the whole internet to see. Am I supposed to compromise on this and just do it? I genuinely don't want my business online. At this point I've considered just deactivating it so it'll shut him up.

I just got my second lobe piercings today and went to a tattoo/piercing studio where they used a needle rather than a gun and everything seemed legit. This is my only piercing since I got my first lobe piercings as a kid and this was much less painful than I remember the gun being. Anyway, the earrings they had to choose from were all titanium but I realized afterward that they’re butterfly backs. Apparently they’re not as good for healing and I wouldn’t prefer them anyway because of how they poke me when I sleep.
Should I try sleeping on the butterfly backs and wait a couple months to change them? Or should I change them now?
And I know the advice is going to be to go to a different piercing studio to get them changed out, but honestly that wasn’t part of my budget and I don’t know that a different studio in my town would be any better than the one I was pierced at. Surely this is something I can do myself?
And finally, where can I find quality flatback studs that aren’t too expensive? Should I get the threadless or threaded ones? I saw there was a list of jewelry companies in this sub’s pinned FAQ but they’re all either wholesale or super expensive. The titanium studs I’m wearing now were only $20 at the studio. Etsy has a lot of cute, affordable options. Do you think it’s safe to buy from there or am I going to get knock offs made from worse metals?
I know you may say “don’t be cheap.” I did pay for the professional piercing, but realistically I have to weigh the risks of infection and such vs further costs I wasn’t expecting.
Edit: a word

There's a girl in my class at college who I really want to talk to, I think she's beautiful, her smile is really cute and I love her pink hair. My problem is that I'm terrible at talking, I don't know how to be funny in a conversation and I don't know how to bring up a topic, I can only say hi to her, but it seems like she doesn't care much about me or notice my existence, I talk to her one of her friends but she doesn't talk to me yet.

I'm in a small country town in west Michigan, but originally from the pacific northwest; it has been a culture shock to say the least. However, today casually thumbing through the local paper for the township I see in the very back "Random Opinions and Observations From 86 Years of Living" my first thought is of the cleaning column Peggy did in King of the Hill, I think it will be harmless cute food for thought as this is right next to the obituaries.
The very next sentence I read: "Two ways to prevent killing babies before they are born: prevent abortion by law, and discourage abortion by choice"
The next passage: "The death and suffering created by illegal immigrants should be blamed on Biden and the entire Democratic Party-every Democratic rep should be held responsible and also the people who voted for them."
It just goes on like that for the full entire page; I get this is an opinion piece in some small country town, but this is out right hateful.
I want to do something, but unsure what or if it would even matter. Who reads the newspaper anymore that would appreciate what I had to say.
I took a picture of the opinion piece for anyone curious. It does warn you at the top: "If opinions differnt than yours offend you, you probably shouldn't read any further." I definately did not even see this ""warning"" before starting to read but to be frank the ""warning"" is just Ron Cooper's cop out of being acountable for the hate he is publishing. Ron Cooper was the township supervisor back in 2008 before he got into some kind of legal trouble. When I googled his name the only article that came up was a piece talking about how the township voted to help Ron with his legal fees totaling $10,000 rather than use the money for storm damage. The lawsuit against Ron was regarding proceeds from a defunct racetrack.
Picture of the hateful opinion piece

I (23F) have been dating 25M for 10 months now. I am so scared I am going to sabotage this relationship because of my insecurities. I am just comparing myself endlessly with his ex and his ex-FWB, and even random girls.
It’s almost like I want to make myself feel anxious and insecure. Information, pictures or texts that I've found through lurking (which I try to stop doing) hurts my feelings but have burned themselves into my head. For example,
the summer we started dating he was frequently liking his ex-FWB pictures on IG - some revealing, some not - last one he liked was from a couple of months back, a very revealing one where she had taken a picture from above, angle looking into her tanktop, her tongue was out, nipple piercings visable through her shirt, very suggestive. Him liking provocative pictures of a woman he used to have sex with makes me uncomfortable. He hasn't done it for months now, but I fear it could return around summer when she wears revealing outfits again.
I've also recently realized in a group chat with his friends he added me to, you can look back at messages before you were in the GC. That led me to look way back and see some things from months before we started dating, that still bothers me. Messages about his ex-FWB, how hot she is, how hot it is that she is a masochist (I'm not one), etc. I even saw pictures he had shared in the GC of many, many nudes she had sent him and pictures he took while they were having sex, in many different positions. It bothers me it looks to be using the same BDSM equipment he uses on me, the same positions he likes me in, etc. It makes me paranoid he's thinking about her when he's having sex with me. From the pictures it was apparent she is more sexually confident than I am, which makes sense given she has a much bigger sexual history than I do, he only just took my virginity, but still, it makes me scared he wishes I was more like her.
I also saw a message he sent in the GC 8 days after him and I had met: “I asked *ex-fwb* if she wanted to fuck just now, she's online she’s ignoring me lol”. This was 8 days after we met, 8 days after he sent a message to that same GC about how he met a cute girl and he thinks that she likes him (me). We weren't official, didn't become so until 5 days after he sent that ex-fwb message, but still, it kind of hurts he wishes to hook up with her once more even after we had met, we had had our first date at that point. Especially also because he has told me multiple times that having sex with her reassured him that sex just as a means to get off wasn't for him, and that it was the emotional intimacy that made it important to him, he said he didn’t even enjoy it, wasn’t even attracted to her body type, etc…. yet he wanted to do it again? I fear he lied to me.
There were also some messages from the past about his ex. He send various different texts various different occasions about how he loves how extremely outgoing and sociable she is and that they can have such intelligent discussions. I feel like him and I never discuss things back and forth. I also am very, very much the opposite of "sociable", I am very quiet and subdued, I like to observe more than anything and talking to strangers makes me nervous. He also send a comment about how his ex, at the time when they were dating, had "perfect big boobs", which makes me insecure since mine are much more on the smaller side.
I also get jealous of girls we see when we're out. He's told me he's attracted to pale skin, dark hair and blue eyes - which I have - but so does a lot of other attractive girls. Whenever we see one, I get anxious thoughts telling me he thinks she is more attractive than me and that he wishes he was her girlfriend instead, and that if I wasn't there he would go and flirt with her, etc. He's also said he gets very turned on by girls in chokers, and whenever we see one that has one I get so insecure and sad, thinking he is imagining having sex with her and wishing he could be with her instead of me. I get really down by these thoughts, he always notices and asks me multiple times if I am OK, gets worried, etc. I try to pretend I am OK but I am not.
Another side note, is how whenever I perform oral or him I try to make eye contact but he always likes keeping his eyes closed. That makes me feel unattractive, like he doesn't want to look at me, despite saying how much he loves my eyes. It makes me feel so insecure because I always imagine he's probably thinking about someone else, or some porn he has seen, instead of me.
This is me being insecure. I am aware of that, fully. I want to fix it. I am in queue for therapy, but with my country's’ psychiatric care being what it is, I can’t expect it to happen anytime soon. My friend waited for 2 years, and that is around the predicted time for anyone who isn’t willing to go the private route - which I don’t have money to do. So I’m doing my best with what I can do. It is absolutely exhausting, the way everything makes me second guess myself. I've considered breaking up multiple times, even though I love him and really can see myself having a family with him in the future, just because it is so draining and I feel much more insecure now than I ever did before we were dating.
The little insecurity that I do show, he will go on to reassure me a ton. Every time I give into my thoughts and ask him questions or express concerns he always is so loving, supportive and reassuring that he loves me for how I am, he's called me more attractive, trustworthy, more compatible, etc, that any girl he had a relationship with before, so it's not as if he is trying to make me insecure or anything. This is all in my head, but unfortunately being aware of that doesn't make it easier to get it out.
TL;DR: I'm struggling with insecurities in my relationship with my boyfriend of 9 months. I find myself comparing myself to his exes and feeling inadequate. I've discovered past messages about his ex-FWB and ex-girlfriend that exacerbate my anxiety, from before we were dating. In these messages he is calling her hot to his friends, seeing the GC nudes she sent him, graphic pictures from when they had sex, which makes me extremely insecure and worried that he prefers her, or is thinkig about her when we do stuff.
Also about his ex, about how he thinks she's so amazing for being sociable and outgoing and I am the completely opposite. I worry that he wishes I was more like her.. I feel jealous and uncomfortable with the fact that he has liked his ex-FWB provocative IG pics last summer and I worry he will start liking her pictures again this summer when she starts to wear less clothing again, despite them seemingly not having been in contact since she ghosted him. I'm aware of my insecurities and seeking therapy, but it's not readily available. My boyfriend is supportive, but I fear my insecurities may damage our relationship. How do I repair my insecurities?

I am nervous as hell. I came out over a year ago and I'm very comfortable with my identity, but I have not been on a date since pre-lockdown 2020. The most recent "relationship" I had was a summer fling with a co-worker in 2022, but that was also before I came out.
I'm getting lunch with a really cute girl this weekend. When I asked her, I didn't specify it being a date, but I've been pretty flirty with her lately and I think she has seemed responsive to it. If she's not into me like that, then I'm cool with it just being a nice meal between two people getting to know each other better and I won't try to push anything. She already knows I'm trans because we went to the same school, but we never talked to each other then so it feels more like we just met this year. She is really funny and pretty and talks to me in a very casually affirming way, and I am super excited to be able to get to know her more, even if she doesn't return my feelings.
Problem is, I'm hopeless when it comes to romance. Should I just treat this meal like a normal platonic outing and not say anything? Should I be upfront with my feelings? Should I wait until the end before I say anything? Should I just follow up with a text later? I have no idea how to approach this. I will see her again the day after we get lunch, so I don't want to risk making things too awkward. I feel like I've put myself in a rough position and I have no idea how to approach this now.
I also don't want to come across as creepy at all, especially now that I present masculine. Are there things I shouldn't do because they might read wrong from a male? I am probably overthinking this all but hoo boy am I nervous. I really don't want to screw this up in a way that could permanently affect my friendship with her.

