She Forgot I Brought the Tape

Right before I swallowed a lethal dose of sleeping pills, an online forum prompt caught my eye. "What was almost a fairy tale in your life, if not for one small thing?" The top-voted comment read: "Not mine, but I witnessed it firsthand." "My college roommate insisted on a strictly sexless, waiting-until-marriage relationship with her gorgeous, six-foot-two boyfriend. She acted so smug in our dorm, bragging about how completely devoted he was to her boundaries." "So, at our senior graduation banquet, I slipped something into his drink. Afterward, I told everyone he finally snapped from her puritanical games and threw himself at me." "He’s my husband now. We have a three-bedroom house in the suburbs, two cars, savings, and a beautiful little girl." Someone in the replies asked: "What happened to the roommate?" "I made sure everyone knew he left her because she was frigid. Her parents completely turned on her, humiliated by the fallout. She spiraled into severe clinical depression. Honestly, she’s so fragile she’ll probably end up killing herself any day now." I stared at the avatar. That distinct, pastel profile picture. My fingertips went numb. In the final, suffocating moments of my life, my mind spun backward: "What if I hadn't taken him to that banquet five years ago? How would our lives have unfolded?" When I opened my eyes, the darkness didn't take me. Instead, I was sitting on the edge of a campus apartment bed—on the exact afternoon of that banquet. 1. When consciousness rushed back into my lungs, Drew was sitting right beside me. I looked at him, and hot tears spilled over before I could stop them. "Willa? Hey, what's wrong?" Drew leaned in, his brows knit with genuine alarm. His thumb reached out to catch a tear before it hit my collarbone. "Why are you looking at me like that? Did something happen?" My lips parted, but before my vocal cords could produce a sound, Kayla’s voice chimed in from the doorway. "Are you two still sitting around?" She leaned against the doorframe, adjusting the strap of her satin slip dress. "You need to finish getting ready. The formal starts in twenty minutes. It’s the senior banquet—the whole cohort is going to be there. Don't be the couple that holds up the group photos." A sharp jolt tore through my chest. The forum post. The casual cruelty of her words. In my past life, this was the night it happened. She had slipped the sedative into his glass when my back was turned, setting the trap that dismantled both of our futures. "If we don't go," the thought crystallized in my mind, "she can't touch him." I stood up, my voice steady and cold enough to surprise myself. "Drew and I aren't going tonight." The glossy smile on Kayla’s face flickered, then froze. "Excuse me?" "I said we're skipping the banquet." Drew looked up at me, clearly bewildered by the sudden change of plans, but he didn't contradict me for a second. Without missing a beat, he stood up beside me and looked at Kayla. "Yeah. Something came up. We’re sitting this one out." Kayla’s expression curdled instantly. "Willa, are you out of your mind? The faculty paid for the private dining room. The class president spent weeks organizing the slide show and reservations. If you want to throw a tantrum and stay behind, that’s on you, but why are you dragging Drew into your little drama?" I stared her down, unblinking. "He’s my boyfriend. If I'm staying home, he stays with me." Kayla let out a brittle, dramatic laugh, looking around as if searching for an invisible audience. "Drew is a human being, Willa, not a piece of personal property. Don't you think you micromanage him enough already? If someone offers him a drink at a party, you say no. If the guys invite him out to a bar, you don't let him go. And now you’re making decisions about his senior formal?" Drew’s jaw tightened. "Kayla. Watch how you talk to her." Almost on cue, Kayla’s eyes welled with practiced moisture. "Watch how I talk? Drew, I’m just speaking up for you! You're an incredible guy. Why do you let her walk all over you like a lapdog?" A couple of other seniors passing in the hallway paused, peeking through the open door. Feeding on the subtle audience, she pressed on, her voice trembling with synthetic concern. "Willa, I’m telling you this as your roommate, as someone who cares about you. You can't be this controlling. A real relationship doesn't survive on an iron leash." I offered her a cool, thin smile. "Kayla, why are you so invested in what my boyfriend does? Are you into him or something?" Her face drained of color. "Don't be ridiculous! I just can't stand watching you treat him like an accessory!" "Then shut your mouth and mind your own business." The bluntness hit her like a slap. Her mouth opened, then snapped shut. Trembling with theatrical