Falling for My Boyfriend's Best Friend

My boyfriend was pretending to be poor.

I figured it out not long after we started dating. He would throw away body wash bottles the second the pump stopped working, and he dumped out the gray water I’d been saving to flush the toilet. When I caught him, he gave me this perfectly innocent look. "Aren't you just supposed to pour dirty water down the drain?"

We’d pass a street food cart selling those cheap processed sausages—three bucks for one, five for two. He’d squeeze my hand and say, "Look, babe, we're saving a whole dollar." He played the part of the thrifty boyfriend flawlessly.

I never called him out on it. Mostly because I was sitting on a secret of my own—one I had no intention of sharing.

That was, until I woke up in the middle of the night and saw him texting his buddy in the dark.

His friend had sent: Girls like her are just for fun. Let me test her out for you. I flash a little cash, and she'll come crawling.

He stared at the screen, hesitating for what felt like forever. Finally, he typed a single word: Yeah.

I just closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

The very next day, his rich little buddy strolled into the coffee shop where I worked. He slid a sleek bank card across the counter. "There’s thirty grand on this," he said. "Consider yourself bought."

Rich people always love testing the moral fiber of the poor.

But who made the rule that they're the only ones allowed to give the test?

Chapter 1

My boyfriend pretended to be broke.

I figured it out not long after we started dating. I knew that poor people and rich people live by different rules, and Caleb Whitmore had never learned ours.

I did not expose him.

I had a secret of my own, too. I slept with his best friend.

The first time I met Caleb, I was working the morning shift at a cafe in the college district. My manager brought him behind the counter in a fresh black apron and said he was our new hire.

Caleb smiled at me. “Lena.”

He was tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, and much too pretty for the hourly wage. He looked less like a barista than a model hired to improve foot traffic.

I handed him a tray. “Learn the floor first. Run drinks until the rush dies down, then I’ll teach you the register.”

He nodded, flashing a bright, obedient smile.

The apron strings pulled snug across his hips when he turned. I enjoyed the view for exactly three seconds.

Then he dumped two iced lattes across a customer’s table.

——

I reached the table before the woman could stand.

“I’m so sorry. He’s new. I’ll remake both drinks, and please choose any two pastries on us.”

Her anger loosened. “Fine.”

I wiped the table, apologized again, and gave her time to choose with her friend. When I turned around, Caleb was staring at me as if I had performed emergency surgery with a dish towel.

Half my urge to drag him into the stockroom and lecture him disappeared.

He was not lazy or rude. He was simply useless at ordinary work, the way someone might be useless at breathing underwater.

I had held enough jobs to know what counted as a good coworker. He did not grope me, steal my tips, dump his mistakes on me, or use me as a shield with the manager.

Clumsy, I could handle.

I figured hourly workers should not make life harder for each other.

So I showed him how to carry a crowded tray, steam milk without screaming it, and apologize before a customer had time to demand blood.

He listened carefully.

He still broke three glasses that week.

——

Caleb lasted six weeks.

On his final day, I was polishing mugs when he stopped beside me.

“I quit.”

“Okay.”

He blinked, plainly wounded by my lack of devastation.

I tried again. “Hope the next job works out.”

“Thanks. For taking care of me here.”

Now he was making it sentimental, which made my first response look cold.

I set a mug upside down on the drying mat. “You’re a decent guy. Just not built for food service.”

His mouth tightened as if he had made a decision. “I’ll miss you.”

I watched him leave and wondered who had the energy to miss a former coworker.

I had started working young. People came and went so fast that most of them blurred into shapes at the edge of memory.

Caleb might last longer than the rest.

Pretty faces had unfair storage privileges in my brain.

——

A few nights later, I came off closing shift and stopped outside a convenience store with a candy stick shaped like a cigarette between my lips.

One streetlight was out. Caleb stepped from that strip of darkness and stared at my mouth.

“Do you smoke? Are you that stressed?”

I pulled out the candy. “It’s sugar. Cigarettes cause cancer, and I can’t afford cancer.”

He looked embarrassed. I put the candy back between my teeth.

“Lena,” he said. “Go out with me.”

He lowered his eyes as though asking had cost him something. Under the amber streetlight, his face looked unreal, like the lead in a glossy K-drama—improbably polished, emotionally lit, and stranded on the wrong block.

I liked his face. I liked the way he had watched me work as if competence were magic.

“Sure,” I said.

——

He looked up so quickly I almost laughed.

The truth was that people this broke do not get to need romance.

What we need is a teammate—someone to split rent, share leftovers, and keep the weight of living from pressing one person flat.

I thought Caleb needed that. He had never looked like a kid who grew up poor, no matter how earnestly he tried.

As for me, my reasons were less noble.

I liked looking at him.

I liked touching him even more.