It was a cute book lol. I don't know how to go about describing this book so I'm just going to say parts I remember.
I remember that the guy's ex (before his current fiance) broke up with him because he didn't propose to her at all after dating for 10 years (i think?). I also remember the book having a side character which is just the guy's friend who is like a comedic relief character I think. Like he encourages the main guy to do a lot of silly stuff.
The stuff his fiance does before he finds out about the wedding plan really makes you think that she's cheating. Like the guy finds her talking to someone else in a cafe without his knowledge, and stuff.
The way he finds out about the wedding is that he comes home one day to find his wife in a wedding dress with another man who he remembers as the same guy he found her talking to in the cafe (I think, I might be misremembering things).
Now that I'm thinking more about this book, I remember a scene where the guy gets drunk with his friends as a "bachelor party" i think. And he wakes up in a random hotel room bed and thought he cheated, but turns out its just his wife finding out that he's drunk and bringing him to a hotel room lol

It’s been a long time I wanted to submit this story to the Potato Queen herself!
It’s a long story, actually it’s two stories in one, because as it involves the same person over more than decade long, it’s worth telling the whole story all at once (and it makes it may more fun too!). I decided to share it because it’s the kind of story that doesn’t seem to happen very often.
Below you will find goodies about an ex, a wedding, a dress, a delivery company and more! Please simply be mindful English is not my first language, trying my best to entertain you all the same.
This story goes back a long way, when (let’s name him) Frank (M) and myself (F) were both in college (both 17 at the time, we’re now 33), young and naive teenagers. We started as friends and eventually decided to be together. We then decided to move to another city together, as I was about to start university.
It went well for a while and then started to go south. So, long story short, after about two years together, we decided to break up. It wasn’t a mean breakup or anything, I think we were mostly disappointed it didn’t work out. Anyway.
We live in the province of Quebec. For those who don’t know, there is this weird tradition of starting and ending about any lease on July 1st. I have no idea why, but Canada’s Day has always been for anybody moving, in this province, a synonym of sweating under the sun, moving boxes, lifting heavy things and ending the day with cold beer and cheap pizza in a new and probably not so clean apartment. Why this context? Because we broke up two weeks before July 1st. It means it was virtually impossible to find another apartment so close to this date. We were about 7 hours away from both our families living on the countryside. We were also awfully broke students. We decided to give it a chance at being roommates.
Yes, it was super awkward at first, really not easy to manage to say the least. We were walking on eggshells and were definitely on edge for a while. There were also some pretty awkward situations, like this one time he decided to bring a one night home as I was sleeping in the adjacent room. Not only that, but the shameful phone call he had to make, waking me up in the middle of the night, so I could unlock the front door because he had forgotten his keys to find out he had brought home an acquaintance of mine. Nowadays I find this story delightfully funny tbh. But on that night, as I couldn’t go back to sleep because the gal decided to show off how an amazing singer she could have been —because, oh boy, this voice carried loudly all the way to my ears for more than an hour — I did not find it funny. I was furious, but prepared myself for the eventuality it would ever happen again. Do you remember the “Tiny Wall Challenges”? Let’s just say I had some games ideas after that night.
Anyway, anybody would probably have walked away but we still deeply cared for each other. We even did better than just survive through this whole year as roommates, we decided to move into a bigger apartment with two other friends. Believe it or not, we stayed there two more years. Moreover, these years were some of the best years and I still keep lots of good memories from this period.
Fast forward to the second part of the story. After being roommates for years, at some point we parted ways and lived our lives. We maintained contact throughout the years and when Frank finally started dating his wife to be, I was absolutely happy for him. He asked her to marry him and she said yes! Our friendship still held such a high place in both our hearts that he asked me to be one of his groomsmen, with his other best friend and his little brother. I felt so honoured, as I was technically a female, to be chosen to be on his side at the wedding.
The bridesmaids chose matching dresses in a beautiful forest green, all from a specialized website from UK, and I was to also be in a dress on the groom’s side, but matching the colour of the other groomsmen suits. With Frank, We all shopped together for their suits, chose a beautiful dark grey for his and a light grey for us, and we were able to match it perfectly with clothing samples I ordered from the website. Everything was going as planned. That being done, I ordered the dress, considering buying two inches heel shoes to go with it. It would take about four months to be done and the dress would arrive about a month and a half before the wedding. I decided to wait for the dress to arrive to pick shoes to go with it.
Four months passed, and I finally received a notice that the dress was on its way. The bridesmaids dresses arrived a bit before mine and they were all absolutely beautiful. As we all ordered from the same shop, we were able to choose different dresses that suited each of our styles, with identical fabrics that made the whole thing look fantastic.
I received the delivery’s notice, saying it was to be delivered by DHL. (If you never had to deal with this delivery company before, let’s just say this in itself is a red flag, but what could I do.)
I chose a delivery date that I could be home all day. I awaited their arrival, and waited. At some point I received a notification that they couldn’t deliver it because there was an error in the address. I called DHL customer service as soon as I read it and could verify with the clerk on the phone that there was no error on the original delivery address and that actually, internally, they miss-wrote a letter of the postal code. The person assured me that the delivery person would be notified and they would then be on their way back.
I waited. It never came.
The next morning, I received a notification that, unable to deliver it, the expeditor had agreed to DESTROY the package! I screamed! Why in the world would the UK online shop allow to destroy a custom made dress that took four months to do?! And why the hell the delivery service didn’t make any other attempt after being responsible of the address error in the first place. I was beyond mad. I called DHL, they confirmed someone at the company had agreed on the destruction of the item. I wrote to the person I was in contact with from the beginning at the online shop (this lovely clerk who clearly never asked for any of this). Over there, they couldn’t find who the hell agreed to this insane request to destroy the dress. They were also appalled and didn’t understand how it could have happened. They could put a request to redo the dress rush, but we first needed to either try to stop the destruction from happening by going to the DHL warehouse directly, or to obtain a proof from DHL that the dress was irreversibly lost forever.
It felt surreal! The fiancées were both furious too. There was only one DHL warehouse we could go to do this kind of request in the city and it was really far. As the clock was ticking, they jumped in their car, joined me, and to the warehouse we went, arriving a few minutes before closing like an epic movie scene. The clerk there was mind blown by the whole situation. It seemed we were too late and the best we could do was to have the proof that, in their system, the dress had effectively transited and was destroyed.
With photos as proof in hand, I forwarded everything to the clerk of the online dress shop. Days passed, as they were awaiting the okay to start sewing a new dress. They were really trying their best to help the situation but it seemed to be a mess over there about the whole situation. We were now a month before the wedding. At some point, I was starting to panic. They finally agreed to redo it, but it would be waaaay too close before the wedding to receive it. Like a few days before kind of close, if nothing happened in transport this time.
I decided to go shopping for another dress. I spent a whole day trying to find the perfect grey that would fit the other groomsmen suits. In the last possible boutique, there was one dress checking all the criteria. I bought the new one and wrote to the first shop, hoping they would agree to refund the lost dress.
I took an appointment later that week to do the adjustments on the new dress. I then shopped for shoes. I found a cute pair with one inch heel that would be perfect for me. I’m not used to walking with heels, so the lower the better after all.
Like all this turmoil wasn’t enough, my family called and told me that my grandfather’s health suddenly decreased. Remember? Seven hours drive from family. I canceled some plans and bought a ticket for the night’s bus ride right after the dress fitting. On that morning, the UK shop agreed to refund the dress. That part was a big relief. I went to the dress fitting. At last, three weeks before the wedding, The second dress would be ready in about seven days. I came back home to gather some things to get back out to catch my bus.
But suddenly, the doorbell rang.
I opened.
Some DHL delivery man casually gave me a package and left.
Yes. That’s what you think.
I closed the door, went to my room, sat on the bed, opened the bag. It was indeed the first dress. I had a melt down. I cried so hard. I put the dress down, looked at it, told it “I’ll deal with you when I come back” and went away to the bus station.
Few days later, coming back from the family, I collected the second dress and dealt with the first one, which no longer fitted the length of the shoes! My MIL at the time knew an old lady who was lovely enough to accommodate me and do the fitting of the first one for a as modest price. I decided to keep it a secret until the wedding day. (These friends wouldn’t do any drama about reveals etc, nor would they think it was stealing any of their thunder, don’t worry about that.)
On the wedding morning, I effectively surprised the bride and groom with both dresses. They were mind blowed, flabbergasted to say the least! I put the original one for the official photoshoot and discretely changed right after dinner for the other one. People around that had followed the incredible adventures were laughing out loud and finding it hilarious that I decided to wear both of them as I had so much troubles!
Quite a story with dresses and with an ex, right? Guess what, I’m also the godmother of their first child!

Long story short, I am new to dating at 43 at end of my marriage of 6 years. I don't have much experience with dating and there is a lot of good and bad information out there. I haven't really dove into the dating scene other than trying tinder, and FB dating for a few weeks but didn't like it - it seemed women are inundated with messages or just don't really put much effort into it.
I have decided I'd rather meet someone in a more natural way: cold conversations and if there is interest on both sides ask to take her out sometimes and exchange phone numbers. Having a conversation with someone in a less intense setting seems easy to do but I keep bumping into situations where I bump into a woman that is doing her job and she takes my breath away: eyes, smile.. you get the idea.
Two concerns I have with a cold approach is 1. gauging her interest is a challenge because I am aware she is doing her job so I can't really judge any signals fairly and 2. starting with small talk to see if we have anything in common seems out of place in each setting.
The last time I shot my shot: she was a server and I simply asked if I could take her out sometime, she simply said she was taken. I replied that I wasn't surprised and smiled. Needless to say the entire lead up to this was nerve racking because it just felt like such a cold start - no connection other than what any server would be to probably any customer. :/
Today, I was at the dentist to pick up my mouth guard and the woman that greeted me and brought me back had these stunning eyes, great skin and hair and a lovely personality. I joked a little with her about the case it came in but the interaction and time was so short and "business" oriented again: no way to truly gauge if she is just being polite or interested in the slightest.
Now I am not gloating but I am handsome, fit(lift regularly but not a bodybuilder) and I carry myself well. I am also curious about people, love meeting new people and am emotionally intelligent. Unless I am mistaken she actually looked back at me when she walked away - after bring me up to the front desk to schedule my net appointment. This might be irrelevant but during the fitting she did ask me if I wanted to get a cleaning today, I should have asked her if she was the hygienist!
Anyway, after leaving I kicked myself: why didn't I ask her for her number or if I could take her out sometime!? I realized it just feels awkward in these situations to me. Business as usual going on and I know she has things to do. But if she really did check me out then what's the harm? I really prefer to talk first and see if there is a connection.. help me see the other side of this ladies!
My question is two fold: 1. do you agree it would be out of place to have a man ask for your number right there in the office, ion the spot - totally cold approach. Would you see it as endearing, creepy or just plain naive? I was thinking: in front of your coworkers(part of me thinks the ladies would be talking about it after you left for sure) 2. what are guys options? It seems stalker(ish) to try to connect with her another way, not even sure how that would happen. I like the idea of naturally, I bump into her at the office again but there are like 10 women that work in her role, I might not see her again.
The romantic in me wants to call up and ask her name from the receptionist or go so far as to even tell them I have another question for her and just ask her over the phone: admitting I thought she was cute and hope to connect with her outside of work.
I can take the raw feedback people, go for it.

I started talking to this girl I met at uni last year, let’s call her Julia, and we hit it off and hung out a few times. I thought we had feelings for each other but the next semester, in the Fall, we went out for lunch and she said her friend would join us. She starts telling me about her friend and how she’s really cute and stuff and I get the feeling that she is trying to set us up. It confused me at first because I thought me and Julia were getting along really well and she wanted to date. Anyway I meet her friend, let’s call her Katie, and we actually click and she’s really cute and sweet so I start taking to her.
A few weeks later I’m talking to Julia and she suggests we go hiking. I say cool let’s invite Katie and she rolls her eyes and goes “Oh sure”. I’m thinking what the hell, I thought you wanted this, whatever. Anyway the two of them just go hiking without me. Lame but ok.
I showed up to class one morning with a coffee for Katie since she is in the class right next door to me and Julia, and Julia rolls her eyes again. I gifted Katie some artwork I made, and Julia’s response to me is “I’m so jealous, where’s mine!”
What the hell is this behavior about? I thought she would be happy for me and her friend especially after playing matchmaker. What gives?