indignation, she pulled out her phone and fired off a voice note directly into the senior cohort’s group chat. Her voice cracked on the recording, dripping with sweet victimization: "Hey everyone... I just tried to remind Willa not to be late for the formal, but she got really upset with me out of nowhere. She said neither she nor Drew will be attending. I honestly don't know what I did to make her so mad, but please don't wait up on them..." Within seconds, the group chat began buzzing with rapid-fire pings. "Seriously? Still playing the high-maintenance diva on our last night together?" "Does she expect the department chair to personally beg her to come?" "It’s fine if she wants to pout at home, but why does she always leash Drew? The guy has zero freedom." "Her control issues are exhausting." Kayla turned her phone screen toward me, wearing an expression that blended mock pity with barely concealed malice. "Look, Willa. Everyone is asking why you're ditching. Maybe you'd like to explain it yourself?" I stared at the screen, at the venom spilling out from people who barely knew me, and a quiet realization settled deep in my bones. Running away wouldn't end this. If I dodged tonight, she would simply wait for another party, another gathering, another vulnerability. Parasites don't stop feeding because you close a door once; they simply wait for a window to crack open. I looked directly into her eyes, letting a faint, unbothered smile reach my lips. "No need to explain in the chat," I said softly. "I'm coming. And Drew is coming with me." Kayla blinked, caught off balance, before her glossy mask quickly slid back into place. "Good. That’s much better." I watched the subtle, predatory relief wash over her features. She still believed tonight was her night. She was about to find out how wrong she was. 2. The Uber ride downtown was smothered in quiet tension. Drew sat beside me in the back seat, the passing streetlights casting rhythmic amber shadows across his sharp jawline. Slowly, carefully, he slid his hand over mine, his fingers curling around my knuckles. "Willa," he murmured, his voice low enough that the driver wouldn't hear. "What are you afraid of?" I turned to look at him. My chest ached with the urge to unload the entire horrifying truth—the years of ruin, the whispers, the pills, the slow, agonizing erosion of my soul. But I knew how insane it would sound. A girl claiming to have returned from the dead to stop a roofie. Instead, I tightened my grip on his hand, looking straight into his dark, steady eyes. "Stay away from Kayla tonight," I whispered. "Far away." Drew’s brow furrowed, but he didn't laugh or dismiss me. "Do not eat or drink anything she hands you," I continued, every word deliberate. "Not a cocktail, not a glass of water. Even if she tells you I sent her to bring it to you, do not touch it." He didn't demand explanations. He didn't ask if I was losing my grip on reality. He just held my gaze with absolute gravity, nodding once. "Understood. I promise." The formal was hosted in the grand third-floor ballroom of the downtown hotel. The moment the double doors swung open and we stepped into the chandelier-lit room, the low murmur of chatter shifted toward us. "Well, look who finally graced us with her presence," a guy from our marketing seminar called out, swirling a glass of bourbon. "And here I thought Drew had been locked in the dorm closet for the night." "Seriously, Willa," another joined in with a smirk, "let the guy breathe once in a while." In my previous life, I would have shrunk back, offering an awkward, apologetic laugh to smooth the tension. Now, I held my chin up and met the speaker’s eyes dead-on. "My boyfriend hasn't complained once. Since when do you speak for him?" The guy’s smirk vanished into an irritated scowl. The surrounding conversation died down into an uneasy silence. Kayla materialised instantly from the crowd, playing the role of gracious diplomat. "Come on, guys, it was just a joke! Willa, it’s our final celebration together. Let’s not bring all this bad energy into the room." She slipped an arm around mine, her painted nails deliberately digging into the tender flesh of my forearm through my sleeve. I violently wrenched my arm free. "Don't touch me." Kayla stumbled back a step as if she’d been struck, and instantly, tears sprang to her eyes. "Willa! Why are you putting hands on me?" A girl standing near her immediately rushed to steady Kayla by the shoulder. "Willa, what the hell is wrong with you? Kayla was just trying to keep the peace. You didn't have to shove her!" I held up my wrist, where four distinct crescent-shaped red indentations were already swelling against my pale skin. "She was pinching me. Are you blind, or just choosing to ignore it?" The girl rolled her eyes with theatrical