I’ve never done this before, so let me know if I'm doing this wrong. I have a tight-knit friend group. It’s been me, Anna, Michael, and Lola for a long time. I don’t know if this is relevant, but I’m like a year or two younger than they are, although it doesn’t affect our group much. Recently, my younger brother has been distancing himself from his friends. His friends have been really cruel and mean to him lately. He’s a small guy, especially compared to these guys, so he asked to hang out with me and my friends. I said sure, and the others agreed. Now, here’s where it gets iffy.

Michael has a friend, Lance. Lance has never brought it up to me personally, but according to Michael, I’m a huge bitch to him and Lance is hurt by it. Every instance he cites, though, it's been Michael twisting my words. One example was that he said I told Lance he ‘looked like a girl’, but I saw Lance out of the corner of my eye and thought it was another person because they had the same hair length and color. I turned to Lance, laughed, and said, “Oh my god, I didn’t realize it was you, Lance. I thought it was Sarah out of the corner of my eye.” Immediately, Michael started saying “bro, you're saying he looks like a girl” and stuff. Another time, Lance was talking about doing karate. I also do martial arts. Lance is a big dude, and I know karate is kind of a baby’s first martial art (im sorry for the karate masters, but I doubt he’s a master) and I mentioned “Karate? Really? You’re like a big guy though. I figured you’d do something more taxing like krav maga or something.”. Michael said I called Lance fat. I quickly clarified I meant buff and tough, because Lance is like…not even a little bit overweight?? Even so, I've apologized to Lance multiple times. I’m autistic, so maybe my words don’t translate well. 

Now, Lance had been picking on my brother. I found this out recently. When my brother John started hanging with me, Lance followed. He’s behaved until like three days ago. He knocked John’s food out of his hand. Lance claimed he only did it because Michael ‘commanded’ it. This made me and John furious, because, well, food is sacred in our culture. You don’t waste it, especially when someone is eating it. John gave him an earful and stormed off. 

I decided to talk to Michael. He and Lance are close, so I figured it’d be better to have Michael talk to his friend, y’know? I asked Michael, politely, if he could talk to Lance and ask him to treat John with respect, and I wasn’t gonna tolerate picking on him around me.. He said (summarized) “Well, you’ve been a huge fucking bitch to Lance, so why should I do that? They’re both men, so they can man up and talk to each other. You’ve been a piece of shit, calling him fat and a girl”. I got mad, because I never said any of those things. It frustrates me to hear one of my good friends, who has never acted this way to me, unless Lance is in the picture. Lola says I’m an asshole and to get over. Anna and our friend, out of the friend group, Emily, say I am right. Help?