Unspoken rules in friendships can sometimes feel trickier than official ones.

Imagine your friend had a harmless “hallway crush” on a cute guy, but she never actually talked to him, and you ended up dating him years later.

Would you feel obligated to step aside out of loyalty?

Or would you see him as fair game because she never had a chance anyway?

In the following story, one young lady finds herself in this predicament and is unsure if she crossed a line.

Here’s how it all played out.

AITA for going out with my friend’s hallway crush even though they never talked?

Back in high school, my friend Hope (f19) had a hallway crush on this guy from an older grade, we’ll call him Jake (m20).

I say hallway crush rather than crush because they’ve never interacted. She simply finds him hot.

Honestly, I also thought he was cute because he’s literally the epitome of my type: blonde and blue-eyed.

I wasn’t crushing on him as hard as she was; she literally joined a club he was a part of just to look at him.

However, around this time, she also had a situationship with another boy whom she really liked and a WHOLE BOYFRIEND AFTER, so I thought it didn’t mean anything to her.

A different friend officially introduced her to Jake.

Two weeks ago, Jake and I formally met through my best friend Kayla (f19).

We knew each other in high school, and in fact, he told me he also found me cute but couldn’t “go” for me because his friend liked me at the time, and I turned him down.

But now his friend has a girlfriend, so he figured he’d shoot his shot. I said yes, and we went on two dates.

I kept these dates a secret from Hope because I was trying to gauge her reaction.

She’s quite dramatic, NGL, but I honestly feel like she has no right to feel any type of way since Jake doesn’t even know she exists, and I also liked him!

They never talked, he never looked her way, and it was never going to happen! But maybe hiding it from her was wrong on my part. I was trying to see if it would go somewhere.

If it didn’t, and we just went on one date and never talked again, I wouldn’t have brought it up to her.

Not wanting to hide it, she told Hope what was going on.

Anyway, now I think it might actually go somewhere. He’s sweet, and we both like each other and want to continue seeing each other. So today, I broke the news to her.

The first thing she said was, “Wait, didn’t I have a massive crush on him?”

It got a little awkward, so I said, “Oh, but this was around the time you had a thing with (her situationship), no?” and she said, “Yeah, I guess.”

Then she kept on asking why I didn’t tell her, and I explained the reason above.

Now, she feels bad because Hope didn’t take it well.

The whole time, she sounded surprised and was a little quiet and non-responsive, which confused me because… why?

It’s not like I dated her ex. He’s a literal hallway crush who she never had a chance with.

After that, I sent her a photo of us on our date on Snapchat, and I feel like any normal friend would save that photo in the chat and be like, “Awwww,” but no, she didn’t.

She just said, “Wow, he is really good looking,” and then I changed the subject.

I can tell the whole call was awkward, and she wasn’t her usual self; every laugh was forced.

It’s to the point that I’m second-guessing if I did anything wrong.

I honestly don’t think I did because they never had anything, and she can’t just dibs a random guy whom she liked for a bit?

AITA?

Yikes! This is quite a situation.

Let’s see what the folks over at Reddit think about this whole thing.

This person offers a pretty harsh judgment.

Here’s an interesting way to look at it.

This reader thinks she went about it the wrong way.

Yet another person who thinks sending the picture was out of line.

It’s not always what you say. She should’ve just told her friend and then let it go, because sending the photo was crossing the line.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.