Caddie wanted to press her for more. Like why she had made up something like that and why she would tell it to a complete stranger. Instead she said, “I didn’t know he and you were together when it happened.”

Nicole looked at her, no trace of hatred in her countenance. “It’s all right,” she said. “Really.”

Caddie drank her chai, giving herself time to think. Nicole was an enigma. She’d thought her to be a stupid girl, at the least a naive one. Now she wasn’t sure what she thought.

“I do love him,” Nicole said. “And I know he loves me, no matter what he does.”

Caddie, against her better judgment, said, “But don’t you deserve better?”

Nicole smiled. “What’s better?” she said. “A boyfriend who doesn’t cheat on me? Do you think there is one?”

Caddie thought about this. “Honestly?” she said. “I don’t know.”

“Sex isn’t love,” Nicole said. “And Nick doesn’t love anyone else, even if he forgets sometimes.”

No, Caddie thought. Sex isn’t love. She had to agree with Nicole on that. As for the rest of it, she decided it really wasn’t any of her business.

“So, how’s your summer going?” Nicole asked, abandoning the current topic of conversation.

Caddie let out a long sigh. “I’m not sure,” she said. She thought about her father, and Brian, and about Sam and Bree. A few days ago, she’d thought she had all of them neatly arranged in her life. She’d known how she felt, and what she wanted—or didn’t—from all of them.

She started talking, and once she’d started, she didn’t stop for a long time. Nicole just sat and listened, nodding occasionally but saying little else than to encourage Caddie to go on. Caddie surprised herself by telling Nicole about her father and their long estrangement. She touched on Brian—who wasn’t so much a problem as he was a diversion that was becoming less and less amusing—and ended with a reconstruction of the morning’s phone call.

“It all makes Nick sound like a piece of cake,” Nicole said when Caddie was finished.

Caddie looked at her and they both laughed. It felt good to laugh about her problems; she just never thought it would be with the girlfriend of the first guy in Monterey she’d slept with. “Maybe I’m making it sound more dramatic than it really is,” she said.

“Life is dramatic,” said Nicole, drinking her latte. “That’s what makes it interesting, right?”

“It makes it something,” Caddie said. “I don’t know if interesting is the word I’d pick.”