He Cheated with the Girl Next Door

*"Missing you already... can't wait to see you tomorrow."*

*"That little café we went to was perfect. Our secret spot now?"*

The steam from Nathan's shower filled the bathroom as I sat on our bed, staring at the phone as it buzzed incessantly on the nightstand.

It wasn’t my phone, nor were they my messages.

It was Nathan—my fiancé’s. Truth was: we’d been engaged for almost a year.

And here were these messages.

How funny.

I knew I shouldn’t look. I should give some respect to my fiancé’s privacy.

But the messages just kept flooding in, and every single time a new message arrived it lit up the screen once and I was forced to have a glimpse of its content.

Missed you. Why not reply. Don’t leave me alone. Babe. Blablabla.

I took a deep breath and took the phone anyway.

The messages were all from Chloe. Our neighbor.

*"Hope your girlfriend wouldn’t mind. I mean we didn’t meant to hurt her, right?"*

My hands trembled as I scrolled up all his chat history, finding weeks of exchanges I'd never known existed.

Flirtatious messages, inside jokes, plans to meet when I was at work.

One specific line from 2 hours ago made my blood run cold:

*"She's so naive, isn't she? Poor little small-town girl has no idea what's happening right under her nose."*

Nathan's response: *"Let's keep it that way for now."*

The phone slipped from my numb fingers, clattering onto the hardwood floor. The shower was still running. He had no idea I'd seen everything.

When Nathan emerged twenty minutes later, towel wrapped around his waist, hair still dripping, I was sitting exactly where he'd left me. But everything had changed.

"Hey, babe." He smiled that easy, familiar smile that had charmed me for nine years. "You look pale. Everything okay?"

I held up his phone. "We need to talk."

His face went through a series of micro-expressions—surprise, panic, then something that looked almost like relief. "Emily, I can explain—"

"Explain what, exactly?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Explain how you've been meeting Chloe behind my back for weeks? Explain how she calls me naive and you agree? Explain how you have a secret spot together?"

Nathan sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, suddenly looking older than his twenty-seven years. "It's not what it looks like."

"Then what is it, Nathan? Because it looks like you're having an affair with our neighbor."

"It's not an affair!" He ran his hands through his wet hair, droplets scattering. "Chloe's going through a rough time. Her ex left her with massive debt, she's struggling to make rent—she needed someone to talk to."

"And that someone had to be my fiancé?"

"She doesn't have anyone else, Em. She's alone in this city, just like we were when we first moved here. I was just being a good neighbor."

I stared at him, searching his face for the man I'd loved since I was eighteen. "Good neighbors don't have secret meeting spots, Nathan. Good neighbors don't call their friend's girlfriend naive behind her back."

"You're being paranoid." His voice took on that dismissive tone I'd been hearing more and more lately. "This is exactly what Chloe said would happen—that you'd get jealous and insecure if you found out I was helping her."

"She predicted this?" The words came out as a whisper. "You two discussed how I'd react?"

"Emily, you're spiraling. This is your insecurity talking, not logic." He reached for my hands, but I pulled them away. "Chloe is going through hell right now. She needs support, and I'm not going to abandon someone who needs help just because my girlfriend can't handle me having a female friend."

The casual cruelty of it hit me like a slap. "A female friend who calls me naive? Who talks about what a good actor you are? Who says poor little small-town girl?"

Nathan's jaw tightened. "You went through my entire conversation history?"

"That's what you're focusing on? My invasion of privacy, not your emotional affair?"

"It's not an affair!" He stood up abruptly, the towel nearly slipping. "God, Emily, this is exactly why I didn't tell you about helping her. I knew you'd blow it out of proportion."

"Blow it out of proportion?" I felt something dangerous rising in my chest—a fury I'd never allowed myself to feel before. "Nathan, you've been lying to me for weeks. Meeting another woman in secret. Sharing intimate conversations. Making plans behind my back. What part of that is proportional?"

"She needed someone to talk to about her problems—"

"Then why didn't you tell me? Why all the secrecy if it was so innocent?"

He was quiet for a long moment, and in that silence, I heard everything he wasn't saying.

"Because you knew it wasn't innocent," I said softly. "You knew exactly what you were doing."

"Emily—"

"We're getting married in a month, Nathan. One month. And you're having secret coffee dates with another woman, letting her call me naive, agreeing that I'm some clueless small-town girl who doesn't know what's happening in her own relationship."

He sat back down, suddenly looking defeated. "It's complicated."

"No, it's not." I stood up, surprised by how steady my legs felt. "It's actually very simple. Either you want to marry me, or you don't. Either you respect me, or you don't. Either you're committed to this relationship, or you're not."

"Of course I want to marry you. Em, you're everything to me—"

"Then prove it." The words came out harder than I intended. "Cut contact with Chloe. Completely. No more secret meetings, no more being her emotional support system, no more anything."

Nathan's face changed. Something stubborn and defensive flickered in his eyes. "I can't just abandon her when she needs help."

"But you can abandon me?"

"That's not what I'm doing."

"Isn't it?" I grabbed his phone again, scrolling to find the message that had hurt most. "Here. 'Let's keep it that way for now.' Keep what that way, Nathan? Keep me in the dark? Keep me looking like a fool?"

His phone buzzed in my hand. Another message from Chloe: *"Can't sleep. Thinking about our conversation today. You always know exactly what to say to make me feel better."*

I held the screen toward him. "Still think this is just friendship?"

Nathan looked at the message, then at me, and I saw something I'd never seen before in his eyes—not guilt, not remorse, but irritation. As if I was the problem. As if I was the one being unreasonable.

"Emily, you're making this into something it's not. Chloe is vulnerable right now, and I'm not going to kick her when she's down just because you can't handle me having compassion for someone else."

The words hung in the air between us like a challenge. And for the first time in nine years, I wondered if the man I was supposed to marry in thirty-two days was someone I even knew at all.