The words died on her lips right in the middle of her own dinner party, and I watched the shock curdle into pure, ugly humiliation on her face.
For twenty years, every victory I had was just a warm-up act for her.
My biggest career win, the project that would define me, became a boring story about her trip to Italy. My son’s proudest moment on the soccer field was nothing next to the gleaming memory of her kid’s chess trophy.
She even tried to one-up my potential brain tumor.
Her constant comparisons became a poison in my head, making me doubt my work, my choices, my own life. A person can only take so many paper cuts before they start to bleed out.
But she never imagined my revenge wouldn’t be some elaborate scheme, but a quiet, public trap laid with a single, devastating question.
The First Cut: The Vance Commission
The email landed in my inbox with a subject line so bland it was almost comical: “Project Proposal Follow-Up.” I stared at it for a full minute, my heart doing a nervous tap dance against my ribs. My finger hovered over the trackpad, a tiny god deciding the fate of my next six months. Mark was still asleep, and our son, Leo, was a black hole of teenage slumber down the hall. This moment was mine alone.
I clicked. My eyes scanned past the pleasantries, hunting for the keywords: “pleased to inform you,” “impressed with your vision,” “move forward.” They were all there. The Vance Commission. The biggest project of my career as an interior designer, a historic downtown renovation that could finally put my small firm on the map.
A giddy, silent scream built in my chest. I pushed back from my desk, my bare feet cold on the hardwood, and did a little hop-skip into the kitchen. I needed coffee. I needed to call someone. I needed to tell Jessica.
She was my oldest friend, the kind you collect in college and somehow never shake loose. The pull to share my best news with her was instinctual, a muscle memory forged over two decades of inside jokes and shared crises.
I texted her before the coffee was even brewed: *HOLY CRAP. I GOT IT. I GOT THE VANCE COMMISSION!*
Her reply came back in under thirty seconds, a testament to her ever-present phone. *OMG congrats! That’s amazing! Totally reminds me of the Kensington loft I did right after I moved to London. The client was a nightmare, minor royalty with a Corgi that peed on everything, but the budget was insane. We ended up sourcing hand-blown glass from Murano. You should look into that, the exchange rate is probably decent now.*
I read the text twice. My victory, my career-defining moment, had lasted approximately twelve seconds before becoming a backdrop for one of her well-worn anecdotes. It wasn’t a question or a conversation. It was a pivot. My news was merely the on-ramp to the Jessica Show. The giddy feeling in my chest fizzled, replaced by a familiar, dull ache.
The Echo Chamber
It was a pattern as predictable as the seasons. Good news, bad news, weird news—it didn’t matter. Whatever I brought to the table, Jessica had a bigger, better, or more tragic version of it in her back pocket, ready to be deployed.
Last month, Leo made the varsity soccer team as a sophomore. I was bursting with pride, posting a blurry action shot of him on Instagram. Jessica’s comment appeared almost immediately. “So proud of him! It’s such a great age. Reminds me of when Ethan won the state chess tournament in eighth grade. We didn’t even know he was that good! The pressure was immense, he was up against this prodigy from the city, but he pulled it off. We still have the trophy on the mantel.”
My blurry photo of Leo, red-faced and triumphant, suddenly felt small and amateurish next to the gleaming image of a trophy-wielding, prodigy-beating Ethan.
It was the same when I’d sprained my ankle stepping off a curb last year. I called her from the urgent care, bored and in pain. Her immediate response wasn’t “Are you okay?” but “Oh God, you think that’s bad? When I broke my wrist skiing in Aspen, the bone was literally sticking out. I had to get a helicopter airlift to a special surgeon in Denver. Mark was a mess.”
Her life was always in high-definition Technicolor, a blockbuster epic. Mine was a grainy, low-budget indie film. Sharing anything with her felt less like connecting and more like submitting an opening act for a headliner who always, always brought the house down.
A Crack in the Armor
Mark found me staring into the refrigerator later that morning, the Vance Commission email still open on my laptop. He wrapped his arms around my waist from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder.
“You’re radiating,” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “I’m guessing the news was good.”
“The best,” I mumbled, leaning back into him. “They went for my proposal. All of it. The reclaimed wood, the exposed brick, everything.”
“That’s my girl,” he said, kissing my temple. “We have to celebrate. I’ll pick up champagne. We’ll get that fancy takeout you like.” His enthusiasm was a warm balm on my pricked ego.
