But all we could come up with was that he was a flirt and tried (and succeeded) to be really good in bed. It was useless. He was perfect. Other than, of course, the fact that he’d let her go.

Anyway, back to Callum and me. That night, one bottle of champagne led to two others.

“I don’t get it. I have demons, too, you know?” he said. “I’m not the squeaky-clean bastard she thinks I am. I can be a horrible person, Summer.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said.

“I’m selfish,” he replied.

“We all are.”

“Me more than most.”

That was the last thing he told me before his mouth descended on mine.

We slept together.

He cheated on her.

I cheated on her.

It was brief, quick, four-minutes-and-he-came sex. So anti-climactic in every sense of the word. I still consider it the worst thing I’ve ever done. And I wasn’t even close to climaxing. I didn’t enjoy it, but Callum had always been the fantasy—well-bred, well-endowed, and well-hung. Not to mention, the guy in a suit was the eighth wonder of the world, I’m pretty sure. It was a moment of weakness.

“See?” he said as he put his shoes on in a hurry. “I told you. Selfish.”

I said nothing to that.

“But I thought she’d be different, you know? I thought she’d get me out of that behavioral pattern. I don’t know. Maybe I have a sex addiction.”

I stopped answering him because I didn’t pity him. I had my own problems, my own issues with life.

The thing is, I didn’t know she would come back home, plop down next to me on the couch, notice the roses and sashimi on the counter, the traces of the masculine cologne he’d left behind, and say: “You’re right. I’m so stupid. I should just get over Mal and give this thing with Callum my best shot.”

That’s what she said when I could still smell the rubber of her boyfriend’s condom wafting from my pajamas, even after I took a shower. And Callum wasn’t doing much better guilt-wise. I’d watched from the window half an hour earlier as he shoved himself into the back of an Uber, on the verge of sobbing.

“I think you should,” I told Rory, thinking, but please don’t.

So now you see why I’m carrying five tons of guilt on my shoulders.

I never thought it would pan out this way. And even though I want to throw up every time the three of us are together in the same room (which doesn’t happen often), I just can’t be the one to let her break up with Callum.