I have been talking to this girl who’s really nice and I think I like her a lot and she calls me cute quite a lot and I just say thank you but I feel guilty because I don’t know a complementary word as I’m very shy but I’m not sure how to explain fully like people expect a man should be more confident and she’s taking a more leading role in this if that makes sense. I really want to find a word because otherwise I feel bad just saying thanks all the time and not returning the favour and me feeling thankful would just lose its meaning it feels like to me. Im not confident enough to say words that are like suggestive of if you’ve been in a relationship with someone for a long time it’s the type of word they’d say though

okay so basically i have a friendship group and we like never have any problems, a few funny little arguments but nothing serious . there is about 7 of us. then this new girl join (we will call her newi). we accept her into the friend group. a couple of weeks ago newi sent a letter to one of my bsf in class (well call her bsf1) saying how much she wanted to be her friend. i found that really cute and they began getting a little closer. yesterday one of my other really close friends in the friend group gets a letter from her. at lunch she is reading it. the context is about how newi wants someone to be like absolutely besties with her and how everyone has little duos. she says how she wants to besties with my other bsf (bsf2) and how she thought i was a duo with bsf 1 but now im app a duo with bsf2. and then in the letter she goes on a rant about how i should just pick one friend. so now bsf2 feels bad and wants to do something but in the past shes tried to talk to her but she just doesnt really have a connection for her. the friendgrp doesnt want to force any of us to be like 'a duo' with newi. i just feel like newi is trying to force friendships. newi is one of those really outgoing people but nobody is her act number 1 bestie.
sorry if this is confusing but highschool stupid girl drama is.
pls do give advice.

[Ok to monetize, but don't paywall. Yet again, a short script set at the same party. Yknow i'm gonna have to come up with a name for the stories that take place at Teo's party]
(Party ambience)
[Bf]
(Awkwardly, as if the words aren't natural for him)
Hey, beautiful, come here often?
…
What? Can't I flirt with my absolute favorite person this side of the Mississippi?
…
(Scoff)
I am not bad at flirting. You take that back. I flirt just as well as the next gay. Guy. I mean guy. Fuck. Well, also gay. I mean, I'm bi, but I do call myself gay a lot.
…
Sorry, not the point. Look, I'm going to prove that I can flirt with you in a… perfectly respectable way.
…
(Shouting)
I'm gonna flirt with my lovely datemate and it's gonna be so normal! You'll all see!
[Random partier]
Off to a great start, weirdo.
[Bf]
Fuck.
…
Okay, so I'm bad at flirting. I admit it. Happy?
…
Good. Cuz I'm going to flirt as ridiculously as I can now, just to be annoying.
…
(Laughing)
You love it.
…
When we met, it was at a party like this, remember? You walked up to me and told me you wanted to kiss me. I did not hear you correctly because the party was loud, and I thought you said you wanted to kick me. If I remember right, my response was something along the lines of "sounds kinky."
…
Yup. That's why I said that. Wait, did you seriously think I said that in response to a mysterious queer saying they'd kiss me? No, no. You looked hot as hell and your expression was absolutely electrifying, and I thought you wanted to get rough. You were an intimidatingly attractive enby. A "them fatale," if you will.
…
Well, yeah, maybe if I'd said that to someone who actually wanted to kick me, I would have gotten destroyed, but luckily, I'm just a dumbass and you love it.
…
Oh, I actually had a crush on you before that. That's how I knew your pronouns before we introduced ourselves. Jenny knows pretty much everyone, so I asked her about the "devastatingly beautiful person of indeterminate gender," or something like that.
…
Eh, I barely know her. I just know she knows most of the people who come to these parties. She even knows the emo boy that sometimes comes through outta nowhere. I think he and Mateo might be a thing?
…
I-D-K, babe. It's the best explanation I can think of.
…
Okay, I think I'm gonna give flirting another try. Prepare for me to sweep you off your socks.
…
You know you love it when I mess up an expression, babe.
Uh, you, um… Did it hurt when you, um…
…
Sorry, I got kinda lost there.
(Salvaging the pickup line)
Must have been your eyes.
[Hit]
Owwwww! Why the domestic abuse all of a sudden? Mad that I made it work?
…
Oh my god, that's exactly it, isn't it?
…
You look so cute when you're trying to be mad about something dumb. Kinda breaks my immersion.
…
You know, with the whole "them fatale" vibe you've got going on. Although I guess I don't fit the sexy brooding detective vibe, huh? I'm more like a henchman. Which, now that I think about it, would be pretty hot. We should totally roleplay that sometime.
…
Oh, right. I was flirting. Um… You know what? I give up. I am bad at flirting.
…
Yeahhhh.
…
I kind of wanna try again.
…
Okay, here goes: Make out with me? Please? Pretty please? With toppings of your choice?
…
Yippee!
(While making out)
Fuck, you're so hot.
And you're so good at kissing.
…
(Listener pins him to the wall)
Whoa.
(Making out resumes)
If you keep this up…
I'm gonna be even more brainless…
Than usual.
…
No, I'm not complaining, I—
(Making out continues)
I'm the luckiest guy…
In the whole fucking world…
And no one but me knows it.
(Excitedly)
W-whoa, you're moving down to the neck?
…
N-no, I like, I'm just– I don't know if I can, uh, keep it together if you keep going. We should, um, find a spare room.
…
N-nice. Let's, uh, do that.

For the past year I’ve been dating my gf. We met in 8th grade at the time she had a boyfriend so whenever I would make advances they’d just get shut down. We rekindled my senior year of high school when I discovered her instagram page. At the time I didn’t know if she was currently in a relationship and didn’t really care to ask. We made small talk here and there but never anything flirtatious or sexually suggestive. One day she texted me and asked if I wanted her to hook me up with one of her friends, so of course me being me I accepted the offer. She then proceeded to ask me if I was a cheater, I told her no. She then asked for my number to put us into contact and right after I sent it. She texted me on iMessage stating that she thinks we’d make a good couple. I had been tricked. And in this moment when I read her text I couldn’t help but feel like the nice guy who finished last and got what was left over. we started chatting again more frequently and this was probably at the peak of my “hoe phase” I had just recently got a car gifted to me by my loving parents. So as a horny teen who just recently graduated I was doing bad. Seeing girls daily (intimately) sometimes even two. So as you could imagine I was not in the mental head space to jump into a relationship especially seeing that I’ve never been in one. Mind you she knew the type of guy I was, Because during my “hoe phase” I would publicize me going on dates with various girls on my instagram story cause I thought it was cool and my buddies would always ask how can I maneuver so carelessly and still have women that still put up with me. Around this time we weren’t in a relationship yet so their wasn’t any consequences for my actions. She’d see it complain then brush it off. But seeing that I did use to like this girl a lot…and I mean a lot, Just to put it into perspective for you on how delusional and down bad I was. When we first started chatting again, I went to our old Snapchat messages and reread every single one which took about 3 hours and they were so cringey and sappy to me that I took the time to delete every single one. (She was one of those weird people who’d saved the messages instead of letting them automatically delete after 24 hours) I felt like I had to do this because I didn’t want her to have any recollection of that desperate version of myself. Fast forward a few weeks and we went on our first date. I decided to take things slow with her by limiting myself to only kissing and fingering her. Then About a month after that is when we first had sex. And it felt exactly like I expected it to…magical. It was like we were two bodies who were meant for each other that finally met. Fast forward a few more months now it’s time for her to go off to college and when she left I slowly started reverting back into my old ways of seeing multiple girls a week and being promiscuous. This continued up until about January the next year when I got caught. Long story short, she cried I cried and we both decided that we’d like to move forward. During this season of our relationship I was constantly feeling guilt so much to the point where I ever considered suicide. I was constantly in my head saying things like “is it even worth it” “she probably doing it too and you just don’t know” “leave her” “it’ll never work” “you won’t regain her trust” “our relationship is irreparable” “don’t waste anymore of your youthful years on this failing relationship”. And with due time these negative thoughts stopped consuming my mind and we actually started doing better. I quit my job moved in with her and started working remotely. At this point in my life I couldn’t be any happier. It felt like a dream come true. All it took was one weekend and all of this ended. At this point it’s around spring break so all the surrounding colleges are having parties. I devised a plan to pick all the boys and go on a little road trip. We hit different colleges daily to party, drink and smoke and the biggest of incentive all, to meet girls. Looking back on it, this was a recipe for disaster. On one particular night I uploaded a video of me getting twerked on my by a girl to my close friends on instagram not remembering that she was still included in it. And before I could even sober up and realize what the fuck I’ve just done she eventually saw it and messaged me stating that this is her last time and “we’re done”. In this moment when I read the text while being drunk & high I just couldn’t find it in me to care or fight for our relationship. So I just thought to myself “ok”. As the night proceeded I found myself in some random suite where a girl approached me and began express her interest in me and long story short I ended up cheating. When all the fun was over and I dropped all the guys back home. I was still tasked with having to drive my girlfriend m back to her dorm cause she stayed with family for the weekend. I didn’t want to take her but no other buses were departing and everyone who she could’ve possibly asked was already preoccupied or just didn’t feel like doing a 4 hour drive there and back. And plus before all this turmoil I had already promised to her that I’d drive her back. I go to pick her up and she’s all moody and for the first 3 hours of the ride she gives me silent treatment. And the first words out of her mouth were “you know when we get back to my dorm you’re packing your shit and leaving right?” At first I didn’t respond. I laughed actually, not hysterically but more of a “wow after all we been thru you’re really ending this?” Laugh. All types of thoughts started racing thru my head. Part of me wanted to serve the car in front of an oncoming 18 wheeler but then I remembered that she’s still here with me and as ironic as it sounds I’d never want to hurt her, especially in a way that could result in fatality. The laughing slowly turned into silent tears. The pain I was feeling in my stomach was so excruciating it felt as if I had just been stabbed with a 10 foot sword repeatedly over and over and over again. I eventually started uncontrollably crying and spewing out my feelings. While doing this I confessed to cheating on her and told how I’d been long before that weekend. I pulled over to the side of the interstate in the middle of nowhere with no reception got out and just started crying even harder so she couldn’t see. I felt like my life had been ruined and the only person I could blame for it was myself. I eventually got back in and started driving in silence again. After all that crying with the added partying the past week and weekend I must’ve been real tired cause I started to doze off which I usually don’t. I’ve taken the drive enough to become accustomed to it and have built up enough stamina to make it all the way through without having to fight the feeling of tiredness. She noticed this and offered to take the wheel which I respectfully declined. I then told her I’d be pulling over to the side of the road to catch a quick 2 minute nap. I typically do this whenever I’m on extra long drives and my friends know me for it. I set a 2 minute timer on my phone and let my body temporarily rejuvenate as much as possible. And chances are they usually fall asleep too. Because I’d literally rather trust myself to drive tired before I let one of my unlicensed friends behind the wheel. I put my head down for what felt like 10 seconds and woke up to her nudging my shoulder saying that 7 minutes have passed. This bothered me because if I was so tired to the point I myself didn’t hear the alarm she should have came to the realization that I was genuinely tired and let me rest a little longer. But because it was her birthday she probably overlooked this aspect of my situation because she was just tooeager to get to her own birthday party that her friends had started without her. I began driving again will still tired and now aggravated from being woken up. I began to speed at this point we’re 40 miles away from our destination. The tiredness began to take over again and before I knew it I wake up to the screaming of my name as the car is slowly drifting off the road and I’m stuck in mud on the side of the interstate. A state trooper and tow truck arrive to assess the situation and we end up taking a Uber the rest of the way. At this point I’m stranded. I spent my last on tow truck fees and don’t even have anything saved up to pay for the mechanic fees, let alone worry about gas money. We somehow managed talk and temporarily bandaid the under lying issue and sleep in the same bed that night but things progressively kept on getting worse and worse as the days went on. It got so bad to the point where we slept in different rooms, Or so I thought. The morning after I go into her room to check on her and see paper towels and her sitting up still crying in the same position she was the night before. I on the other hand actually slept pretty well. She then came into my room still with water in her cute pearly big eyes. And to my surprise sat down directly on my lap and told me how she couldn’t get no sleep. We hugged and talked and cried then ultimately came to the conclusion that our relationship is worth more than my stupid mistakes and I have some more maturing to do.

