Season 1

Shay, Dani and I circled together in line, enjoying each other’s company just the three of us (like we had together many times before meeting up with everyone else invited along to celebrate a very excited Dani’s 25th Birthday), before Elle decided to leave her her circle with the only two boys in the group, Jason and Chris (and Char, the “just a friend”) and join us. This led to Dani joining the others and me being left to witness Elle and Shay flirting intensely while joking together and including me briefly at times, as happens when third-wheeling a pick-up attempt.

Elle was a beautiful, French girl and Dani’s current roommate, but Dani and I were roommates before them, with Shay as the property manager of the building we rented in (and neighbour across the hall). Elle and Dani were friends from their university in a different city, and she recently moved to ours. After living together for a year, Dani and I had agreed we were pleased with our set-up together and co-signed a lease renewal for another year. But, not even a week after signing, Dani asked if I would mind living with a sublet if she found one because her and Elle were looking for a cheaper rental together. I certainly did mind, I'm quite private and don't like to share my living space with strangers, so I worked out with Shay that we would cancel our renewal and I would sign a lease independently for the bachelor across the hall (almost doubling my rent, but worth it for the privacy). If I'm honest, this was the start of our friendship breakdown. Dani and I had been on and off friends since childhood, visiting each other's homes frequently and getting to know each other's families. We were always playing on the same soccer teams growing up and had a resilient type of connection that didn't need constant maintenance to stay strong, so losing touch with distance from choosing different universities didn't stop us from reconnecting when she moved back home. Personally though, I don't take lightly to betrayal, and the suddenness of Dani's change of heart on living together felt deceitful in a way that planted a seed of doubt and changed our pre-existing resiliency for me. It also made me aware of a certain controlling element to Elle's character that I hadn't been aware of previously.

Shay on the other hand, was a friend of mine from a different university in the same city we all lived in now before getting the property manager position. The unit was a beautiful, modern apartment with prime nightlife access being within walking distance of the downtown core of our humbly popular city on the coast of the country. The city was small enough that there was only a few areas with bars, all within 10 or so blocks of one another, but had a large tourist base. People were frequently revolving through the city for different reasons and durations. It was mine and Dani’s hometown, and Jason and Chris’s too, but Shay came for university where her and I played Varisty together (Elle and Dani played for another university in the same competition area, but Shay and I's school was better than Dani and Elle's, just saying). Maybe that interesting dynamic could’ve predicted how those relationships would end up now.

Eventually we had all chatted ourselves to the front of the line and started showing ID's before heading to find a table to settle into. Shay, Elle and I then went to the bar, followed by Dani, Chris and Jake. It wasn't until we were all getting served our drinks and started filing back to the table that I realized Char didn't make it inside with us. I wanted to start conversation with Jake and ask what happened to her, but was quickly pulled into a conversation with Chris. He liked pulling me into some deep conversations once he was fully drunk, I guess he was already there.

The party table quickly became chaotic as the drinks kept coming and we kept finishing them. Behaviours became less careful and people started acting with the fearless mentality alcohol seems to induce. I was the type to sit and let people come to me when I got too drunk, so Dani's invitees were coming to me frequently to chat for a bit before getting distracted and moving on again. I'm also very much an observer and enjoy people watching, and noticed Shay and Elle's flirting becoming more intense before the two girls left to the washroom together.

Shay quickly returned from the washroom and pulled me aside to gush about how her and Elle just made out. Shay had only flirted with girls at this point, but she had been open with me recently about her sexual curiosity and was very excited to have her first actual experience. I tried to put aside my personal hesitations about Elle and join in the excitement because supporting my friends has always been important to me. Shortly after Shay moved on and I returned to my comfort chair, Elle approached me to also talk about the kissing. This conversation was much different and felt more like an "information gathering" attempt from Elle on Shay with many questions about who she is and what I know about her. I wasn't sure why I felt uneasy in this conversation, but I entertained it minimally and returned to my chair again.

Chris was also periodically checking-in on me in his own playful way of tossing me insults and sarcastic banter throughout the night, often followed by a whisper in the ear from Jake. His whispers were always quick sentences and then he would start conversation with someone else before we could. I didn't know Jake that well so sometimes his whispers would take me a bit off guard, saying things like "He wants you, not Dani." or "You're clearly the hot friend.". Someone else might have taken these as compliments, but my childhood gave me a funny relationship with compliments that accidentally taught me not to trust them, and certainly not to trust anyone who thought my beauty was my only or best quality. Unfortunately for Jake, this meant that his attempts to grab my interest were going seemingly unnoticed.

Shay and Elle ended up leaving together as the night got into the early morning and Jake's younger brother ended up joining us after his own friends ended their night before he was ready to. He was 19, and very new to the bar scene, introducing a whole new energy to the table with his incoherent attempts to socialize. As soon as he entered the building he started fixating on me almost instantly. He took the seat next to me after greeting Jake and started "wheeling" (the "hip" term at the time to describe a hook-up attempt) by pointing at me, staring and winking, tapping my shoulder and arms, but again, too drunk to speak much. So this time, when Jake came for his scheduled whisper in my ear, taking his brother's seat beside me when he went to the washroom, I interrupted before he got too close saying "Your brother really seems to like me, maybe I should add him to my list...". My comment was completely ignored and the whisper that followed would change my life forever.

"Let's get a cab.".