The Boyfriend Pact

Chapter 1: The Liar's Table

The text from an unknown number arrived at 7:43 on a Tuesday evening, just as Annie Malone was debating whether to order the pad see ew or the drunken noodles.

*Hi. This is going to sound strange, but are you dating Keith Brady? I think we need to talk.*

Annie stared at the message for a full thirty seconds, her thumb hovering over the screen. She was sitting cross-legged on her couch in her apartment in East Austin, still wearing her work badge lanyard because she'd been too tired to take it off. The TV was playing a true crime documentary she'd already seen twice. Her cat, Byte, was asleep on the arm of the sofa, one paw dangling.

She typed back: *Who is this?*

The response came fast. *My name is Priya Lawson. I'm a graphic designer. I've been seeing Keith for about six weeks. I just found out there might be someone else. Maybe two someone elses.*

Annie's stomach dropped, but not in the dramatic, soap-opera way she might have expected. It was more like the feeling of stepping off a curb you didn't realize was there—a sudden lurch, then the disorienting realization that the ground wasn't where you thought it was.

She and Keith had been dating for two months. Two months of weekend brunches at Jo's Coffee, of him texting her good morning with a little sun emoji, of him telling her she was the first person in a long time who actually *got* him. Two months of her cautiously, carefully letting someone in.

*How did you get my number?* Annie typed.

*Keith left his phone unlocked at my place. I know that sounds terrible. But I saw the messages and I couldn't just pretend I didn't. There's a third woman too. Her name is Tamara.*

Annie set her phone down on the couch cushion and pressed both hands against her face. Byte opened one eye, assessed the situation, and went back to sleep.

She picked the phone back up.

*Where do you want to meet?*

---

They met the next evening at a coffee shop on South Congress that Priya had suggested—neutral territory, she'd called it. Annie arrived first and chose a corner table where she could see the door, a habit she'd developed from years of thinking about security, both digital and personal.

Priya walked in at exactly six o'clock. She was tall, with dark hair pulled back in a low bun, wearing a printed blouse that Annie immediately recognized as the kind of effortlessly stylish thing she herself could never pull off. She carried a leather portfolio bag over one shoulder and had the slightly shell-shocked expression of someone who hadn't slept well.

"Annie?" she said, and her voice was steadier than Annie had expected.

"That's me."

Priya sat down across from her and placed her phone on the table between them like evidence. "Tamara's on her way. She teaches at Crockett High—she had to wait for a parent conference to end."

"Okay." Annie wrapped her hands around her iced coffee. "So. How much do you know?"

"I know he's been seeing all three of us since at least January. I know he told me he wasn't on any dating apps anymore. And I know he uses the same pet name for all of us, which is honestly the part that makes me the angriest."

"Let me guess. 'Beautiful'?"

Priya closed her eyes. "Beautiful."

"God."

Tamara Fitzgerald arrived twelve minutes later, slightly out of breath, wearing a Crockett Eagles lanyard and carrying a tote bag with a stack of ungraded papers visible at the top. She was shorter than both of them, with close-cropped natural hair and the kind of direct eye contact that suggested she did not suffer fools.

"Which one of you is which?" she said, pulling out a chair.

"Annie. Cybersecurity."

"Priya. Graphic design."

Tamara sat down heavily. "Tamara. Tenth-grade English. And I am going to kill him."

What followed was two hours of comparing notes that felt like assembling a jigsaw puzzle where the picture kept getting worse. Keith had met Annie on a dating app in January. He'd met Priya through a mutual friend at a gallery opening two weeks later. Tamara, he'd approached at a bookstore in early February—the same bookstore, Annie realized with a sick feeling, where she and Keith had gone on their third date.

He'd told Annie he was a marketing consultant who traveled frequently. He'd told Priya the same thing. He'd told Tamara he was in sales, which at least had the virtue of being closer to the truth—he sold lies.

The schedule was almost impressive in its logistics. Annie got Tuesdays and Saturdays. Priya got Wednesdays and Fridays. Tamara got Mondays and Thursdays. Sundays, apparently, were Keith's day off from being a terrible person.

