What happened to Tyler made me paranoid that it would happen to me, too. I chose to stay away from girls who I felt “sought too much attention”. You know the type – girls with clearly marked daddy issues gaged into their ears from their dyed pink hair to their visible tattoos to their acting careers to their penchant for talking in front of a mic in front of strangers every night to their long Facebook rants. Anyone who sought too much validation was marked with a giant red X to me. They were walking warning symbols. I would be smarter than Tyler. I would learn from his mistake of dating an aspiring writer who used him for material. I would never be accused.

Furthermore I always wanted to make sure anyone I slept with would be into it. I made sure she consented. Not in a creepy way, but I rarely just started taking clothes off without asking her if I could. Without asking her if she wanted me to get a condom. Without asking her where I should finish. And always – always – I followed up the next day with a text. A simple “that was really wonderful last night”. Even in the occasions where I never saw her again, I still did that.

In some ways, Tyler made us all be better gentlemen. We were all so careful. He made sure we knew that it could happen to us if we weren’t. When #metoo hit, it made everything much more tense for us.

Tyler’s “accuser” sought attention before the movement and now she was weirdly quiet during it. It just made us disbelieve her even more.

Here’s what we knew. Tyler and Miranda went out for about two months and he was very nice to her despite her penchant for talking too much and being a self-righteous bitch. They had had sex a number of times. And apparently she dumped him – totally broke his heart – used him for sex one last time and then couldn’t let him have his heartbreak. She just had to come out months later and accuse him of rape. She said she broke it off with him and he got mad at her and forced sex. Please. Almost everyone has had a break-up go poorly and end in a hook-up. It’s messy, sure, but it isn’t rape. She says he held her down and took off her pants. That he never even took off her shirt like that’s supposed to be proof of his conduct.

She said he went inside her and that he didn’t stop until she was crying hysterically. She wrote – yes, wrote in an online blog as if that’s credible – that she started crying because she realized what was happening and knew in the moment that no one would believe her. She thought the only way she could make it stop would be to cry loudly in case his upstairs neighbors heard through his notoriously thin walls.

We still wonder how much that stupid feminist blog paid her to write this.

“She broke up with me,” Tyler told us over and over when this was brought up. He was often the one to bring it up, incredulous that she had the nerve to seek attention in this extreme way. “She broke my heart and then wanted to play victim. It’s sad, really.”

We all nodded.

“Miranda would tell me these stories of other guys she dated,” he said. “They were all these stories. Like crazy stories. It was all material for her to write her stories and somewhere deep down I knew that I would just be another story someday. I just never thought I’d become this terrible of a story.”

We all shook our heads at the weird burden he had to bare, terrified of it ever happening to us. We could only imagine with horror what it was like to be accused, having someone we thought we had a perfectly fine time with attempt to tarnish our name.

“I want to warn other guys she dates, too,” he said. He was a victim in all this at a time when we men couldn’t talk about the ways women lie about assault. How often it actually happens. “Like hey, this could happen to you! If she says this about me, imagine what she could say about you.”

It was terrifying to think about. We never questioned him, either. We knew Tyler and thus knew his innocence. Sometimes doing what’s right doesn’t seem so PC. “Believe women” sounds awful nice until you know the full truth. I always sought to get the truth, not just believe random women on the internet.

“There are two sides to every story,” was something I said often, especially after hearing about a situation like this. My girlfriend Kyra liked that inquisitive attitude I had. She called me Sherlock as a pet name and would kiss my cheek and call me cynical. Until she really got to know my friends. The first time she met Tyler, she told she felt off about him.

“I gave you the benefit of the doubt when you told me about him and that whole…story,” she said, referring to the made-up rape. “But after meeting him…I don’t know. I think he’s overcompensating”

What do you mean? I asked her. “He’s nice, he’s funny, he didn’t do anything offensive around you.”

“That’s just it,” she said. “I’ve obviously never met this girl, but don’t you think maybe she could be right? The way he brought up his mom, the way he slammed that recent ex-girlfriend, it all feels like he doesn’t really trust women.”

Doesn’t trust women? What is this bullshit? It felt like maybe she was just trying to get me to rag on one of my friends. Was this some kind of grand scheme from my new girlfriend to keep me from seeing my own best mates?

“Sure, but would you trust women if they falsely accused you of one of the worst crimes?”

“Are you so sure it’s false?”

