Thanks, Yaowen - writing down what was happening, and remembering things I haven’t included here, a lot of which I was unaware of and had to be filled in on by “mutual friend”, I do agree it feels like a confusing situation right now. There’s also the fact ex friend and her best friend are a sort of package deal. Best friend seems nice but has treated us (me and former mutual friend) poorly in various ways, even before we all started pulling away from this group thing we had going on.
I think you’re a nice person, too, Yaowen - thanks for replying