"He literally had a spreadsheet life," Tamara said flatly. "I teach organizational skills to fifteen-year-olds and even I'm a little impressed."

"Don't be impressed," Annie said. "Be furious."

"Oh, I'm both. I contain multitudes."

Priya had been scrolling through her phone, lining up screenshots of Keith's messages to all three of them. The same compliments, recycled. The same stories about his childhood dog. The same "I've never felt this way before" delivered with copy-paste precision.

"So what do we do?" Priya asked.

Annie had been thinking about this since the first text. Her instinct—the cybersecurity analyst instinct, the one that mapped threat vectors and planned incident responses—said to cut the connection cleanly. Block him. Delete his number. Move on. Minimize exposure.

But there was another instinct, older and less professional, that came from her grandmother in Trinidad, who had raised her with the principle that you never let someone disrespect you and walk away thinking they got away with it.

"He's at Sidecar tonight," Annie said. "He told me he had a work dinner, but I'm guessing—"

"He told me the same thing," Priya said.

"Same," Tamara said.

They looked at each other.

"So we go to Sidecar," Annie said.

---

Sidecar was a cocktail bar on Rainey Street, the kind of place with Edison bulbs and overpriced old-fashioneds and a crowd that skewed young professional. Keith loved it because it made him feel important. Annie had always found it a little try-hard, but she'd never said so because she'd been too busy trying to be the kind of easygoing, low-maintenance girlfriend who didn't have opinions about cocktail bars.

That, she realized as they walked through the door, was over.

Keith was at a high-top table near the back, nursing a bourbon and laughing at something on his phone. He was handsome in the way that Annie now understood was part of the problem—the kind of handsome that made you want to believe whatever he was saying. Dark hair, easy smile, a jawline that belonged on a dating app profile, which was, of course, exactly where she'd found it.

He looked up and saw Annie first. His smile brightened. Then he saw Priya behind her, and the smile flickered. Then Tamara stepped out from behind Priya, and the smile died entirely.

"Hey, Keith," Annie said. "Work dinner going well?"

The next four minutes were, in retrospect, some of the most satisfying of Annie's life. She didn't yell. None of them yelled. They simply stood in a calm semicircle around his table and laid out what they knew, fact by fact, like a prosecution presenting evidence. Keith tried to interrupt three times. Tamara shut him down each time with the practiced authority of a woman who managed thirty teenagers daily.

"You don't get to talk right now," Tamara told him. "You've been talking for months. It's our turn."

Keith's face cycled through several expressions—surprise, then a flicker of charm as he tried to smile his way out, then something like anger when he realized it wasn't working, and finally a sullen, cornered look that Annie recognized as the face of someone who had been caught and knew it.

"This is insane," he muttered. "You're all being—"

"Honest?" Priya said. "Yeah, it's a new experience for you. I can see why it's confusing."

A woman at the next table had her phone out and was very obviously recording. Annie noticed but didn't care. Keith noticed too, and cared very much.

"Can we not do this here?" he said, lowering his voice.

"You chose the venue," Annie said. "You chose all the venues. You chose the restaurants and the schedules and the lies. You don't get to choose how this ends."

They left him sitting at the table with his bourbon and his phone and the stares of everyone within earshot. Outside, the March air was warm and smelled like grilled meat from the food trucks down the street. Annie's hands were shaking, but she felt lighter than she had in weeks.

"I need a drink," Tamara said. "A real one. Not at that place."

"I know a spot," Priya said.

They ended up at a dive bar on East Sixth with sticky tables and a jukebox that only played country music from before 1990. They ordered a pitcher of margaritas and sat in a booth and talked until midnight—not about Keith anymore, but about themselves. About Priya's dream of starting her own design studio. About Tamara's students and how one of them had just gotten a full scholarship to UT. About Annie's grandmother, who had come to Texas from Port of Spain at twenty-two with a suitcase and a degree in mathematics and had built a life through sheer, stubborn brilliance.

By the time they left, Annie had two new contacts in her phone and the unfamiliar, fragile feeling of having been truly seen by people who had no reason to be kind to her but were anyway.

The video hit the internet the next morning.