As the last orange light of day drained from the sky, the living dead in Club Vlad rose. Max the skeleton and Jessie the…not skeleton…sewed up the gaping Y-shaped incision on Dom’s chest under Merrick’s direct supervision. Dom sat there, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. He’d woken with a headache and a feeling of cold, and even now, he could feel the dull throb above his left eye. It felt like someone was tearing his brain apart with a fork. He had told Merrick, and Merrick had nodded sadly. “Is my brain rotting?”
“Most likely,” Merrick had said.
There was a certain peace in the idea of losing his cursed humanity. As Merrick had said, he would feel no pain, know no quandaries. He would live only for the night and for his master. On the other hand, watching someone like Matt sit and stare into the distance, drool coursing down his chin and nothing happening behind his dead eyes, scared Dom. He didn’t want to be a braindead idiot. He didn’t care about keeping his emotions, he just wanted to function.
Like Merrick.
There wasn’t much he could do, however. He was dead and that was the end of it.
Once Dom was patched up and dressed in a pair of jeans and a hoodie, Merrick called his children before him. “I have done my best to love and protect all of you,” he began. “Jessie, you were miserable with your grandmother, were you not?”
“Yes,” Jessie said tonelessly.
“You were depressed, bipolar, and cut yourself. Now you’re happy.”
“Yes,” she replied again.
“Joe, you were a two bit nobody staring down a ten year stretch in jail.”
“Yes.” Thin yellow liquid dripped from his nose.
“But now you are free.”
“Yes.”
“You appreciate what I’ve done for you.”
“Yes.”
Merrick flashed then, slamming his fist onto the arm of his wheelchair. “Then why do you keep fucking up? The police were here earlier. They have messages between you and Jessie. I told both of you to delete those. Then I find out that you bit someone and turned them despite my orders. We have an endless supply of blood here but you still went off on your own. How many are there?”
“Just one,” Joe said.
“Are you being honest with me?”
“Yes.”
Merrick sagged back in his chair, looking somehow older. “Joe, take Matt and go to her. Bring her back here before she causes any more problems. God alone knows how many people she’s changed. Too many vampires without a father will bring heat on us, and you know what happens in that case? We get pieces of wood shoved in our chests.”
Turning to Dom, Merrick said, “I have a job for you and Jessie. We’re nearly out of embalming fluid. You haven’t had your first dose and the rest of us are starting to get ripe as well. I have a contact at a funeral home. He texted earlier that the order he placed on my behalf has come in. I want you to pick it up and to pay him.”
Dom had never been picked for anything in his whole life. No one had ever wanted him on their team and no one had ever placed their trust in him the way Merrick was now. He was honored, proud, and would do anything to not let Merrick down.
“That cop who came here might be a problem,” Merrick went on. “We may have to deal with him, but we’ll leave that for another night. In any case, I want this place cleaned from top to bottom. If the police come, I want them to see nothing out of the ordinary.”
Now that everyone had their marching orders, they dispersed. Merrick handed Dom an evelope stuffed with cash, and Dom slipped it into the pocket of his hoodie. The other team - Joe and Matt - left, while the remaining vampires began tidying up.
A fleet of vehicles waited in the parking lot behind Club Vlad. Dom and Jessie took a black pedo van with no back windows. They drove in silence, the radio off. Dom did not want to hear music, nor did he wish to speak to Jessie. Their kinship was one of blood and circumstance, not one of words and emotions. He had no questions for her and wished to answer none of his own. The only thoughts he had were of the mission ahead and of the growing pain in his skull. He thought of the staring stupid Matt, of the decayed Max, and a shiver went down his spine.
What was left of his humanity recoiled at the idea of becoming like them.
The pain grew hotter, more intense. He forced it away and focused on driving.
The funeral home was on North Allen Street, next to a restaurant called Pepperjack’s. A tall, white house with dark shutters and a sign out front, it looked like a quiet, peaceful place. “Pull around back,” Jessie said.
Dom pulled the van around back and parked under a balcony, killing the headlights. They got out and went to the back door, Jessie in the lead. He assumed that she had done this before and that the seller would recognize her. She knocked, and a few moments later, the door opened. A youngish man with a shaved head appeared, wearing an apron and gloves. He saw them and tensed a little. Dom could smell, rather than sense, his fear, and his throat panged with thirst. “Come on,” the man said quickly. He stepped aside and allowed them to enter. Dom noticed that he walked behind them, wary of putting his back to them. “Do you have the money?”
“Do you have our order?” Jessie countered.
“Yes,” the man said, “I’m really risking my neck for this. They don’t just give embalming fluid away, you know. They keep track of it and if they realize I’m over ordering, someone from the state’s going to come down here and check.”
He led them into an embalming room. Three boxes sat on a table. Dom gave the man his money, and he and Jessie carried the boxes outside, loading them into the van. The whole time they were there, the man was edgy, like he was afraid they were going to attack him. Dom would be a liar if he said that the hot smell of the man’s blood didn’t excite him. Perhaps once his brain rotted away, he wouldn’t be able to control himself, but for now, he could.
A lightning bolt of pain shot through his head and he nearly dropped the last box onto the ground.
Once the man was paid, Dom and Jessie drove back to Club Vlad. In fifteen minutes, they were drinking side by side from two passed out partygoers, their reward for a job well done.
Meanwhile, across the city, Joe and Matt weren’t doing as well. They were standing outside of Heather’s apartment. Joe, slightly annoyed (anger being another emotion vampires could feel, along with fear) pounded on the door. He knew she was in there; he could smell the putrid odor of decay. “Let us in,” he said. “We won’t hurt you.”
Joe could barely remember changing her. He didn’t mean to, it just…happened. Like an unwanted pregnancy. You can bite someone as much as you want and drink as much as you want, but if you take too much at once and they die, you get the vampire equivalent of a baby. Joe liked the hunt. It was exciting. Having his meals brought to him Club Vlad didn’t arouse the same level of excitement. It was like shooting an animal tied to a tree. Or hiring a prostitute instead of wooing someone. No real satisfaction to it.
That was probably his greatest downfall. He had lured Jessie the same way, though Merrick was indeed interested in rescuing her from her grandmother. People you have saved obey just as well as people with no brains.
He felt fluid on his upper lip and sniffed. “Come on, let us in,” he said.
No response.
He looked at Matt and nodded to the door. Together, they rammed their shoulders against it. It shook in its frame. They were both dead and weak, but modern American architecture is even weaker, and the door eventually slammed open. The apartment beyond was dark, messy, and reeked of death. They searched high and low, and eventually found Heather huddled in a corner, trying to hide. She was naked save for a pair of panties, her body bloated and beginning to turn black. Her skin hung from her frame and her eyes were filled with blood and fear. It was a wonder no one had called the police yet. The smell was overpowering. “We’re here to help,” he said. “You have to come with us.”
She shook her head and trembled. Maybe she remembered that he was the one who did this to her. Maybe her memories had rotted away. Those were usually the first to go. Then your emotions, then your personality. Finally, your capacity for higher reasoning. “I’m sorry I did this to you,” he said. That was a lie. He was not remorseful. Nor was he proud, for that matter. It just happened. Like rain. “But I want to help you. We can fix you.”
No amount of coaxing or conjoling could induce her to move. Joe weighed his options. He doubted anyone would call the cops even if they heard the door coming down - people who lived in places like this rarely called the cops, which helped Joe and his cause immensely. Even so, there was the possibility. Every minute they spent here was a minute that something could go wrong, and Joe had a lot to lose.
So, too, did Merrick.
Giving up, Joe took out his cellphone and called Merrick. “She refuses to come,” he said simply.
The line was quiet for a moment, then Merrick’s voice came back. Cold. Calculating. “Then do what you must.”
That was the go ahead.
Hanging up, Joe looked around the apartment and found a wooden chair in the kitchen. He lifted it over his head and slammed it on the counter, shattering it into a million pieces. He selected the longest, sharpest, and sturdiest looking one. He went back into the room and directed Matt to hold her down. She fought, kicked, and spat, but she was weaker than even they were. They had been embalmed. She hadn’t.
Matt pinned her hands above her head and Joe straddled her. Animal terror filled her eyes and she whipped her head from side to side. Joe lifted the makeshift stake with both hands, and brought it down as hard as he could, driving it deep into her heart. Her eyes bulged from their sockets and a high, otherworldly scream ripped from her throat. She bucked, thrashed, and kicked her feet. Her resistance began to ebb away until she was twitching…until she was still.
Heather from OKCupid was dead.
Truly dead.
Joe couldn’t help wondering what it was like.
Pulling the stake out, he tossed it aside and got to his feet, Matt doing likewise. A soul petrifying scream might be cause for even the tightest of lips to start talking. “Let’s go,” he said. And together, he and Matt fled, leaving the poor, dead body of Heather behind.
***
As it turned out, one of Heather’s neighbors did call the cops. At 10;13pm, Vanessa Rodregiez arrived with two patrolmen and found the front door of Apartment 237 knocked down. Guns drawn, they entered, Vanessa at the head. The first thing she noticed was the smell. It jammed itself into her nostrils, shoved its tongue down her throat, and violated her - all without even buying her dinner first.
Vanessa hadn’t been at this as long as her buddy Bruce had, but she knew a dead, rotting body when she smelled one. They searched the premises, and sure enough, they found a vic in the bedroom, lying in the gap between the bed and the wall; it looked like the former had been moved, perhaps in a struggle. Vanessa knelt down to check the vic’s pulse, but stopped.
There was no need.
The vic - who looked like a female but could have been an overweight male - hadn’t had a pulse in a very long time.
Examining the body, Vanessa found a wound in the chest, just above the heart. Black, stinking goo leaked from it, and Vanessa gagged. She fisted her hand to her mouth, retched, and then ran for the kitchen sink. Her partner for the night, Jim Walsh, stared down at the stiff before him, and his face turned a sickly shade of green. He avoided puking because he didn’t nose fuck the wound like Vanessa had, but he wasted no time in getting out there, dry heaving in the hallway where the air was somewhat fresh.
After leaving her lunch in the sink, Vanessa radioed back to headquarters, and before long, the place was crawling with cops. The assistant medical examiner - who had taken over after Ed Harris quit the previous night - knelt over the body and studied it. A solidly built black man with a mustache, his name was Leon and he knew death just as well as his old boss, so when he said the vic had been dead nearly two weeks, Vanessa accepted it.
That begged the question: Who broke in and screamed just now? A relative? The caller clearly heard screaming and peeked out her door to see two males fleeing on foot. Maybe they found the vic and freaked out? Or maybe they were the killers returning to the scene of the crime. After all, the vic had clearly been murdered.
In fact, they found a likely murder weapon. A long sliver of wood soaked in black goo. Blood turns black after a while, but there was something different about this stuff. “What is it?” Vanessa asked Leon.
“I’m not sure,” Leon said and pulled off a pair of Latex gloves he’d donned to examine the vic, “could be blood or…”
“Or what?” Vanessa asked.
“Or something,” Leon said. “Give me a few hours.”
And a few hours it was. Just before 1am, Leon called Vanessa at her desk. “I think you should come down here,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later, Vanessa stood over Leon as he pulled the vic’s chest open with a pair of tweezers. “That’s the heart,” he said, “whoever stabbed her scored a direct hit, but this…this is what concerns me.”
He prodded a furry lump with the tip of his scalpel.
“What is it?” Vanessa asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, “it looks like mold.”
That word - mold - triggered a memory in her brain. “Ed said something about mold last night. He found it in -”
“The Mason boy,” Leon finished.
“Yeah. The one who got up and ran off.”
Leon turned away from Vanessa and looked at the dead woman - for it was a woman. Vanessa got the impression that he didn’t want her to see his expression. “I’ve known Ed ten years. I know something happened last night, but a stiff getting up and walking off? I thought he was confused. Now…I don’t know. That makes two bodies in 24 hours. And get this. The chest wound? It was done post-mortem. I can’t find a cause of death anywhere. Except maybe blood loss but it’s hard to tell at this point. And speaking of blood…”
“What?” Vanessa asked quickly.
“When I opened her stomach up, a whole shit load of blood spilled out. And a lot of it was a lot fresher than she is.”
Vanessa furrowed her brow in confusion. “You mean…?”
“It’s not hers,” Leon said. “I can’t be 100 percent sure until I run tests, but I’d put money on it.”
Vanessa’s head spun with information both new and old. You know that full, heavy feeling you get when a poo is brewing in your guts? That’s kind of what Vanessa was feeling, only in her head instead of her stomach.
Leon was just as mystified by the whole thing as she was and stayed up late to run a few preliminary tests. By sunrise, he had confirmed that the blood inside of Heather’s stomach was not hers. In fact, it had come from at least three different sources. “Is it human?” Vanessa asked over the phone.
“Yes,” Leon said, sounding troubled, “it’s human.”
In the cobalt hour before sunrise, Vanessa sat at her desk and tried to piece this whole thing together. They had:

