Jessica sounded different on voicemail than she had at the party.
Less guarded.
More tired.
“Hi, Chloe. It’s Jessica. I’m sorry to contact you out of nowhere. Sarah gave me your number after I asked if there was a safe way to reach you. I debated whether I should.”
She paused.
“I think there are things you deserve to know.”
Harper sat beside me.
Neither of us spoke.
Jessica continued.
“I’m not calling because I want to make the breakup worse. And I’m definitely not calling because there’s anything between me and Liam. There isn’t.”
Another pause.
“I blocked him last night.”
I remembered his message.
Jessica blocked me. Happy now?
She went on.
“But after I left, I started thinking about conversations we’ve had over the last few months. Things he said about you. Things he said about himself. They don’t fit with what I learned at the party.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“I’d rather explain directly than leave a huge voicemail. Call me if you want. If you don’t, I understand.”
The message ended.
Harper looked at me.
“Do you want to know?”
“No.”
She nodded.
“That’s fair.”
I stared at the screen.
Then I sighed.
“Yes.”
“That’s also fair.”
I called.
Jessica answered on the second ring.
“Chloe?”
“Hi.”
“Thanks for calling.”
“You said there were things I should know.”
“Yes.”
She sounded nervous.
I appreciated that more than confidence.
It made the conversation feel less like gossip.
“I want to make one thing clear first,” she said. “I did not know you two were serious.”
“I believe you.”
“I knew you existed.”
“That part I gathered.”
“But the way Liam talked about you…”
She stopped.
“What?”
“He made it sound casual.”
I closed my eyes.
“How casual?”
“He called you someone he was seeing.”
“For two years?”
“I didn’t know it had been two years.”
My stomach turned.
Jessica continued carefully.
“He said you had recently started spending more time together because you needed somewhere to stay.”
I looked at Harper.
She could hear Jessica through the speaker now.
Harper’s face hardened.
“I moved in because Liam asked me to.”
Jessica exhaled.
“That’s what I suspected after last night.”
“When did he tell you this?”
“A few months ago.”
“How many?”
“Maybe four.”
I calculated.
Two months after I had moved in.
The same period when Liam had started mentioning Jessica more frequently.
He had described their coffees as occasional.
Harmless.
I kept my voice steady.
“What else did he say?”
Jessica hesitated.
“A lot of it seemed normal at the time.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“He said you were pushing for more commitment than he wanted.”
My throat tightened.
“That’s interesting.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. Keep going.”
“He said you wanted your name on the lease and were talking about marriage.”
“I never asked about marriage.”
“Okay.”
“I never asked to be added to the lease either. We discussed it once because renewal is coming up.”
Jessica went quiet.
“That changes the context.”
“What context?”
She breathed out.
“Why he started contacting me more.”
Harper sat forward.
I said, “How much more?”
Jessica answered slowly.
“We used to talk maybe once or twice a year.”
That surprised me.
Liam had always described Jessica as a long-standing close friend.
“What changed?”
“He messaged me in May.”
May.
I remembered the month.
I had moved into his apartment in April.
“He said he’d been thinking about the past.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“What exactly does that mean?”
“He asked if I ever wondered whether we’d ended things too quickly.”
Harper closed her eyes.
I stared at the floor.
Jessica rushed to add, “I shut it down.”
“I’m not blaming you.”
“I told him we broke up for a reason.”
“What reason?”
She paused.
“That might be useful for you to know too.”
I leaned back.
“Tell me.”
“When Liam and I dated, he hated feeling like he wasn’t the center of a relationship.”
The wording was so precise I almost laughed.
Jessica continued.
“At first it felt romantic. He wanted to do everything together. He wanted constant contact. He remembered every detail.”
I knew that Liam.
The early version.
Good-morning messages.
Unexpected lunches.
Flowers without occasion.
“He made me feel chosen,” Jessica said.
My chest tightened.
“Yes.”
“You know.”
“I know.”
Her voice softened.
“Then once he felt secure, it changed.”
I stared at the kitchen wall.
“What changed?”
“Everything became proof of whether I cared enough. If I wanted a night alone, I was distant. If I disagreed with him in public, I embarrassed him. If I spent time with friends, I was prioritizing them.”
Harper looked at me.
I looked away.
Jessica continued.
“He was never physically threatening. I want to be careful about that.”
“Same.”
“But every disagreement became exhausting.”
“Yes.”
“You’d start with one issue and end two hours later defending your entire personality.”
I closed my eyes.
“Yes.”
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Jessica finally said, “That’s why I left.”
“Did he understand?”
“No.”
A sad laugh escaped her.
“He told everyone I had commitment issues.”
That sounded painfully familiar.
“What did he tell you about us recently?”
“He said you were pressuring him.”
“For what?”
“Marriage. A house. Kids.”
I thought about Friday night.
Liam sitting on the floor eating noodles.
Maybe we should get a townhouse.
Especially if we ever have kids.
My stomach twisted.
Those ideas had been his.
Yet to Jessica, they had become evidence of my pressure.
“He said you were trying to lock him down,” Jessica added.
I rubbed my forehead.
“Did he say he wanted to get back together with you?”
“Not directly.”
“What does that mean?”
“He kept creating opportunities for me to say I missed him.”
I almost smiled.
That was exactly Liam’s style.
Not a proposition.
An invitation for someone else to make one.
“What kind of opportunities?”
“He’d bring up old trips. Old jokes. Places we used to go. Then he’d say things like, ‘Funny how easy things were back then.’”
Harper mouthed, Wow.
