Abi Roberts, 19, Bekah King, 18, and Morgan Tabor, 21, were all betrayed by the same man – now they’re driving an old bus across the United States together. Photo: Instagram / the.bam.bus
Three young women are touring the west together this summer, united by something they never thought they would have in common: they all had the same deceitful boyfriend. At the same time.
Instead of being bitter about their discovery, Abi Roberts, 19, of Salt Lake City, and Bekah King, 18, and Morgan Tabor, 21, who both live in Boise, said that they had decided that the best way to deal with it to become, to move on – in a 30-year-old school bus that they bought and renovated themselves in 2 ½ months.
The trio left almost a month ago and are currently camping in Bozeman, Mont., Where they hike, enjoy the outdoors and laugh a lot. They document their adventures on their Instagram page. “The BAM bus”, which they named after each of their first initials.
“We are living our dream life and having a lot of fun,” said Tabor. “It’s incredible to think it happened because of him.”
The trio’s unexpected friendship began around the holidays last December when Tabor began to feel suspicious of her boyfriend. They had dated over and over again for several years, but at that point they had only agreed on that.
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She noticed that her boyfriend, a 20-year-old college student who lives next to her parents’ house in Boise, texted several women and received flirty comments on his social media posts, she said.
“I had this bad feeling that I couldn’t get rid of, so I went to Instagram to find one of the girls’ names,” says Tabor, who works for an organic company.
What she discovered shocked her.
“Almost all of the photos on this girl’s page were of her with this guy who I thought was my boyfriend,” she said.
Tabor contacted the woman on Instagram and she was equally stunned, she said. The two continued digging and found Roberts, a Utah State University student and artist whose name they found on their busy friend’s social media accounts.
“When Morgan contacted me it was the craziest feeling ever,” said Roberts, who had been with her Boise beau since Halloween last year, in a relationship she thought was exclusive.
“This guy had literally slept at my house the night before, kissed me goodbye and said he was going back to Boise [from Utah] to visit his family, “she said.
Instead, he showed up at Tabor in the middle of her long FaceTime chat with Roberts.
“We were talking and suddenly I heard his car outside and he came to the door with flowers,” said Tabor.
“Hey, look here,” she remembered telling him. “I made some new friends.”
“Seeing his face sag when he saw who I was talking to on FaceTime was the most cinematic moment ever,” she said.
Her boyfriend tried to convince her that there was nothing wrong with going out with more than one woman at the same time, but neither of them bought it, Roberts said.
“After he left, we did some research,” she said. “We found at least six women that he had seen.”
One of them was King, who had been with him since 2018.
“Just two hours after being confronted by Morgan and Abi and telling them he was going to be a changed man, he sent me a message asking to hang out,” said King, who works as a medical receptionist.
“I was as shocked as anyone when I found out what he was up to,” she said.
It turned out, they said, that he had talked to all three of them about a future together.
The three women agreed that it was time to drop him, said Tabor.
When reached by the Washington Post, the friend said, “There are two sides to everything, but I think the best part right now is not to say anything.”
He spoke briefly in a telephone interview on condition that his name not be used.
“I really don’t want anything more to do with them,” he said of the three women.
The women also asked that his name not be published as it was not their aim to publicly shame him or damage his reputation. Rather, they said, they wanted the focus to be on their bond, not his betrayal.
The women provided text messages and social media posts to verify their account. This was also confirmed in an interview with one of her fathers.
Each of the women managed their breakups by texting and FaceTiming each other for several months, Tabor said. Then in January they all decided to meet at Roberts’ apartment for a weekend.
“We went through a lot of trauma and shared memories, and it was obvious that we were all really cool, fun people who had a lot in common,” said Roberts. “We became good friends straight away.”
“This guy had told each of us that his dream was to take a VW bus and travel around the country with it,” she said. “We were sitting together that weekend, laughing and talking about van life, and pretty soon we were like, ‘Hey, we can do that.’ “
“We all had a summer free and I knew a guy who could sell me an old bus,” said Tabor.
“Since we had all worked very hard and saved some money, we decided, ‘Why not?’ “Added King.
So they pooled a few thousand dollars, bought the bus, and parked with King’s parents while they renovated it. King had experience helping her father with home construction projects, she said.
“We checked out a few YouTube videos, but most of them were pretty straightforward,” said Tabor. “Bekah’s dad and my dad helped us frame it, but beyond that, we built the rest.”
The trio met in Boise every weekend to pursue their vision, she added.
“We took out the seats and the flooring, painted the ceiling, added new floors, siding and insulation, and built bunk beds and a roof terrace,” said Tabor.
In mid-June, a few days after the bus renovation was completed, the trio filled the tank and made their way to the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho, then on to Jackson, Wyo. and to Grand Teton National Park.
They park their bus in campsites at night and aim to land on a California beach sometime in the fall, King said.
“We take turns, and if we go downhill and have a good tailwind, we can go 100 km / h,” she said.
She and her bus mates said they didn’t want anyone to get the impression that their road trip was some kind of revenge tour.
“What this guy did to us doesn’t define our lives,” said Roberts. “We all feel really blessed to have found each other. We are friends for life.”
The Washington Post
