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“Fine—Lacey and Liam are dating now?” I said it as sarcastically as I could, to both indicate how little chance I thought of it happening and to cover the pain I’d be in if I were right.

Sarah’s eyebrows crawled up her forehead, and she laughed. “No. Hell no. Where did that come from?”

“I just got up, Sarah,” I said, flipping my coffee mug over again, hoping the waitress would come and save me.

She leaned across the table and spoke in a rush. “Ryan and I are, like, really boyfriend and girlfriend now. Like—you know.” She gave me a knowing look and tilted her head provocatively.

“Of course you are. You’ve been dating for three months already?—”

“No. I mean it counts now. For real.” Her expressive face encouraged me to get with the program, which I would, if I had telepathy. “You know,” she said, with an emphasis on the ‘know’.

My eyes widened. “You didn’t—did you?”

“We did,” she confirmed, pulling back to her side of the table again.

I sat back and blinked. What did you say to your best friend who’d just told you they’d lost their virginity?

The waitress swooped in with food and coffee just in time.

CHAPTER 3

“Congrats?” I guessed, as the waitress set our plates down, and Sarah laughed.

“Is that all?” she asked.

I quickly shook my head. “No.” There was more, it was just figuring out how to say it. “What’s it like?”

Sarah took on that face she got that teachers loved, the one she used from three rows back to lecture fellow students on the Kreb cycle. “It was—good. Like all the stuff you see on TV or movies—it’s like that, only it was better. It didn’t hurt, but he went slow, just in case—and then he went faster and—” She shook her head and flushed, unable to explain any more of it to me.

I did a friend/adult-check over both my shoulders before leaning in. “Did you use a condom?”

She gave me a look. “Jesus, Jessica.”

There’d been a time in 8thgrade, where as far as Sarah was concerned, Jesus-Jessica could’ve been my name.

“How’d you know it was time?” I went on.

“The stars aligned. We were kissing, and it just felt right—we didn’t even get out of his truck, we left the party and drove out tothe Point.” I had never been to the Point. She broke the yolks of her sunny-side up eggs and yellow juices flowed out. “Only time I’ve been out there and it was empty, because everyone else was at Liam’s.”

“Wait—” I stirred the contents of my plate up into an eggy-potato-y pile and started eating. “What about Lacey?”

“What about her?” Sarah said. “You can’t tell her about Ryan and I. We’re the mature ones,” she said, gesturing between us with her fork. “Her mom still makes her wear floral prints and go to church.”

“But you got us invites, remember?”

“Yeah, but I figured you’d both be at work.”

“So you didn’t see her there?”

“We were only there for literally thirty-seconds,” she said and looked past me for a moment, and I knew she was remembering something private, like Ryan’s hand creeping up her thigh. My gut twisted in disgust and jealousy and I decided to hide it by re-checking my phone.

“She didn’t text me back last night. Or this morning.”

“She’s probably hung-over and grounded. If her mom found out, we won’t see her outside of school for weeks.”

“Yeah.” Lacey’s mom’d threatened her with Catholic/private/all-girls school before. I had no idea where the money for that would come from, seeing as she was in the trailer park with me, but who could say?

“Anyhow,” Sarah said, refocusing our attention back on her, which was where she liked it, “Ryan and I are now definitely a thing.”