disgust. "Oh please, nobody pinched you! We all saw you shove her. Just because you think you’re better than everyone doesn't give you the right to act like a monster." Drew stepped forward, putting his broad frame between them and me. "Say another word to her," he said, his voice dropping into a register so dark and cold the entire table froze. "Go ahead. Try." The girl swallowed hard and backed away. Seeing the dynamic slip away from her script, Kayla dabbed at the corner of her eyes with a napkin and reached for two glasses of sparkling sangria from a passing server's tray. "Let’s just move past it," she said, her voice small, trembling, entirely innocent. "It’s our senior night. Let’s not ruin it. Drew... let me get you a drink. Just to say thank you. For four years of being such a great friend to everyone, and for always taking such good care of Willa." She extended the glass toward him, her smile wide, open, guileless. "It’s barely alcoholic. Just one sip to celebrate." Drew didn't even look down at the glass. "No." Kayla’s smile twitched at the edges. "Drew, literally everyone is having a drink. Rejecting a toast from a friend is kind of insulting, don't you think?" Before Drew could speak, I stepped in front of him. "Didn't you hear him? He said no." Kayla sighed heavily, tilting her head with an expression of performative sympathy. "Is Willa not letting you drink, Drew? Look, I live with her. I know how controlling she can be. It must be so exhausting, walking on eggshells every single day." A guy standing nearby chuckled into his beer. "Man, Drew, you really need her permission to take a sip of punch? Come on, bro." "Seriously," another girl chimed in. "It’s a friendly toast. Willa, stop acting like his warden." I didn't dignify them with an argument. I simply reached out, tapped the rim of the glass in Kayla’s hand, and firmly pushed it back toward her chest. "He doesn't want it." Kayla’s lower lip trembled violently. "Willa, I don't know what I did to make you hate me so much, but if you want an apology, I'll apologize right now! Just please stop taking it out on everyone else. I never meant any harm." The pitiful performance worked like a charm on the crowd around us. "Alright, that’s enough, Willa," one of the guys snapped, grabbing a fresh glass of whiskey and aggressively stepping toward Drew. "You’ve made your scene. Drink up, man. Be your own man for once." He reached out to slap a heavy, patronizing hand on Drew’s shoulder. I smacked the guy's arm away with enough force to send him stumbling into the edge of a mahogany table. "Back off. Don't touch him." The guy’s face went crimson with humiliation. "You crazy bitch—" Drew lunged forward, his collar taut, eyes blazing. "Finish that sentence and see what happens to your teeth." The guy shrank back, completely silenced by the raw violence in Drew’s posture. Kayla began crying harder, shaking her head. "Stop, please, everyone stop! It’s all my fault. Let’s just drop it..." In the ensuing commotion, one of Kayla’s close friends pretended to stumble backward into me. The entire contents of her cranberry cocktail splashed across my chest and down the front of my silk dress, cold and intensely sticky against my skin. The girl gasped, covering her mouth with exaggerated shock. "Oh gosh! I'm so clumsy. I’m so sorry!" I gritted my teeth, breathing through the fury, and turned to Drew. "I need to clean this off in the restroom," I said, keeping my voice low and urgent. "Do not touch anything Kayla gives you. Stay right where you are. Do not leave this floor until I come back." Drew looked at the mess on my dress, his jaw set, and gave a firm nod. "I won't move." I hurried to the restroom, tearing off paper towels to scrub at the staining liquid. I was only halfway through when the lights flickered and abruptly went out. The entire venue plunged into darkness. From the ballroom, screams and confused laughter echoed down the hallway. A circuit breaker blown, or something far more deliberate. A cold, visceral dread pooled in my gut. I dropped the paper towels and sprinted into the dark corridor. By the time emergency exit lights flickered to life, the ballroom was a chaotic mess of flashlight beams and drunk students. I pushed through the crowd, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Drew was gone. And so was Kayla. 