1. A corpse that (allegedly) woke up and dipped out
2. A dead girl who’d been stabbed in the heart with a piece of wood after somehow ingesting the blood of three different people.
3. Some missing kids
4. Oh, and both bodies - the girl’s and the runaway corpses’ - had the same weird fungus in their heart cavities.

All of this - even the missing kids, Vanessa felt - was related. She just didn’t know how. The only answer that half way fit was that both of those bodies were vampires. Like…what’s a vampire but a dead body that gets up and walks around at night? And how do you kill a vampire? Why, you drive a piece of wood through its heart.
The idea that vampires were real was dumb, but the more she turned it over in her mind, the more she became convinced that it was at least an option. A lot of things people thought were fantastic and made up turned out to be real, so why not vampires too?
Shortly after 8, Bruce came in. He was just sitting down when Vanessa came in and slapped her report on the desk. “Buckle up, bitch,” she said, “things just got weirder.”
He stared up at her with one of those grumpy - but cute -expressions he was so good at putting on. As he read, however, his brow knitted. “Jesus,” he muttered to himself. He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a weary sigh.
“I have a theory - kind of,” Vanessa said, “but I don’t want to say it.”
“You might as well,” Bruce said. “It can’t be more kooky than reality these days.”
“Okay,” Vanessa started, “what if - and I’m just thinking out loud here - what if there are vampires in Albany?”
She expected Bruce to give her a dirty look, but he chewed it over, actually taking it seriously. “And those missing boys are victims?” he asked finally.
“Yeah,” Vanessa said. “That girl’s been dead two weeks. Maybe she bit Dominick Mason and he came back for revenge after realizing he was cursed to be a goddamn shit sucking vampire forever.”
Bruce nodded. “Yeah, but who turned her?”
“I don’t know,” Vanessa said, “I don’t know.”
***
Before dawn painted the eastern sky, Merrick Garvis sat in his chamber like a withered king, a mess of IVs hooked into his arms and neck. The vault was silent save for the soft noise of the machines as they filtered out the old embalming fluid and replaced it with new embalming fluid. Embalming fluid always made him spacy, like a drug. The others had gone first, and even now lay near comatose around him like addicts in an opium den.
As far as he knew, Merrick was the oldest vampire in the world, perhaps, even, the oldest vampire to ever live. Though he was not fully honest with Dom, he was not lying when he said that vampires rotted like any other dead thing. Conditions considered, you had a few weeks tops if left untreated. There may be living vampires in remote corners of Egypt or the northern most reaches of Russia, where the climate preserved dead things, but unless you made it to one of those places, you were pretty well fucked.
Merrick was not a proud man, nor was he concerned with saving face - the dead have no need for that. He was being truthful when he said that he feared death. What’s more, he feared being helpless. Deep down, vampires are people, and people don’t exactly have the greatest track record with caring for their infirm. He read once that the first sign of a civilization was a broken leg that had healed, as it showed that someone stayed with and cared for a fellow human long enough for them to get well again. In Merrick’s opinion, that was true…and thus there was no civilization. Merrick was fifty-one when he died in the year 1982. In his lifetime, he had seen The Great Depression, World War II, and a million small acts of cruelty and selfishness in between. He’d seen beggars starving in the streets, abused children shuffled out of sight and out of mind, and disdain for the poor and the weak.
The living were awful, and the living dead were no different. Once their humanity rotted away, they cared only about filling their stomachs. They were like ticks - they would drink until their bellies literally ruptured…and then keep on drinking.
That left him in a precarious position. He was old, his body was weak. He couldn’t stand unassisted and if left to fend for himself, he would decay into a pile of bones within days. He would be cursed to lay in one spot for all eternity, aware and hungry, little more than a ghost tethered to a black and still beating heart.
He refused to let that happen to him. Thus, he had created a family, a clan of vampires loyal to him and to him alone. He did this through acts of simple kindness and understanding…but also through deception. He knew, for instance, how to preserve the brain. He’d figured out how to do it early on - you pickle it. Like a fetus preserved in a jar. He sawed off the top of his own head and filled it with a special solution that kept his brain - and his intelligence - intact. It slowly drained out through the nose and ears in a thin, yellow liquid, but it worked well enough. He couldn’t save everything, however, and had lost vital things in the process, such as most of his human memories, his sense of humor, and some motor functions. He shared this secret with only Joe, and a few others before, because he needed a strong captain. He kept the others in the dark because vampires - like people - are easier to control when they don’t think for themselves.
Right about now, however, Merrick was beginning to regret sharing the formula with even Joe. Joe had brought him nothing but grief. Joe, you see, could think for himself. He could make decisions. He could go behind Merrick’s back. Joe had something called free will, and free will is a worse affliction than vampirism. Free will is messy, free will is dangerous.
Free will could very well turn Merrick into a pile of bones.
That was, of course, if they weren’t discovered first. Joe had made several mistakes lately, not least of which was the turning of Heather. Sitting there in the predawn hour, attended by Tony, his gay bartender and human familiar, Merrick decided to have Joe killed. There are only two ways to kill a vampire: The stake and the flame. The latter seemed somehow appropriate in this case. After Joe, there would be no more captains, only him, one father with absolute power. That was how it had to be. One man, one vision. Democracies didn’t work. That was especially clear today. Everyone was so divided and nothing ever got done. If the humans had one strong leader, they might go in the wrong direction, but at least they would go somewhere. Instead, they stagnated.
Merrick didn’t particularly look forward to killing Joe, but it had to be done. To protect the family. To protect him.
And Merrick would do anything…anything at all…to protect himself.
***
Vampires.
Bruce kept coming back to that single wor, hoping each time that he would chuckle at the absurdity of it.
But he never did.
Did that mean he believed it? Not necessarily, but damn it, he considered it a possibility, and that alone was enough to make him feel like a fucking clown. All the evidence he had pointed to vampires, but then again, it might point to other things as well. Like aliens.
But let’s say the whole vampire thing was real. Who, like Vanessa asked, was patient zero? Who started this whole mess?
A name came to mind.
Merrick Garvis.
He had not had time to check into Garvis the previous day, but by God, he was going to do it now. He ran his name and social through the system and everything seemed to check out. Merrick Garvis was born on June 31, 1963 in -
Wait a minute. Weren’t there only 30 days in June?
Bruce checked, and there were, indeed, only 30 days in the month of June. Hm. Bruce did a little digging and found something out. Before 1987, social security numbers weren’t issued at birth. You had to sign up, using other forms of ID. Merrick Garvis applied for his in April 1984 and the date of birth on his state issued driver’s license was June 31. Bruce spent an hour on the phone with the DMV and learned that they had never issued a license to a Merrick Garvis. He then spoke to the Social Security Administration, and after much wrangling and frustration, he managed to get a photocopy of the license Garvis used to get his social security number. It was dated 1983.
The face staring back at him was almost exactly the same face he’d seen at Club Vlad, except maybe a touch less stiff and waxy. Though not as rough looking, there was no way in hell Garvis was 20 in that picture. It had to be a fake,
Bruce thought back to the events of the previous two days. Missing bodies, staked corpses, hearts that still beat after death.
Vampires didn’t seem like such a crazy explanation.
And if anyone was a fucking vampire around here, it was Merrick Garvis.

