THREE

"CALM DOWN, Doris!" Evelyn hurried out of her house reaching out for the handle of the taxi she'd called earlier. She spoke to her friend through her phone who was bawling her eyes, talking randomly. "Slow down, Doris. I can't hear you. I'm on my way to your apartment, okay?" She hung up and tapped the driver's shoulders. "Could you please hurry up?"

    "Yes, Ma'am." He replied, stepping on the gas pedal.

    Evelyn was about to go complete the finish touches on the rented hall they had prepared for Doris' birthday bash which was today when her best friend had called her wailing and gibbering. She found it difficult to understand what her friend was on about over the phone but she's never seen her best friend this way. Yeah! She could be a little puerile sometimes but not like this. 

    After a few minutes, Evelyn barged into Doris' apartment yelling out her name. "Doris! Doris!" She scanned every corner of her apartment and finally spotted her underneath her kitchen table sitting with her head resting right on top of her knees, still crying.

    Evelyn sighed. Squatting down to her position she placed a hand on her quivering shoulder. "Dee. What happened? Why are you on the floor crying?" She said in a soothing voice. 

    Doris looked up at her friend with tear-filled eyes, sniffing. "Evy," she called hoarsely. "Jeff has been cheating on me. He has another girlfriend who he's getting engaged to today."

    "What?!" Evelyn shouted out astonished. She'd never believed in true love and all those silly stuff because she'd never experienced one and had never been in any way eager to do so, but she'd strongly believed that what Doris and Jeff shared was certainly true love. "Are you sure about this? You probably misunderstood or something?"

    "There was no misunderstanding, Evy. He came over early this morning with a huge bouquet. I thought he was going to propose to me but he wasn't, all he said to me was he was sorry and he has been seeing this girl he wants to spend the rest of his life with and their engagement party is supposed to be today."

    Evelyn hugged her best friend tightly. "It's okay, Dee. It's okay."

    "How could he do this to me? Of all days he chooses to do this to me? Today? My birthday?" Doris cried. "After all we've been through? How could he?"

    "Stop crying, Dee. That asshole isn't worth your tears, okay? You shouldn't be miserable on your B-day, he should. Instead of crying, you should be wreaking havoc at his stupid engagement party. The nerve of that guy! I'm breaking his legs when I lay my eyes on him." Evelyn said vehemently, rocking her friend's quivering body.

    "I thought of that a zillion times but I can't even do that which hurts even more."

    "And why can't you?"

    "He said they were going to be cameras capturing every moment of their engagement party and he threatened me with making sure the vid circulates if I did anything drastic. As much as I hate him I can't lose my followers." She pouted, sniffing.

    Evelyn blinked taken aback a little by her last line. She changed her mind about how she assumed her best friend was just a little childish. She was super childish! She'd thought she didn't want to wreck his engagement party because she was trying to be the bigger person and forgive him but she didn't want to do it because of her followers. Well, who was she kidding? Losing her fans would destroy her. Doris' followers were the second most important thing to her. The first was her life.

    "When I promised my fans to surprise them with something vast today." she continued, wiping her tears with the back of her hand and spreading her legs in front of her. "I did not picture this at all."

    "Hold up a sec." Evelyn sat down beside her friend. "Why would you be the one losing followers? He cheated on you. He should be one losing followers not you."

    "You're right!" Doris said abruptly, trying to stand up forgetting she was under the kitchen table. "Owww-aah!" She yelled rubbing the top of her head. 

    Evelyn shook her head, trying to smother the laughter bubbling up. "I think is about time we left this table."

    "Good idea." Doris winced, as they both hurried out from under the kitchen table. 

    "So what's the plan?" Evelyn asked the moment they got to Doris' room.

    Doris' face wrinkled in a silent laugh of derision. "I'm gonna make sure he rues the day he met me." She said with a sinister look on her face, ferociously ripping the tissue paper she'd used in wiping her tears. "I'm gonna rip off his balls and make an omelet out of it."

    Evelyn stared at her from the corner of her eyes alarmed by her choice of words. "Okay, calm down Mrs. Voldemort." She said  "You're starting to creep me out. Let's not do anything illegal. Prison food tastes horrible."

    "How'd you know that if you haven't been there?"

    "I don't know, that's what most people say. Anyway, that's beside the point. What exactly are you planning?"

    Doris scoffed, tossing her hair. "Well, he'll probably think I'm under a table bawling my eyes out too devastated to do anything..."