I froze dead in my tracks. Was she serious? Kyra had definitely heard me talk about this before and she knew the story. Was she just trying to piss me off? I was confused, irritated, defensive all at once. But my instant reaction was to be overly-defensive. And why shouldn’t it be? He was one of my good friends and Kyra was saying all of this as if it wasn’t scary. What if some woman said this about me? Would she just believe that woman and dump me? That’s absurd. She knew me. She knew it would be a lie. Even worse, what if she got falsely accused of a sex crime? She had no idea of knowing what it was like. No woman really did.

“Okay, Kyra, you’re black. How do you like it when someone makes false assumptions about you?”

She looked at me skeptically. I think I crossed a line that I shouldn’t have. As a white guy bringing up race to my black girlfriend or other friends certainly felt uncomfortable. I knew, of course, that comfort was a privilege. I knew that I didn’t understand a black person’s experience. Hell, I’m sure I don’t understand a woman’s experience. But I can have a pretty good idea, can’t I? We can at least talk about it.

“First of all – that’s not the same –“

“Why not?” Instead of backing down or apologizing, I went all in. Deal me in. Let’s play.

“Because that’s an assumption based on the color of my skin and negative stereotypes. That’s racism and it’s different than accusing someone of a sex crime. You have to understand that, don’t you?”

I was fuming. She was also upset that I made that comparison. We lay in silence for a while staring at shadows passing on the ceiling.

Finally she said, “I know what you’re trying to say, I’m just saying what if? What if she was right? No one was in the room except for those two people.”

It sounded simple enough, but I rarely doubted Tyler’s story. Mostly for that reason.

“Exactly. No one was in the room other than Tyler and Miranda and their stories are wildly different. One is clearly true and the other is clearly made into a think piece to help a shitty writing career.”

“Do you really think in any way saying you got raped helps your career?”

“It’s attention, isn’t it? No press is bad press.”

She looked at me coldly, brimming with disdain. It was the first time I felt like I was disgusting to my own girlfriend. Like I was somehow the bad guy. How was I the bad guy?

“I guess it’s like you said. There are two sides. It just seems tacky to be so sure of one when you don’t know that it’s 100% the truth.”

Tacky. Right. It was tacky to lie, too. We went to sleep in silence that night, not touching each other. I woke up with a terrible headache.

Several weeks later we were all hanging out at Tyler’s favorite bar. He was the kind of magnetic guy who attracted people to him like a light. He said he was going to be at Four Moons Tavern and the rest of us said ‘when?’ We all flocked to him as usual, listening to his every word as he regaled us with stories and jokes, ripping on our friends in that casual way that bordered on mean, but could only be down out of love.

It was the strangest thing then that I saw her. I was sitting facing the door and I think I was the only one who caught her walk in. Miranda.

None of us had seen her since she and Tyler dated. I thought I saw her one time waiting for a train across the platform, but I was never sure. We certainly hadn’t seen her since she released the damning article that haunted Tyler. I glanced at Tyler in terror, but he didn’t see her. He was looking the other direction. I was the only one.

Miranda walked into the room. She saw Tyler. She shuddered.

She shuddered.

I hadn’t seen anyone do that before. Not really. She saw him and I could see her world freeze. I could see her stomach drop. I could see the panic flicker in her eyes and her flight or fight impulses take over. It was real. She was scared of him. Physically scared.

He was her boogeyman. I just never thought it was possible before.

I looked back at Tyler who took a swig of his beer as he finished off another quip. Everyone laughed, allowing him pause to enjoy a sip of beer. He never saw Miranda. He didn’t see her shudder. He didn’t see her scuttle backwards out of the room like a cat who just ran into water. He never stopped his momentum, but he had shattered hers.

And I saw it.

He didn’t see it. It didn’t phase him. She didn’t perform that reaction for anyone. It was involuntary in her. It wasn’t “for attention”. I think I was the only person who saw it. I’m positive I was or someone would have brought it up to him. It wasn’t a performance for anyone, let alone me. It was real.

It felt like I was the only one who could see in a room with the lights off. Tyler kept on with his story. I no longer knew what he was talking about. I no longer felt it was important to know. I just watched him talk. I watched the movement of his lips, those lips that had told us so much of what was true and what wasn’t. I watched his animated faces and hand gestures that made him the life of every party. I watched him be engaging. I watched him mold us, his friends, into his captive audience. I watched him with that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach – that awful, bottomless feeling – that I had been so wrong about my own friend.

– Stephanie Weber

Author’s Note: Working in entertainment, I’ve heard people cover up for friends who have been accused of sexual assault for years. It’s both fascinating and depressing to me. None of us want to find out our friends have done horrible things and when accusations arise, it can be difficult to navigate what one should do or say. This story highlights those feelings and asks: what’s the proper response?