3. Panic turned my veins to ice, but I forced my legs to move. I pulled out my phone with trembling hands and dialed 911 without hesitation. "I need police dispatched to the downtown Grand Regency Hotel," I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the ambient noise. "My boyfriend has been drugged and lured into an upper-floor room under false pretenses. It is an active kidnapping and assault attempt." Several classmates heard me on the call. Their whispers turned into a frantic tail as they followed behind me. "Wait, Drew and Kayla are both missing?" "Look at Willa's face—she’s completely unhinged." "Did she just call the cops? Over what? What is going on?" I ignored the noise, checking the elevators, the stairs, running through the hotel floors based on the fragments of memories and the whispers from five years ago. When I reached the sixteenth floor, the faint sound of a woman’s frantic voice drifted from behind the heavy wooden door of Room 1608. I threw my full body weight against the door handle, kicking the bottom edge with everything I had. The latch gave way with a sickening crack, and the door swung wide. The scene inside looked like a staged disaster. A lamp lay knocked over on the carpet. The bedsheets were pulled half off the mattress. Kayla sat curled in the far corner of the bed, one strap of her silk dress torn and dangling off her bare shoulder, sobbing so violently her chest heaved. Drew lay sprawled across the edge of the mattress, his eyes shut, his breathing shallow and irregular—completely unconscious. A jagged pain tore through my ribs. "Drew!" I rushed toward the bed, desperate to check his pulse, but Kayla suddenly lunged forward, her nails bared, screaming at the top of her lungs. "Don't touch him! Get away from him!" She pointed a shaking, tear-stained finger at Drew’s limp body, her voice cracking in a shriek designed to carry down the hall: "He... he tried to rape me!" The students who had gathered in the hallway gasped, stepping back into the doorway, their expressions morphing from curiosity to absolute shock. The room went tomb-silent for a heartbeat before the murmurs exploded. "Holy shit... Drew seemed like such a stand-up guy." "I told you. Men who get starved of physical intimacy always snap eventually." "She spent four years holding out on him, driving him crazy with her purity nonsense. Now look what happened." I stood like a fortress between the crowd and the bed, my voice flat, cold, and dead. "He didn't touch you." That single sentence seemed to shatter whatever fragile restraint Kayla was performing. She scrambled off the bed, clutching her torn bodice, sobbing hysterically toward the open door. "Willa, are you insane? Are you really defending him right now?" she screamed. "Do you think I tore my own clothes? Do you think I dragged myself here to frame him? Would any woman in the world destroy her own reputation just to lie about this?" The onlookers immediately rallied behind her tears. "Willa, have some goddamn human decency!" "Look at her! Kayla is traumatized, and you're still protecting him?" "Just because he’s hot doesn't make him immune to being a predator!" One of the guys pulled out his phone, holding the camera directly in my face. "Take a good look, everyone. Here’s the self-righteous Willa, the girl who refused to touch her boyfriend for four years, now covering up his crimes the second he assaults someone else." I snapped my head toward the lens, my eyes burning. "Put the phone down." He sneered. "Scared of the truth coming out? You should be." On the bed behind me, Drew groaned. His eyelids fluttered open, heavy and unfocused. He pushed himself up on one elbow, swaying violently from the vertigo. I instantly reached down, wrapping my arm around his torso to steady him. Drew blinked through the haze, his gaze slowly registering the crowd of hostile faces, the fallen lamp, and Kayla weeping in the corner. His face went chalk-white. He turned to me, his voice hoarse, panicking. "Willa... Willa, listen to me. I don't know what happened. A server told me you passed out upstairs... I came up, took a sip of water, and everything went black. I swear to God, I didn't touch her." Kayla’s sobs grew shrill. "Of course you'd say that! You told me she drove you out of your mind! You said you couldn't take her coldness anymore!" Drew’s confusion instantly crystallized into pure, venomous rage. "I never said a word to you." "Then explain this!" Kayla wailed, gesturing at her torn dress and bare shoulder. "Explain why I'm like this!" The voices in the doorway grew louder, crueler. "Own up to it, Drew!" "Don't play the victim, Willa, you drove him to this!" I looked at the sea of self-righteous faces, then at Kayla’s trembling, triumphant eyes. A slow, quiet smile broke across my face. "Drew," I said softly, my voice carrying over the din. "Take out the recorder." Every shout in the room abruptly died. Kayla’s breathless sobbing caught violently in her throat. Drew nodded, his expression completely calm now. He reached into the inner breast pocket of his tailored jacket, pulled out a sleek, matte-black digital voice recorder, and pressed the playback button. The second the audio started playing, the color drained completely from Kayla’s face.