    "You actually were some few minutes ago." Evelyn interrupted.

    "Don't rub it in!" Doris retorted with clenched teeth. "And would you let me finish speaking?"

    Evelyn raised both her hands up. "My apologies! Continue."

    Doris glared at her one last time, sighed, then continued. "He'd be probably too occupied with his engagement party which is the perfect time to unleash my plan." She reached for her tripod and started mounting her streaming devices. "I know Jeff a lot and one thing he hates apart from Avocados is going live on camera, so I'm one hundred percent sure his engagement party won't be streamed live."

    "Okay, you lost me at ‘Avocados’. Who on earth hates Avocados?!" Evelyn demanded and was rewarded with a murderous glare from Doris. She laughed nervously. "Sorry. Go ahead."

    "Anyway, he knows he'd be called out by our fans about his engagement to someone else when he finally uploads the vlog on his social media handle. Certainly, he would have made a plan to pin it on me somehow which I'm not gonna let happen. I'm gonna beat him to his own game."

    "So how are you gonna do that?"

    Doris laughed softly. "Evy, I wasn't crowned drama queen of our high school for nothing." She sat down in front of her camera. Then turned to her friend with a smirk. "Relax. Watch and learn!"

    With that, she turned on her camera and her drama queen mode. Before 30 sec she already had 5K views and counting. 

    Evelyn gaped in amazement at her phone, then at her friend, then back to her phone. She knew how influential her friend was but had no idea the great weight her image carries. She hadn't really had any time to watch her videos or stream them live this was actually the first time for her.

    Evelyn nearly burst out laughing when Doris started whimpering, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Hello, guys. I know I'm not in my best appearance which isn't supposed to be so, considering today is my B-day and all." She sobbed some more making her viewers comment like crazy, asking what was wrong with her. "I'm canceling my Birthday Bash because I'm not in a good condition to celebrate. I was gonna share a piece of huge news with y'all which was supposed to be my proposal. You see, I thought Jeff was going to ask me to marry him, I guess I thought ahead of myself." She sniffled, damping her tears. "Anyway, long story short, he came over to my apartment this morning and said he was getting engaged to another chick today. Does that even make sense? We've been dating for three years and he's just gonna cheat on me and rub it on my face, threatening to ruin my image. He's been leading me on all this while making me believe we were going beyond boyfriend and girlfriend but it was all a sham. You guys I'm aching so badly right now, like, this isn't the kind of news I was hoping to share with y'all, but here we are. I feel like I'm closely plunging into depression. I'll be off social media for a while to try and nurse my broken heart. Thank you for being here for me all this while. I love you guys. Till the next time, stay safe."

    Doris switched off the camera, wiped her tears, and smiled at Evelyn. "Now let's see if he can beat that?" She crossed one leg over the other. "He chose the wrong chick to mess with."

    Evelyn clapped twice. "Wow! I think Jeff is gonna get boycotted after this." She clicked on Jeff's account. "Whoa! He has lost 100K followers already?!"

    "Which he deserves!" Doris snapped.

    "Weren't you like in love with him some minutes ago?"

    "I've moved on sweetie."

    "That quick? And you wonder why I choose not to be in any fashion of relationship." 

    "Okay, that right there is not what we're gonna do. You're not gonna slip out of a good relationship right in front of you because people around you have had it bad. Look at me I've dated some serious scum bags, but I still believe in love.

    "Uuhhh... And where exactly has that gotten you?" Evelyn asked, sneeringly.

    Doris rolled her eyes. "The point is, love is a beautiful thing and you shouldn't give up on it. Now," she stood up stretching her hand towards her friend. "Let's go drink away our sorrow."

    "What? Drink? You know I don't drink!" Evelyn slapped her friend's hand away, shooting her piercing glare. "And didn't you just say you've moved on?"

    "I've moved on but I still need to heal my shattered heart. Besides it's still my B-day, I've still got to celebrate even though it wasn't the Birthday I expected." She pulled Evelyn up despite her struggles. Pouting and making puppylike faces. "C'mon, I have to drink and you know I can't drink alone. You've gotta come with me, pretty please. You just have to drink one glass. Just one...mmm?"

    "Fine. Just one and I'm getting outta there, okay?" Evelyn stated firmly.

    "Okay. Let's go!" Doris shrilled at the top of her voice, making Evelyn stick her thumbs in her ears.