The people involved (names are changed):
Jake – me
Tom – my flatmate
Kath – Tom’s girlfriend
Emily – Kath’s flatmate
TLDR (but context is very important for how the situation develops):
· Me and Emily get with each other at a party.
· It turns out Kath had forbidden Emily from getting with me. Since Emily went and did it anyway, Kath falls out with her.
· Kath ends her friendship with Emily. Me and Emily continue seeing each other.
· When I plan to go to see Emily at their apartment, Tom tells me that Kath is in a really dark place mentally, and the thought of me and Emily being there together while Kath’s there is triggering her anxiety, so he asks me not to go over.
· Me and Emily follow these instructions for months, all whilst Tom and Kath continue coming and going to either of our apartments as they please.
· Emily eventually gets in touch with Kath to try and understand exactly why me coming over is an issue, since Kath has no problem coming to my place. Kath has a meltdown due to this and it makes her suicidal.
· Tom falls out with me because I knew about the messages that caused his girlfriend to feel suicidal.
(Skip to 'Late April' if you want to go straight to the crux of this post, but I do think it's quite an entertaining read).
Background Context
Me and Tom (both mid-twenties) have lived together in our apartment since I moved to the city last year. I’ve known him for several years and would put him in my inner circle of closest friends, so living with him was all just good chill vibes as expected - or at least it was for the first six months.
I met Tom’s girlfriend of several months, Kath, for the first time pretty soon after moving in. Although she was kind of shy, I thought she seemed nice enough. I noticed that Kath would seem to lean on Tom a fair amount when it came to support for her mental health (she had been diagnosed with anxiety), which of course is normal as her boyfriend. On one occasion, she had a particularly bad anxious episode during a group hangout, with Tom consoling her about it afterwards. Following this, Tom seemed exhausted, saying to me “I’m not a professional, I’m not equipped to deal with all this mental health stuff. She needs help from someone who can adequately help her deal with these thoughts. When she blows things out of proportion and she stresses out to me about her anxiety, it just ends up making my own anxiety worse”. He also said that he had even offered to pay for therapy for Kath, but she didn’t want to accept it.
I just felt bad for Tom, especially since I had some understanding of what he was going through. I had previously had a girlfriend who had anxiety/depression/BPD and put all her mental health issues on me. That girlfriend was also very manipulative and would mention suicidal thoughts any time she started feeling like she was losing control over me (just to be clear, there was no indication that Kath was acting in a manipulative way towards Tom at that point). In my experience, when you end up in a situation where you’re essentially acting as someone’s full-time personal mental health counsellor, it hardly ever ends well.
At some point in January, I met Kath’s “bestie” flatmate, Emily. I remember thinking she was cute, seemed nice and easy to talk to. We all hung out as a group a few times that month and I thought there may have been a little bit of a vibe between me and Emily.
So as you do, I slid into Emily’s DMs and basically let her know I was interested. I messaged her a week or two before our party that her and Kath were coming to, but her response was lukewarm so I just thought she probably wasn’t interested.
For context, I had recently broken up with my girlfriend in January, who had just got back from travelling for the last 6 months. Things in that relationship weren’t great before she even went travelling, and during the months she was away I had come to terms with the fact that it was best to end it. I waited until she was back to say it in person, as I didn’t want to drop that on her while she was travelling and ruin that once in a lifetime experience. However, deep down I knew I had wanted talk to other girls and explore new connections for the last few months, but obviously I didn’t want talk to anyone until it was cleanly over. Me messaging Emily was only a few days after breaking up with her, which I guess isn’t great, but in my head I had been ready to move on for a while, I saw no point in putting an arbitrary time limit on myself. I made sure to explain this context when I messaged Emily so that she was aware of my recent circumstances.
The Party (End of January)
So me and Emily end up getting with each other at the party. Initially, when I brought up me messaging her, she said “I think you’re cute, but I think it’s best we just be friends for the next couple months, since you just recently got out of a relationship, and we can see what happens afterwards”. But as the night went on, I guess Emily changed her mind, because as we kept talking it got increasingly flirty and we ended up getting together. Perfect end to the night, right? Not exactly.
At one point when Emily goes to the bathroom, she comes back into my bedroom saying “Kath is furious at me”. I ask why, and she says that Kath had basically forbidden her from getting with me.
Back when I first messaged Emily, she had of course shown Kath the messages straight away. It turns out Kath for some reason had a really intense reaction to this and was like “I can’t believe he has the audacity to hit on my best friend right after breaking up with his girlfriend! It’s so disrespectful using you as a rebound, it’s disrespectful to his ex and it’s disrespectful to me for hitting on my best friend like this! He was the only one of Tom’s friends that I actually liked but he’s ruined that too now!”.
Apparently, Kath had been used as a rebound before and this was triggering for her, so she didn’t want her best friend to be used as a rebound. She said “you can’t get with him, Emily, that’s my boundary.” Emily was a bit taken aback by the intensity of this reaction and was just a bit like “umm okay…?”. She tried a few times before the party to understand a bit more about why Kath had such a problem with it but didn’t get much further explanation than that.
Now, I agree that Emily was in the wrong for saying to Kath that she wouldn’t get with me and then went and did it anyway, and Emily also acknowledges this. Emily should have said from the start she wasn’t okay with this weird “boundary” Kath had set. It was a bit cowardly. Although given how intensely Kath overreacts to things, I can understand why Emily initially just agreed to whatever she was saying to calm her down. I can also understand how when you’re at a party having fun, drinking and realise that you do actually have a good vibe with the person, in the moment you might change your mind and be like “actually fuck that, who the fuck is she to tell me who I can and can’t get with?”.
Kath saw this as Emily having no respect for their friendship, by choosing some guy she’d just met over her. From Emily’s perspective she was choosing herself, choosing not to follow these nonsensical rules that had been imposed on her, and she was just tired of Kath overreacting to everything and trying to control her.
In my opinion, being this controlling for no good reason is pretty disrespectful in itself. Given that Kath’s reason for telling Emily not to get with me was because she didn’t want her to be used as a rebound…well that’s Emily’s risk to take, isn’t it? I can see how from Emily’s perspective, she knew Kath might not be happy about it, but it’s also not some deep betrayal, since based on the reason Kath gave, the consequence would only be on Emily herself. Emily had the exact same knowledge about my recent relationship status as Kath did, so why did Kath think she can tell her what to do?
As we get to further into this post and the real reason why Kath set this “boundary” is revealed, you will see why I actually think any argument Kath has against Emily for getting with me at the party is automatically void, but we will learn these details as they come.
Start of February
After the events of the party, Kath didn’t want to talk to Emily the next day when she tried to initiate communication via message (Kath tends to avoid in-person confrontation). Fair enough, Emily gave her space. Me and Emily spend the next day together just talking and getting to know each other more, and it’s clear that we vibe together and both feel very comfortable with each other, which is pretty rare for both of us.
I don’t see Tom for the first few days after the party, as he had been staying at Kath’s. When I do, I’m a bit surprised that he didn’t think much of Kath’s reaction at the party. He says “yeah I probably should have warned you about this beforehand”. We both agree that Emily was in the wrong for going back on what she said, but also that Kath shouldn’t have tried to control her like that. He did say “sorry I know this put you in an awkward position”.
A few days after the party, Emily again tries to get in touch with Kath via message.
Emily’s message essentially apologised for her actions, saying she was in the wrong for going back on what she said, and that she should have said from the start that she wasn’t happy with this “boundary”. She also said that Kath shouldn’t have tried to dictate her life and tell her what to do, especially when it’s something that’s none of her business, and that she is going to continue seeing me, taking the risk of being a “rebound”.
Kath’s response essentially said the whole incident at the party was only a small part of why she exploded so intensely, this was just the last in a long line of things Emily had done in the past which she had not forgiven her for. This was just the last straw for Kath because “it hit so close to home, so close to the love of my life”. She wanted things to be civil between them until the end of their tenancy, but this was essentially the end of their friendship.
Okay good, Kath flipping out so badly now finally made a bit more sense to me. Obviously, I wanted to know what Emily had done that was so bad to cause this, as any indicators of bad character would inform whether I choose to keep talking to her.
Emily went through these, explaining that these were incidents from their past that they had discussed at the time, dealt with and moved on from. I have cut these out for the word limit as they don’t add much to this post, but it was the most minor, nonsensical things (I can explain in the comments if anyone wants details).
In any case, I wasn’t particularly interested in what mistakes Emily might have made months or years ago, I was more interested in what her character was like now and going forward.
Early/Mid February
So here’s where the main situation we’re in now starts. For context, Kath and Emily’s apartment is in the city center, close to where both mine and Tom’s offices are, so it would make sense to go over in the evening and go into work from theirs the next morning, as Tom has been doing once or twice a week for the last few months.
It's worth noting that ever since the party right up to the present moment, Emily and Kath have not been interacting at all, avoiding each other in their apartment, only messaging for things like bill payments.
The first time I planned to go stay round Emily’s place was early/mid-February. When I mention this to Tom, he tells me that Kath has been having a really bad time mentally since the party, and the thought of me and Emily being there together triggers her anxiety. He asks me not to go over to their apartment for the next couple of weeks or so while she’s in this particularly bad phase. I don’t really understand what me going over and seeing Emily has to do with Kath’s anxiety (and Tom says he doesn't really understand it either himself), but I say okay fine it’s not that big of deal, I won’t go over for the time being.
Now, a valid question for myself is why I decided to keep seeing Emily, despite knowing that Kath had fallen out with her and therefore knowing it could potentially cause fiction between me and Tom. I don’t think I did anything wrong for several reasons:
· I suppose there’s the general visceral reaction against being told what to do. Like mind your own business, it’s not my fault Kath decided to get involved in my business. Why should she get what she wants when she’s the one being unreasonable? Why should we deny ourselves the opportunity of getting to know someone we seem to vibe with just because Tom’s girlfriend doesn’t like it?
· Before I even knew there was any issue at all, it was already too late; I had already gotten with Emily, they had already fallen out, and Kath already thought I was a dickhead. So what good would it do now to not see each other? Kath already didn’t like me (and she had also previously told me that once she doesn’t like someone, there’s no going back, they’re finished in her mind).
· In the initial first few days after the party, both me and Tom were kind of expecting that Kath’s reaction would blow over in a few days after she had cooled down. How could I have predicted that her reaction would instead continue getting increasingly intense as the situation went on?
· Frankly, I was annoyed at Tom at this point. He knew how Kath had reacted to me messaging Emily, so why did he just bend over and enable his girlfriends’ controlling, unreasonable behavior without question? If it was my girlfriend acting like this generally, I’d be like “why are you getting involved in their business, just let them do what they want?”, and especially so if it was directly affecting one of my close friends.
· Fundamentally, there’s no inherent reason why there had to be any issue at all? Okay Kath has ended her friendship with Emily and might not like that we’re seeing each other, but there’s no need for there to be any continued drama. Obviously we won’t all be hanging out as a four having fun like I had initially hoped, but that doesn’t mean we can’t just exist as adults and be civil? The only reason this continues to be an issue in the first place is because Kath is making it an issue for everyone else involved.
· Finally, I actually like Emily – from the first few days it was clear it wasn’t just going to be a FWB situation. If it felt like more of a superficial FWB situation, then yeah I probably would have just thought it’s not worth the drama, even though I thought Kath was the one in the wrong.
Late February
Over the month of February, me and Emily keep hanging out and getting closer. Whilst I was keeping a very close eye on her for any sign of character flaws (it was still possible that Kath could be in the right, even though her side of it didn’t make much sense to me), the more I got to know her, the more it seemed my initial judgment of her was accurate. I saw how she acted with her other friends, they all seemed to really value and appreciate her. I saw her helping out her friend in need of a fairly large amount of money without a second thought, I saw her going to accompany her friend for a medical scan they had, and generally she was really nice and thoughtful with me. Not exactly the behavior of an inconsiderate person.
Sometime in late February, Emily messages me completely baffled. She couldn’t believe that Kath had invited over a girl from their social circle, Dianne. The reason why this is a bit scandalous is because Kath is always talking shit about Dianne behind her back. And it’s not just “she can be a bit annoying sometimes”, it’s an explicit sentiment of how much she dislikes her, how much of a bad person she is and how much she wants her removed from her life. And she does this frequently, I barely speak to Kath and even I’ve heard her rant about how much she doesn’t like Dianne. So, she’s constantly saying this kind of stuff behind her back, and here she is now inviting her round for tea acting all friendly. I just found that so two-faced and this inevitably shaped my perception of Kath being deceptive.
Not long after I heard about this, Kath was round our place over the weekend. Me, Tom and Kath were heading off to our friend’s housewarming party later that day, with me driving us. At one point when the three of us are all in the kitchen, Kath speaks to me properly for the first time since the party, basically to clear the air. She says she doesn’t want there to be any bad blood between us and that her problem wasn’t with me, it was with Emily. I just say that I was cool with her, I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable with me or when coming over to our apartment, and that the situation between her and Emily was between them and not my business.
I wasn’t entirely convinced with her “clearing the air”, given that I had seen she apparently has no issue with being two-faced, but at the time I thought it was best to stay cool with her for the sake of me and Tom’s friendship and also I didn’t particularly fancy spending the rest of the day and a long car ride with awkward vibes.
End of February
At the end of February, Tom asks me how things are going with Emily and basically advises caution with her. He says that from what he’s seen she’s basically not a good person and she’s generally inconsiderate. I tell him I find that surprising from what I’ve seen of Emily, but I know it’s possible she could have just been putting on a front for the last month. I openly accept this, saying “I want to hear what you have to say, obviously you’re my friend and I respect your opinion”.
Essentially, he doesn’t bring up anything that I hadn’t already been told.
When I question Tom on why Kath thought she was a mind reader and assuming what my intentions were with Emily at the very start of this whole thing, Tom reveals he had since found out that the real reason Kath had forbidden Emily from getting with me in the first place actually wasn’t really to do with me recently breaking up with my girlfriend/using Emily as a rebound (Tom said this was a minor part of the reason, more of an excuse to base it on). It was more that Kath already knew beforehand that she wanted to end her friendship with Emily and was essentially trying to prevent her still being part of her life (i.e. by getting close to her boyfriend’s friend/flatmate).
Now it all made sense why Kath tried to “ban” her from getting with me in the first place. I’m not sure if Tom thought telling me this would make me more sympathetic to Kath’s side of it, but if anything, this deceptive behavior was even more of a red flag to me. As far as everyone (except for Kath) was concerned, her and Emily were best friends. Kath had even said to Emily a couple of weeks before the party that “she was like a sister to her”.
Tom didn’t seem to have much issue with this, saying something along the lines of “yeah I know she shouldn’t have kept all this stuff bottled up, but she doesn’t like confrontation, it makes her really anxious”.
After learning this, I think any argument for Emily being in the wrong for disobeying Kath’s instructions at the party is automatically void: Imagine having the audacity to be like “yeah I know I tried to control you by framing it as me being a protective friend looking out for you, but actually it was really because I wanted to end my friendship with you anyway teehee 😊”. In my view that is just so manipulative. No wonder the reason given to Emily for not getting with me made no sense to her.
When I revealed this to Emily, she said that she had been suspecting that was the case anyway, but it still really hurt to hear it confirmed.
Form her perspective it was like: “So was Kath holding all these grudges all the times I was consoling her for whatever mental health issue she was having at any given time?” (I wonder if Tom was thinking what a bad person Emily was when it was him and Emily staying up till stupid o’clock trying to console Kath who was crying about job applications a few weeks before all this kicked off). There are many other examples of things she had done for Kath in both the recent and more distant past.
Kath also knew that Emily’s best friend had killed herself a few years prior, and after going through the loss of her best friend, Emily had always said she was super hesitant to call anyone her “best friend”. Kath knew about this and still let Emily believe they were best friends, whilst she clearly didn’t really mean it, which I think is quite cruel of her.
Despite what I had seen of Emily so far, I still took what Tom said into account, and continued to watch her carefully.
Mid March
Another couple of weeks pass and given that my last interaction with Kath was her clearing the air with me, I thought everything was now cool between us. I mention to Tom at the start of the week that I’m planning to stay at their apartment later that week and he says “okay cool”. However, later that same evening, he once again asks me not to go over to their apartment. Apparently when he told Kath that I was going over, she started having a panic attack at the thought of me going there.
At this point I’m really started to get frustrated at this situation and again I try to understand exactly what the problem is, because this entire time Kath and Tom have been coming and going to either apartment as they please, so Kath clearly doesn’t have a problem coming to my apartment while I’m there. Tom again says that he doesn’t fully understand it himself, and that Kath doesn’t want to feel this way either, but she’s in a really bad place at the moment and me being there with Emily is really triggering her anxiety.
This makes no sense to me or Emily, because we obviously wouldn’t do anything to make Kath uncomfortable, and from our perspective this is just enabling her dysfunctional way of dealing with this situation.
Even though I still don’t understand what the fuck me seeing Emily has got to do with Kath’s mental health, I’m obviously not going to barge my way into someone’s home when I’m not welcome. So once again, I do as I’m told and say I won’t go over. But I do tell Tom that this situation isn’t going to continue going on like this indefinitely, and to me it feels to me like I’m being walked all over, in the sense of “oh yeah no worries, you two carry on going to either apartment as you please, I’ll just sit here like a dickhead and follow my instructions, don’t worry about it 😊”. He does say sorry and that he knows it’s inconvenient for us, but it's an even bigger inconvenience for Kath.
It’s worth bearing in mind that at this point, I could have responded to this situation by saying that if I’m not welcome at her apartment, Kath is not welcome here (or equally Emily could say to Kath “you can’t bring Tom round”). Whilst yes, it’s a bit petty, I think this would be a completely justified response to prevent a situation where we are being walked all over. Because what would be the alternative? They just carry on doing as they please indefinitely whilst Emily is told she isn’t allowed to have equal use of her own apartment? Now obviously telling your friend that his girlfriend isn’t allowed to come over is really a last resort and would definitely put a big dent in our friendship, and generally I have no desire to control what anyone else does, so of course I didn’t respond in this way.
Despite my frustration at this entire situation, I do feel bad for Tom because I can see how uncomfortable he seems during these conversations with me, he obviously doesn’t want to give me these unreasonable instructions. I can only assume he’s just trying to do whatever he can to keep his girlfriend afloat and prevent her next meltdown. I’ve been there myself dealing with a girlfriend with mental health issues, so I don’t want to actively make things worse for my friend either. However, I’m also worried that it’s likely to get worse for him the more he feeds into it and gets sucked into it.
At this point, the cynical side of me couldn’t help but wonder if Kath was being a bit manipulative and leaning into all the mental health stuff to maintain control of the situation.
· She seemingly is unable to give a reason for exactly why me and Emily being in her apartment makes her so uncomfortable. To me, this was completely indistinguishable from her just hating the fact that we’re together.
· All this reminds me of exactly the same kind of manipulative behavior I saw with that ex-girlfriend.
· She’s shown she has no problem with being intentionally deceptive – maybe if the entire basis of this situation hadn’t started off with Kath being manipulative she would have a bit more credibility in my eyes.
I know this kind of behavior is often not even intentional, and that it can be subconscious where the person doesn’t even realise they’re being manipulative.
(Still Mid March)
Now we get to the part that pisses me off the most in this whole situation. Only a few days after that conversation with Tom, for some reason Kath comes to stay in our apartment for the weekend while Tom was away at a house party. As in, it’s just me and Kath in my apartment.
Personally, I couldn’t imagine having the nerve to say to someone they aren’t welcome in my home because their presence triggers me, and then only a mere few days later actively choosing to go stay the weekend at their place while it’s just us two in the apartment. Like either my presence triggers you or it doesn’t?
Now to be fair, Tom had asked me a week or two beforehand if Kath could come to our apartment to hang out with someone from our friend group while he was away, and I said that was cool. Anyway, those plans fell through, but Kath still came over by herself.
But the main thing that pissed me off about this is that Tom, after knowing that I was already feeling like I was being taken for a mug in this situation, apparently didn’t even think it was worth bothering to check with me if it was still cool with me that Kath came round, given our conversation a few days prior.
If he’d at least checked in like, “I know it’s a bit weird that she’s coming to stay round by herself after having just said that your presence triggers her anxiety”, I still would’ve said okay, because I have no desire to control what anyone does. But it was just the fact he didn’t seem to care, saying “btw Kath is gonna stay here tonight” moments before leaving to his party.
To me it felt like he had spent the last month or so basically giving me instructions to make sure everyone caters to his girlfriend’s feelings, and yet didn’t give the slightest consideration to how this would make me feel. Part of me was thinking does he even see me as a friend or just as an inconvenience to his relationship at this point?
I spoke to Tom in the week following this, expressing how I had felt about Kath staying round. He did apologise and acknowledged he could’ve checked in with me, but he didn’t really seem to understand why her coming over like that was such a kick in the teeth for me. He said Kath doesn’t have a problem with me, it’s only a very specific situation that triggers her (i.e. me and Emily being in her apartment together).
Again I try to understand exactly why it’s a problem. Ever since the party, Emily’s presence in their apartment has consisted of her quietly staying in her room, quickly cooking her food and going straight back to her room. She doesn’t spend 2 hours in the kitchen making food like Kath and Tom sometimes do when he’s there.
Tom again says he doesn’t fully understand it himself. From what he understands, it’s triggering because her home is her safe space and if we’re both there it’s like there’s two hostile presences in that safe space. He reiterated that she is in a very dark place at the moment, and that she’s been having frequent panic attacks and suicidal thoughts.
Tom then says that Kath would be prepared to leave the apartment if me and Emily wanted to meet there, and Kath would basically get out of the way and come to me and Tom’s apartment instead. This did give me a bit more confidence that Kath wasn’t just purposefully making things difficult.
If Kath genuinely meant this, then of course that’s really appreciated, but I’m obviously not going to make her leave her own home and come all the way to ours to then have a 2 hour commute to her work. It’s so over the top and needless. I think that this clearly isn’t a functional solution going forward. What if one day when we want to meet up, Kath has had a long day at work and doesn’t feel like leaving her apartment (obviously, fair enough!), what if she’s got plans with friends in her apartment that evening? In any case, it’s still a situation where rules are being imposed on us, I can never just spontaneously decide to go see Emily one day after work or something. We still can’t come and go freely in the same way they have been doing for the past two months. It would be much better to understand why exactly it’s such a problem and see how we’re going to find a long-term solution, instead of Kath just running away from it.
The cynical side of me was wondering if Kath was just saying this knowing that neither me or Emily are realistically going to make her leave her own home, and if we do agree to it, then she can say “oh look how inconsiderate they are, making me leave my own home just so that they can be in the apartment”, ensuring that she keeps Tom firmly on her side.
Logically, I would’ve thought as time goes on, Kath would eventually get used to the situation and just accept it. Conversely, is it not quite understandable that the longer we have rules imposed on us, the more frustrated we become?
Once again say that I won’t go over and tell him that I won’t press this issue for the time being.
Late April
So now we get to the latest development in the situation, which is the crux of this post.
For the next month or so after that conversation with Tom, me and Emily have just been following our instructions and not pressed anything, whilst they continue coming and going as they please. One weekend we’re talking about the whole ‘Kath situation’ and we say “okay we’ve left it for a while now, it’s probably time to see how we’re going to move forward with this”.
In that next week, Emily sends Kath the following message:
“Hey, I appreciate this message might be uncomfortable but we need to discuss the fact that Jake can’t come here while you’re at home because I know that him and Tom have spoken about this but we’ve never addressed it with each other and I think it’s unfair that they’ve been largely absorbing this conflict this whole time. Can you please tell me what the exact problem would be and how we could make it work? At the end of the day we both pay equal rent here and I should be allowed to bring someone over, especially considering that Tom comes here whenever you want. We’re nothing more than just 2 housemates now and if you were living with a stranger from Spareroom such restrictions couldn’t have existed. I think I’ve let it slide and should have addressed it earlier, but it’s time we come up with a fair solution and I’d like to know if there’s anything reasonable we can do. I don’t want to go into other conversations about our fallout cause that’s done and dusted now, I want to strictly address this issue. Would you like some notice before he comes? I can’t always guarantee how far in advance I can let you know but I will do my best to give you enough time.”
Kath’s response:
“hey, I do not really appreciate this conversation being brought up 2 days before my birthday and I wish we can settle it today and not drag it on. And I do not appreciate you using Tom as a weapon to guilt trip me either. Please let me know if he is coming over tonight so that I can go somewhere else. As u probably already know I am in a really bad place at the moment and being in the apartment with both of you makes me feel very uncomfortable and unsafe. I’m already struggling to be there and I have been discussing with the agency about terminating the contract early, the terms have only been made clear to me today so I was going to message you about it. By paying a fee of £660 (£330 each) we can terminate the contract 12^th of June and I wish u will consider this. I will be gone from the apartment for 2 weeks. I would really appreciate it if you do not bring him over in the next few days as I said it will be my birthday and I will be gone for 2 weeks after if you decide to do so after this, please let me know at least 2 days in advance so that I can leave (pack clothes and everything), but do not take advantage of this as it is extremely difficult for me to commute to work – it takes me 2 hours on the bus”
Emily’s response to this:
“I don’t appreciate you using your birthday as a “weapon” to paint me as an inconsiderate person once again as you’re saying you were going to message me anyway about terminating the contract. You always have Tom round without any notice, without ever considering if it was ever uncomfortable for me given what’s happened - but now you expect me to organise our schedule around you? We can’t ever do something spontaneous or simply make plans the day before? Jake won’t be coming tonight or in the next few days until you’re away. I was hoping we could talk about why exactly this makes you uncomfortable and unsafe as it’s quite clear we wouldn’t interact with you or do anything to purposely upset/annoy you. You also had no problem being in his apartment with him without Tom there, so clearly his presence must not be that big of a problem. I am going to get back to you about terminating the contract as I have to figure out where I would go, but I’d love nothing more than to leave this apartment as early as possible too.”
There was no response after Emily’s second message.
Tom comes back to our apartment the next day and ignores me all day until the evening when he asks “Did you know that Emily was going to send those messages?”.
I say “Yes, obviously?”. He responds with “Right, okay” and starts walking back towards his room.
I ask him what was wrong with the messages, and he comes back and says “what the fuck is Emily doing sending messages like that to my suicidal girlfriend?”. He essentially thought the tone of the messages, the proximity to Kath’s birthday and the fact that we’re once again bringing up this issue of me coming round was out of order. He also said that Emily’s 2^nd message was implying that she was just going to bring me round without any notice anyway (looking at the message, no it wasn’t? It was just highlighting the unfairness of Kath expecting us to organise our schedule around her? None of the messages say that I’m going to come over, they are essentially just trying to understand exactly why it makes Kath uncomfortable).
We also did note that it was Kath’s birthday on the Friday (messages were sent on Tuesday). Maybe that wasn’t ideal, but we thought what real difference does it make? This is nothing new, it’s the same situation that’s been ongoing for the last 3 months anyway (and personally, I thought that up until the moment Kath says “okay sorry, I shouldn’t have imposed rules on you” then she shouldn’t expect that this won’t be brought up to her?).
I was a bit shocked at how angry he was and explained that we’re just trying to understand exactly what her issue is, because it still doesn’t make any sense to us. I bring up the general point about Kath imposing rules on people and expects everyone to cater to her feelings, whilst zero consideration has been given to how Emily has felt over the last 3 months, when not only does it make her uncomfortable as well that there are two “hostile presences” in her home, but especially given that those hostile presences have told her she’s not allowed to have equal use of her apartment she also pays rent for.
Tom responds with “but it’s not making Emily feel suicidal is it? Kath was having convulsions on the fucking bed last night after those messages. Why do you keep focusing on this tiny issue of coming to the apartment when my girlfriend is literally suicidal? She’s already said she’d make arrangements to leave the apartment for when you want to come over, and yet you keep pressing the issue and triggering her further”.
In that moment I was a bit taken aback and didn’t have much of a response. I kind of just sat and processed that for a few minutes, thinking “fuck, have I actually been in the wrong this whole time?”. Tom looked exhausted and stressed out, he must have been dealing with Kath’s meltdown the whole of the night before.
I say to Tom “tell Kath not to worry about me coming over while she’s there, I’m not going to, I’ll just leave it for good and won’t press this issue anymore”. Tom doesn’t give much of a response, but I think he says “I appreciate it”. He leaves for his two-week holiday shortly after.
I felt really bad that evening, thinking I had caused Tom to have to deal with whatever horrible meltdown because of me pressing this issue. Maybe I had been overly cynical of Kath, and she genuinely was just trying her best and not meaning to be manipulative.
When Tom got back from his holiday, he basically confirmed our friendship is over because I had known about those messages that caused his girlfriend to feel suicidal.
I’ve thought about the situation a lot since he left for his holiday:
· Looking back at the messages Emily sent, I think the tone is completely fine? Every single person I’ve shown the messages to has said they are actually quite kind and empathetic, and way nicer than they need to be given Kath’s behavior over the last 3 months.
· Tom’s reaction was essentially “how dare Emily have the audacity to ask for a reason why she hasn’t been allowed to have equal use of her own apartment for the last 3 months!”
· It’s true that Tom had mentioned that Kath had been having some suicidal thoughts a month prior, but I didn’t know that this would directly impact that, especially since I thought the message was quite nice and sensitive. Just the weekend before this Tom and Kath were out clubbing, having fun and they were going on holiday later that week. So obviously I didn’t realise she was still feeling so bad. How could anyone expect that simply asking the question of “why does this make you so uncomfortable” would result in this reaction.
· As soon as I did realise how intensely Kath had reacted, and what Tom had had to deal with as a result, I backed off straight away, saying that she doesn’t have to worry, I’m not going to press it anymore.
· Realistically, if this is how Kath reacts to being asked for basic fairness, then I think really she needs to be in a mental health crisis center or hospital, not just carrying on with everyday life as if everything is fine, and certainly not in a situation where she’s imposing rules on people.
· At the end of the day, Kath’s mental health is not my responsibility, nor is it Tom’s responsibility. I think it’s unfair of Kath to have made it his problem to such a large degree.
Logically, I don’t think I’m in the wrong, and yet Tom’s reaction to this makes me feel like I’m going crazy. That’s why I wrote out everything’s that’s happened from start to finish to “audit” myself and evaluate each of my actions throughout the entire situation.
I’ve looked back and don’t think I’m in the wrong for anything I’ve done. The only explanation I can think of is that Tom has been so deep in all of Kath’s mental health stuff 24/7 that he’s just not thinking clearly about this situation.