Jessica continued.
“He asked whether I was seeing anyone.”
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“I have a boyfriend.”
That surprised me.
“Did Liam know?”
“Yes.”
“Before Saturday?”
“Absolutely.”
I stared at the phone.
Liam had invited his ex-girlfriend, whom he knew was in another relationship, then behaved as though their shared history carried some romantic ambiguity.
Jessica said, “Ethan couldn’t come Saturday because he was working.”
“Did Liam invite him?”
A pause.
“No.”
“Did he know you might bring him?”
“He told me it was a small gathering and space was tight.”
I almost laughed.
Thirty people had been invited.
Jessica must have heard it in my breathing.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I figured that out last night too.”
“Why did you come?”
“I thought Liam was trying to be genuinely friendly.”
That hurt in an unexpected way.
Not because I believed something had happened between them.
Because Liam had created two different realities and placed us both inside them.
To me, Jessica was his important ex whom I needed to tolerate maturely.
To Jessica, I was an inconvenient woman temporarily occupying his apartment.
He had arranged the information so each of us saw the situation through the version most useful to him.
“What happened after you left last night?” I asked.
Jessica hesitated.
“He called me.”
“When?”
“Before I got home.”
“What did he say?”
“That you manipulated the party.”
I closed my eyes.
“He said you had been planning to humiliate him.”
“How?”
“He didn’t explain.”
“Of course.”
“He said you were jealous of me and wanted me to reject him publicly so you could prove something.”
Harper mouthed, That is insane.
Jessica continued.
“I told him that didn’t make sense.”
“What did he say?”
“He got angry.”
“At you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That I owed him more loyalty than that.”
I opened my eyes.
“Loyalty.”
“That word exactly.”
She sounded disgusted.
“He said after everything we had been through, I should have understood what he meant at the party instead of making him look stupid.”
I imagined Liam in the empty apartment, surrounded by leftover food and decorations, calling Jessica to demand that she reinterpret his behavior in his favor.
“What did you do?”
“I told him not to contact me again.”
“That’s when you blocked him.”
“Yes.”
Harper squeezed my shoulder.
Jessica continued.
“There’s one more thing.”
My body tensed.
“What?”
“I almost didn’t tell you because I don’t know whether it matters.”
“After everything else, I’d rather know.”
“In June, Liam asked me if I’d ever consider trying again.”
The room became silent.
My heartbeat slowed strangely.
Not faster.
Slower.
“He asked directly?”
“Almost.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t remember every word.”
“That’s okay.”
“He said something like, if circumstances were different, could I imagine us giving it another chance.”
I stared ahead.
“What circumstances?”
“He didn’t say.”
“You told him no?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want him back.”
The directness helped.
“I told him I was happy with Ethan and that our relationship ended for reasons that hadn’t changed.”
“What did Liam say?”
“He said he understood.”
Jessica paused.
“Then he told me he’d only been curious.”
Of course.
A test that became a joke when rejected.
A confession converted into nothing.
I stood and walked toward the window.
Outside, porch lights glowed down the street.
“Did he ever mention me during that conversation?”
“No.”
That was the answer I expected.
It still hurt.
“Chloe?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have noticed something was off.”
“That wasn’t your job.”
Neither of us spoke for several seconds.
Then Jessica said, “There’s something else I want to say.”
“Okay.”
“What happened last night was familiar.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“What do you mean?”
“The way he made your reaction the problem.”
I looked toward Harper.
Jessica continued.
“I saw myself in you.”
The sentence landed deeper than everything else.
“I’m not saying our relationships were identical,” she added quickly. “And I don’t know what yours was like privately.”
“You know more than I wish you did.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
She took a breath.
“I stayed with him a year longer than I should have because I kept believing that if I explained myself more clearly, he would finally understand.”
My throat tightened.
“Yes.”
“He understood.”
I went still.
Jessica’s voice became quieter.
“That was the part I didn’t understand until after I left. He understood. He just didn’t agree that my feelings should matter more than what he wanted.”
I sat down again.
Harper watched my face.
Jessica continued.
“I don’t know if that helps.”
“It does.”
“Good.”
We spoke a few minutes longer.
Nothing dramatic.
She gave me Ethan’s name.
I told her I was staying with a friend.
She apologized again for coming to the party.
I told her again that she had nothing to apologize for.
Before we hung up, Jessica said, “If Liam tells you I chased him or encouraged anything, I didn’t.”
“I believe you.”
“I have messages if you ever need them.”
That word caught me.
Need.
“I hope I don’t.”
“So do I.”
We ended the call.
I placed the phone on the table.
Harper waited.
I stared at nothing.
Finally she asked, “What are you thinking?”
I let out a breath.
“That I spent two years trying to become easier to love.”
Harper said nothing.
“And he spent at least four months telling another woman I was difficult.”
My phone lit up.
Another email from Liam.
The subject line read:
Last chance to fix this privately.
I looked at Harper.
Then I opened it.
The first line said:
If you keep talking to people behind my back, don’t blame me for telling them the truth about what you’ve been like.
I read the sentence twice.
Then I felt something inside me settle.
Not fear.
Not rage.
Clarity.
Liam believed truth was whatever version he reached first.
And for the first time since we met, I had no intention of helping him write mine.
Click here to continue reading: PART 9: Liam Threatened to Tell His Version First, but the Messages Jessica Saved Made His Next Move Much Harder to Control
Liam Gave Me One Rule for Our Housewarming, and His Confidence Made My Decision Easier Than He Knew
Part 8 of 35
