The Phone Number Fish Handed Over at the Bar
Here's the receipt: over drinks, catching up after months of no contact, Fish mentioned she'd just gotten out of jail — said it casually, like a footnote, and kept talking. Adora let it slide and kept the night going. That's how close the whole thing came to never happening.
Adora had cut Fish off originally because the friendship, even at its most fun, was exhausting and toxic. She took real time — months — to heal and get her head straight. Then a new year hit, she got bored and lonely, and she called Fish back. That one phone call is the domino. Within the same reunion dinner, Fish was hyping up a male friend, a Leo, which happened to be exactly what Adora had just said she wanted. Fish called him at the table. He was good-looking. Adora handed over her email. A man named Tree walked into her life through a door Fish held wide open.
She Paused, Her Mom Warned Her, and She Went Back Anyway
Tree's own opening disclosure, once they started talking, was the same as Fish's: fresh out of jail. Adora kept talking to him anyway. Two dates in — a picnic — he told her he was a drug dealer. She actually did the smart thing and stopped talking to him for a while. Good instinct, held for a minute.
Right in the middle of that pause, her mother texted her out of nowhere, and the message wasn't vague. There's a girl you recently reconnected with, her mom wrote, and she's going to introduce you to a man who sells cocaine. This man is going to get you caught up with police and try to ruin your life. At the time, Adora believed Tree only sold weed — small potatoes compared to what her mother was describing — so she brushed the warning off and went back to him. It was only later, once she was deeper in, that she learned he was thoroughly in the cocaine trade. Her mother had named the exact drug before Adora herself even knew.
“Boredom will kill you. As a woman, do not let yourself be bored.”
— Adora, the storyteller
Two Different Poisonings, One Fish
As Tree started spoiling Adora — covering Ubers, taking her shopping, stacking up birthday gifts in the lead-up to June — Fish started coming apart. The questions turned invasive: what did he buy you, did you sleep with him, why does he like you so much. Then came the digs — you'll never get married, he talks to tons of women, he's love-bombing you — and at one point Fish even pulled a third friend into a bar conversation to back her up. Adora found the whole thing strange.
When Adora left for two weeks, first Houston then Canada, Fish called every single day with fresh intel: Tree was at the mall talking to a girl, Tree was at a party talking to women, Tree had told Fish he still missed his ex from New York and was basically using Adora as a stand-in. It worked — Adora came home rattled and ready to have it out with him.
Except when she laid it all out over dinner, Tree wasn't defensive. He was stunned. He told her Fish had been feeding him the exact same poison in reverse — warning him Adora plays men, that she can't be trusted, to be careful with her. Fish had been running both sides at once, playing loyal confidante to each of them while quietly torching the relationship from the inside. The second Adora and Tree compared notes, the whole operation fell apart.
“This guy is going to sell coke. He sells coke. And he's going to get you caught up one day and ruin your life.”
— Adora, recounting her mother's warning text
The Confession Text, and Who Tree Turned Out to Be
Adora cut Fish off the moment the dinner conversation ended. Fish sent a long paragraph about feeling disconnected, asking why things had gotten weird. Adora never answered. Then came the confirmation of what this had actually been about the whole time: after Tree eventually blocked her, Fish sent him a message confessing her feelings, blaming Adora for ruining what she and Tree had, asking why he was letting Adora come between them. She was never a friend introducing a friend to a nice guy — she was angling to stay close to both of them, and to Tree's money, and when that stopped working she tried to burn the whole thing down.
Cutting Fish off didn't solve the Tree problem, though. The longer Adora spent with him, the more the narcissism surfaced — he competed with her over everything, down to being visibly upset that her veins showed more than his. When she filmed her first music video, a real milestone for her, he drove her there and made the day miserable, then made her Uber home alone while he badmouthed her to a friend on FaceTime. She started getting physically sick. She stopped eating. She stopped talking to people and pulled away from her whole life. Eventually she went back and reread her mother's text and understood it had never been a metaphor. She got out.
“I really sat down and I was like, that message my mom sent me — it was about you, wasn't it?”
— Adora, on the moment she finally connected the dots
How it unfolded
- The ReunionAdora, bored and isolated after cutting off Fish, reaches back out and they go for drinks — where Fish introduces her to Tree that same night.
- First Red FlagsTree discloses he just got out of jail, then on a second date reveals he's a drug dealer; Adora briefly stops talking to him.
- Mom's WarningAdora's mother sends an unprompted text predicting a reconnected female friend will introduce her to a cocaine dealer who will ruin her life.
- The Spoiling and the JealousyTree begins lavishing Adora with gifts and money; Fish grows visibly envious, starts making digs and asking invasive questions about their relationship.
- The Vacation CampaignWhile Adora travels to Houston and Canada, Fish calls her every day with new allegations about Tree's behavior and his feelings for his New York ex.
- The Confrontation and ExposureAdora confronts Tree at dinner; they compare notes and realize Fish had been lying to both of them simultaneously to split them up — and that Fish was in love with Tree herself.
- The EscapeAdora cuts off Fish permanently, then eventually leaves Tree too after his narcissistic abuse leaves her physically ill, depressed, and isolated.
Our take
A mother named a specific drug and predicted a specific outcome before her daughter had even discovered what Tree really did for money. That's not a lucky guess — that's a parent clocking danger her kid couldn't yet see, and getting ignored for it anyway. We all do this. We assume we know our own situation better than the person standing outside of it, watching it happen in real time. But the warning was sitting right there, in a text, spelled out. What Fish pulled off deserves its own name, because "toxic friend" undersells it. She didn't just hand Adora off to a bad man — she worked both sides of that relationship, feeding each of them poison about the other, all while playing the loyal confidante to both. That's not drama. That's a plan. And the boredom piece is worth naming too, because Adora said it herself — the friendship ran on adrenaline. Peace felt dull, so chaos looked like fun again, right up until it had her sick and pulling away from her own life to survive it.
A mother's warning named the drug and the danger before her daughter even knew the truth — the whole story, delivered early enough to change everything. Some red flags aren't subtle at all. We just walk past them anyway.
Questions people ask
What does love bombing look like in a new relationship?
Love bombing is showering someone with gifts, attention, and affection before they really know each other, as a shortcut to emotional dependency. Tree bought Adora things daily in the run-up to her birthday and covered her expenses, making her feel like an instant priority — which felt flattering in the moment but followed the classic pattern.
Can a toxic friend deliberately set you up with a bad partner?
Adora's story says yes. Fish introduced her to a man Fish already knew was deep in the drug trade, then spent months trying to sabotage the relationship from both sides while extracting information from each of them. Whether it started as calculation or curdled out of jealousy, the result was the same: a trusted friend put Adora in a dangerous situation.
Why do people go back to toxic friendships after cutting them off?
Adora described the friendship as running on adrenaline — exhausting but exciting. After months of quiet healing, that quiet started to feel like boredom, and the old chaos looked appealing again. It's a common trap: distance starts to feel like emptiness, and a high-drama relationship starts looking like fun instead of the warning it actually is.