Hello everyone, I'm a 25( F) and I've been in a relationship with a guy, 24( M) for almost a year. Since I moved abroad for a short period things have been going up and down, normal expecially considering that long distance relationships can be a challenge. After being spending time together here in the UK for a month he left and went back to italy. Everything was going perfectly fine. At one point he started being more and more distant. I asked him what was going on and he would tell me that he wasn't feeling himself and that everything felt weird. I asked him if it was about our relationship, he said no. He started telling me how stressed he is about getting his masters degree and how his boss has been areal pain the you know what. As a supportive girlfriend I completely understood the situation and left him his space. After a couple of days I noticed the situation became even more weird. I would tell him I love you, send him cute pics, but yet I felt as if I was annoying him even more. Again, I try to understand whats going on and again he tells me it's because of work and school etc. Therefore, I started thinking " maybe it's just me. I'm just an exaggerating overthinker ". My friends agree with me because they all know him and know how hard he is with himself. Fast forward to 3 days ago. He calls me telling me that we were in danger because one of his aunts back in Lebanon , he is originally from Lebanon, but was born and raised in Germany, was trying to commission a woman to do a spell on us. Fortunately this woman knew his other aunt and told her about it. At that point she called his mom and told him about what was going on and that they would take care of it with the help of one of the uncles. She told him to cancel every single picture of us together from his social media and also told me to put private the tik toy's I had previously posted of us. I asked him about this spell and he told me that it would affect only him. Jm sorry to say this, but I'm finding myself in a difficult position. I know in the middle eastern people do practice black magic, but at the same time it's sad to say, but I don't trust him. Honestly I have know idea what to do. Sorry for the long paragraph...