“I told Jess,” I said, my voice flatter than I intended.
He was quiet for a second. He knew. Of course he knew. He’d been a ringside observer for years. “And let me guess,” he said, his tone shifting into a gentle parody. “She once redesigned Buckingham Palace on a dare and got knighted for it?”
I laughed, a short, bitter puff of air. “Close. A London loft for minor royalty with a peeing Corgi.”
“Ah, a classic,” he sighed, turning me around to face him. “Sarah, you know what she’s like. It’s not about you. It’s never about you. It’s some weird thing in her head.”
I knew he was right. I knew it on a logical, intellectual level. But logic doesn’t do much to soothe the sting of being constantly minimized. “I know,” I said. “It’s just… exhausting. It’s like I can’t even have my own moment.”
He squeezed my hands. “Then don’t let her take it. This is your win. Hers is just noise.” He was trying to help, to reframe it. But the noise was getting louder these days, and it was starting to sound a lot like my own internal monologue.
The Shadow of Comparison
That afternoon, I spread the Vance blueprints across my dining room table, the official start of the real work. The scent of fresh paper and ink should have been intoxicating, a perfume of success. Instead, a low-grade anxiety hummed beneath my skin.
As I studied the floor plan for the main lobby, a whisper slithered into my thoughts. *Hand-blown glass from Murano.*
I shook my head, annoyed. My concept was about honoring the building’s industrial past—local steel, reclaimed timber, textures that told a story of this city, not some Venetian island. But the whisper persisted. Was my idea too provincial? Too safe?
I pulled up a supplier for custom lighting, my fingers clicking through pages of sleek, modern fixtures. Each one I considered was immediately filtered through a hypothetical Jessica-lens. *Too IKEA. Too Restoration Hardware. Too predictable.*
This was new. The one-upmanship had always been an external annoyance, a conversational tax I had to pay for her friendship. But now it was inside the perimeter. It was sitting at my work table, second-guessing my choices, poisoning the well of my own creativity.
I was designing for my client, for the space, for my own artistic vision. But I was also, insidiously, designing in opposition to a ghost. The ghost of Jessica’s bigger, better, more worldly success. The shadow of her constant comparison was falling over my biggest achievement, and I was the one letting it happen.
The Thousand Paper Cuts: A Public Diminishment
The monthly merchant’s association meeting was held in the back room of a coffee shop that always smelled faintly of burnt espresso. It was a tedious affair, but a necessary part of being a downtown business owner. I was giving a brief update on the Vance project, feeling a flicker of the initial pride as I described the plans.
“…so we’re hoping to have the lobby and the first-floor retail spaces completed by the end of the fourth quarter,” I finished, smiling at the small group of familiar faces.
Before anyone could ask a question, Jessica, who had tagged along “for moral support,” chimed in from her seat near the back. Her voice was bright, carrying easily across the room.
“It’s such a wonderful project for the town,” she began, a benevolent queen bestowing a compliment upon a loyal subject. “It’s so important to revitalize these older spaces. When I was consulting on that waterfront development in Baltimore, the biggest challenge we faced was historic preservation versus modernization. We actually had to bring in a specialist from Belgium to get the facade right. The permitting alone was a full-time job for three people.”
The conversation immediately shifted. People turned to her, asking questions about the Baltimore project. My update on the Vance Commission was forgotten, a footnote in her much grander story. I stood there at the front of the room, holding my folder of notes, feeling like a child who had just shown a crayon drawing to a table of art critics.
I saw Chloe, a mutual friend and owner of the boutique next to my studio, shoot me a look. It was a complex expression—part pity, part exasperation. She saw it. Everyone saw it. But no one ever said anything. And in their silence, Jessica’s narrative became the only one that mattered.
The Unsolicited “Help”
Two days later, Jessica showed up at my studio unannounced, carrying two large coffees. “Thought you could use a pick-me-up,” she said, setting the cups down on a stack of fabric swatches. “Figured you’d be chained to this desk.”
“Hey, thanks,” I said, genuinely surprised. Maybe this was an olive branch, a moment of real, unadulterated friendship.
She walked over to the large inspiration board where I had pinned sketches, material samples, and photos for the Vance project. She tilted her head, her lips pursed in an expression of deep concentration, like a surgeon examining an X-ray.
