People don’t always see things the same way. One person may see a harmless conversation, while another sees a red flag and a reason to worry.

That’s exactly what happened when this young woman attended a scrapbooking session with a friend and brought her knitting along.

When a stranger approached and started asking questions about her project, she treated it like dozens of similar conversations she’d had before.

But when the man asked for her phone number, her friend stepped in and put a stop to it. What followed was an uncomfortable scene that eventually led to the end of a friendship.

Now she’s left wondering if she really did something wrong or if her friend overreacted.

Read on to see how it all played out.

AITAH for putting my now ex-friend in a dangerous situation?

My now ex-friend Zara invited me a few months ago to a scrapbooking session with a friend of hers. I don’t scrapbook, but I brought my knitting with me (I’m making another friend of mine a sweater).

We were seated in a shopping mall at a small churro cafe at around 6 p.m., and at one point in the night, an older man who was sitting at a nearby table approached us and started asking me about my knitting.

I’ve had a lot of people in the past ask me about it, especially on the train, bus, or in public places, so I didn’t think anything weird about this man approaching us or even talking about my knitting.

Then, security got involved.

He did eventually ask me for my number, and before I could even say anything, Zara yelled at the man and told him to leave or she would call security. He started arguing with her, I think mostly because Zara was yelling at him. In that moment, I kind of froze. I didn’t really know what to do because everyone in the cafe and mall was staring at us.

Even security came up to us because of the yelling. Zara told security that the man was harassing us, and security asked him to leave. The cashier at the cafe spoke to security also and told them that the man was a regular at the cafe and had never caused issues before.

We ended up moving to a different area, and I thought the whole thing was behind us.

Now Zara doesn’t want to be friends.

Last week, I got a text from Zara saying she didn’t want to be friends anymore because I put her and her friend at risk and accused me of encouraging the man by answering his questions. She also said I was disrespectful to my boyfriend because of this (even though at the time I wasn’t seeing my boyfriend).

She said that I should have apologized for putting them through that. I sent her a text apologizing and saying that I respected her decision. But it did hurt to lose that friendship, I’ll admit.

I didn’t feel like we were at risk or in a dangerous situation at the time, which is why I reacted the way I did. I also just don’t do well with telling people to leave me alone, and I always assume they mean well until they show me otherwise.

AITA?

Yikes! It seems like that whole thing spiraled pretty quickly.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who doesn’t want to go to the amusement park with her friend anymore, because the friend can no longer ride most of the attractions.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit think about what happened.

Here’s someone who thinks she needs better friends.

This person thinks she’s better off.

She should clear it up at the cafe for the man.

She sure doesn’t.

Zara doesn’t sound like much of a friend.

If this young woman wanted to talk to the man, that was her decision to make. Zara should have minded her own business instead of creating a scene and then blaming someone else for it afterward.

From the details here, the man doesn’t sound like he was up to no good. Then again, you never really know when you’re dealing with a stranger.

In the end, she’s probably better off without a friend who jumps to conclusions and turns a simple conversation into a friendship-ending argument. However, she should take one lesson from all of this and be a little more careful about giving out her phone number to people she doesn’t know.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee whose dietary restrictions caused the whole office to turn against her.