we've been friends about 3 years and started dating in February. We've had a few great dates together and I really enjoy her company. I have other girl friends and dated men (which was awful and made me realize I was gay) and I knew it just felt different. Me and my friends all had like a sleepover and I felt no like "butterflies" or whatever laying by them or anything but even just sitting by my girlfriend brushing shoulders like felt "safe" or I don't know how to describe it, and it's dumb but I think about it. I replay cute moments from the past three months with her in my head all the time. She has a habit of patting my head and even that makes me giggle and kick my feet and shit. She and some friends had like a performance thing and my manager wanted me to come into work and I knew my friends would've understood but I really wanted to see her and I thought she would be disappointed if I didn't go. I thought she looked really cute and happy up there lol and it made me feel lucky to have someone that has so much love and joy for life also like me. We're both busy and I don't really get to see her as much as I want, so I replay a lot of the moments in my head a lot. I can't imagine myself with anyone else right now. She apologized that we dont see each other like everyday and I was like it's okay lol in my head we have the rest of our lives.
I have 6 days before I won't see her again until August. I've kissed a man before but never a girl and she's never kissed anyone so it feels up to me to initiate. I know we'll have one more date before leaving for summer and it just feels like something I should do, I think I'll regret it all summer if I dont. But I'm nervous as fuck. I wasn't this nervous even for my first kiss or sex or even being fucking fully naked with a man because I knew I didn't like them that much and so it didn't matter. I don't know how to initiate because the man always did in the past. The most intimate we've been is hugging and hand holding and like me sleeping on her. I know my fear has something to do with being friends so long first but im nervous and don't know what to doo. I'm not even talking about making out just like a peck freaks me out. I really want to though and I KNOW I'll regret not. I know we'll hug before parting ways and on our first date we had an exchange where I said "what are you thinking about?" and she said something like "I really want to hold your hand, can I?". Ugh shit was like 3 months ago and still makes me giggle and blush internally. I'm thinking of doing something similar though and asking before going for it. Or something like "Do you trust me?" then she says yes and then I say "close your eyes" and just go for it. Any advice? How did you kiss your first girlfriend? Am I being overdramatic? Pls I knew I would do it before the semester ended but now it's here and I'm scared lol.