“It’s a strong start,” she said, her tone implying that it was, of course, only a start. “I see the industrial vibe you’re going for. Very… of the moment.” She tapped a finger on a sketch of the custom reception desk I’d designed. “You have to be careful with this much raw wood, though. It can look a little rustic, a bit too… farmhouse chic, if it’s not balanced. When I did the Barclays penthouse, we used a polished concrete desk with a waterfall edge. It had that raw feel, but elevated.”
For the next twenty minutes, she moved around my board, offering a steady stream of “helpful” suggestions, each one a subtle jab at my own choices. My reclaimed timber was “charming, but prone to warping.” My lighting plan was “nice, but a bit one-note.” Every piece of advice was tied to a bigger, more prestigious project she had allegedly worked on.
She wasn’t helping. She was marking her territory, pissing on my project to claim it as her own. By the time she left, waving a cheerful goodbye, the air in my studio felt thick and stale. The coffee sat on my desk, cold and untouched.
A Glimpse of Insecurity
We were at a PTA fundraiser a week later, a loud, chaotic event in the school gym. I was trying to avoid the silent auction table when I spotted Jessica near the bleachers, locked in a tense-looking conversation on her phone.
I was about to turn away when I saw her expression. Her face, usually a carefully composed mask of effortless confidence, was crumpled. Her shoulders were slumped. I saw her mouth the words, “That’s not what we agreed on,” her voice a sharp, desperate whisper.
She swiped the call away and saw me looking. For a split second, her mask was gone. I saw raw panic in her eyes, a flash of a woman clinging to a ledge by her fingernails.
Then, just as quickly, it was gone. The composure snapped back into place. She forced a brittle smile. “Ugh, work,” she said, waving her phone dismissively. “Just a client being impossible. They want the moon on a stick, you know how it is.”
“Everything okay?” I asked, a pang of genuine concern cutting through my resentment.
“Oh, totally fine,” she said, her voice a little too bright. “Just have to fly to Zurich tomorrow to sort it out. It’s a pain, but if you want the big accounts, you have to be willing to put out the fires.” She straightened her blazer, already rebuilding the facade, brick by perfect brick.
The moment was over. But I couldn’t unsee it. The panic. The desperation. It was a crack in the armor, a brief glimpse of the churning, insecure machinery beneath the polished exterior. For the first time, I wondered if her one-upmanship wasn’t a show of strength, but a frantic attempt to keep from drowning. It didn’t excuse the behavior, but it shaded it in a new, more pathetic light.
The Point of No Return
I’d been having persistent headaches and a weird dizzy spell now and then. Dr. Miller said it was likely stress—the new project, Leo’s college applications looming, the usual mid-life symphony of anxieties—but she sent me for an MRI, “just to be safe.”
The waiting was the worst part. For three days, every headache, every moment of lightheadedness, sent a jolt of ice-cold fear through me. Mark was a rock, but I needed to talk to a friend. I needed to talk to someone who had known me forever. I called Jessica.
“Hey,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Got a second?” I explained the situation, the headaches, the MRI, the awful, stomach-churning wait for results.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. I braced myself.
“Oh, honey, that’s terrifying,” she said, and for a moment, I felt a wave of relief. Then it came. “I know exactly how you feel. Remember when they found that lump a few years ago? Mine was so deep they couldn’t even get a clear reading on the mammogram. I had to have two biopsies. The doctor was convinced it was malignant. We were preparing for the worst. For six weeks, our entire lives were on hold. It was the most harrowing experience. Of course, it turned out to be a benign cyst in the end, thank God. But I know that fear. It’s just… paralyzing.”
My fear. My MRI. My potential diagnosis. All of it had been neatly collected, repackaged, and used to power a story about her own superior suffering. She wasn’t empathizing. She was competing. She was one-upping my potential brain tumor.
Something inside me snapped. It wasn’t a loud crack, but a quiet, decisive click. The part of me that had always made excuses for her, that had brushed it off as “just Jess,” went silent. This wasn’t a quirk anymore. It was a pathology. And it wasn’t just annoying. It was cruel.
My results came back the next day. A pinched nerve in my neck. Nothing serious. I felt a profound, bone-deep relief. I told Mark. I told my mom. I didn’t tell Jessica.
About the Author
