Instead, I hung out more and more in Craig’s basement, not just to watch him play games with his friends but to talk to the other girlfriends and hangers-on, to glow about this special thing or that, none of which were actually that special in retrospect. (God, imagining Craig bringing me a tampon is too impossible to even contemplate.) And of course, as soon as Craig ditched me for Sierra, those girls ditched me too; Alex Gaboury was the only one who even said she was sorry to hear about it.

So maybe … I was not the best friend either. I mean, not “hiding from my BFF that her boyfriend and sister are hooking up” level of bad, but, you know, not great.

“Have you spoken to her at all?” Sabrina asks, breaking into my thoughts. She’s gotten the gist of the story over the past few weeks.

“Nope.”

“Really?” Sabrina twirls her pen between her fingers at impressive speed. “I would’ve thought she’d have reached out by now. Seems like a pretty obvious thing to apologize for.”

“The fight we had about it was … not great,” I admit. “I yelled at her for being a traitor and she told me it was my fault for being so clueless, and it devolved from there. And I didn’t exactly give her the biggest window to apologize before blocking her number and social media.” It’s also possible that I said some unkind things to her about being maybe a little boring or jealous or both that I didn’t feel like apologizing for, either.

“Do you miss her?”

“Does it make me a jerk that I don’t, really?” I don’t make eye contact for that, concentrating my gaze on the cover of my Spanish notebook instead. “I think we drifted a long time ago but were both sort of afraid to see what else was out there.” I take a deep breath, then admit to Sabrina what I haven’t said to anyone else. (And who else would I say it to, anyway?) “I looked at her pictures the other day, and she looked so freaking happy. She’s a different person, doing different things, and the only thing that really changed in her life between then and now is that I left. So maybe I was holding her back. Maybe I was the boring loser.”

The words somehow sound even worse coming out of my mouth now than they did then.

“Or maybe you gave her the push she needed,” Sabrina suggests with a shrug. “I mean, yeah, maybe you were a dick about it—”

“I was definitely a dick about it.”

“Okay, but I’m your friend, not hers, so whatever. Point is, maybe this was the best thing for both of you and that’s all there is to it. You’re here for a fresh start, right? So you’re getting yours, and she’s getting hers.”