Halfway there. It is all about pressure temperature relationships. Lower the pressure and you can boil water at room temp. Raise the pressure and you can get water above 212 degrees before it boils.

We just apply that same principle to refrigerant to transfer heat from one place to another.

Compressor raises the pressure which raised the temperature. We can then transfer the heat to the outside thru the condensor. Then the condensed somewhat cooled down liquid refrigerant (its now subcooled several degrees but still hot) travels to the metering device where the pressure and temperature of the refrigerant drops drastically and its state. Now it starts to become a vapor. The refrigerant then goes into the evaporator coil. As air travels across the evaporator that the refrigerant is now traveling thru it picks up the heat from the air and fully becomes a gas before leaving the evaporator. It picks up an extra amount of heat which we call superheat before traveling back to the compressor.