Chapter 1: The Condom Catastrophe

A box of ultra-thin Trojans slipped out of my girlfriend’s clothes.

My hand froze, box dangling from my fingers. The silence between us was sharp enough to cut—like a credit card through packing tape. In my head, it was like a thousand snarky comments were scrolling past—a viral TikTok feed blowing up with hot takes and eye-roll emojis. I could practically hear the peanut gallery from every group chat I’d ever been in. My phone buzzed in my pocket, like the group chats were about to spill over into the room.

[Here we go, here we go. What does a box of condoms even prove? This guy is so petty.]

[It’s totally normal, okay? Friends sneak these in as a joke, and the second-string boyfriend just has to make a scene.]

[Watch him dig his own grave. Just let Natalie go to the main guy already.]

After a moment of awkward, static-filled silence, I handed the box back to Natalie, jaw tight, trying to keep my face neutral even as every muscle in my jaw went rigid.

"Your condom fell out. Don’t wait until you need it with someone else and can’t find it."

I’m allergic to latex.

My chest tightened—like the air in the room had gone sticky and hot. I never kept latex in the house. Polyurethane only, special order, tucked in my nightstand like some secret. Seeing that Trojan box felt like someone dropped a punchline in a language I didn’t speak.

Natalie looked away, biting her lip, eyes darting from mine. She tugged her sleeve down over her knuckles, cheeks burning with embarrassment. "It was Derek. He won at truth or dare and made me carry this thing for 24 hours."

The comments in my mind didn’t let up, like a group text blowing up during a family dinner.

[Isn’t it totally normal for friends to play games? Wow, the second-string boyfriend is about to act up again.]

[Why drag a boyfriend into a normal friendship?]

[At this moment, Derek is quietly heartbroken.]

I don’t like Derek.

Natalie knows this perfectly well. It’s the unspoken rule in our relationship—the one sore spot neither of us likes to prod too hard.

Back then, I was out with a friend doing man-on-the-street interviews in downtown Savannah, sweating under the Georgia sun, holding a cheap camera with duct tape over the battery cover. We were half-seriously polling strangers about internet scams for his grad project. The humid air clung to my skin; a streetcar clanged by, and the sweet scent of pralines drifted out from a nearby tourist shop.

We happened to run into Natalie and Derek holding hands. Not just walking close together—fingers actually laced, like something out of a Netflix teen drama.

We thought they were a couple, so my friend—ever the jokester—ambled over and stuck the mic under their noses.

"Ma’am, have you downloaded the government’s anti-scam app on your phone?" he deadpanned, doing his best newscaster voice.

Natalie got flustered. "No." She looked like she’d just been caught shoplifting gum at a corner store.

Before my friend could say anything else,

Derek laughed off to the side, all casual confidence. "She’d never install that. What if she can’t get to her favorite browser on her phone?" He grinned, like the king of inside jokes.

After he said that,

he instinctively tried to put his arm around Natalie’s shoulders—like it was muscle memory. But then he noticed Natalie was staring straight at me, her eyes bright and suddenly very far away.

Later on,

when Natalie kept dropping hints—like accidentally mentioning she’d always thought I looked cute with a camera—I realized they weren’t a couple at all. That whole scene had been a misunderstanding.

Derek was her best friend. The guy who knew all her Spotify playlists by heart and still remembered her favorite type of milkshake from middle school.

They ran in the same circle—a guy bestie. The kind of friendship that always makes boyfriends nervous, no matter how many times you tell yourself it’s fine.