“Well, at first I thought, What are the chances? But then, I remembered you always told me Whitney was extra touchy with Callum and totally had the hots for him. Pieces started falling together. He’d cheated on you before, why wouldn’t he do it again? I tried to call when you were in Greece, but you didn’t pick up. Then what happened between us came out, and it was too late. I swear not telling you was the worst thing I’ve ever done, Rory. I swear. There’s never any way a boy could come between us.”

Rory put her hand on mine and smiled. “I know.”

“You do?” I felt my entire face twisting in pain.

She nodded. “I’ve known it for a long time—that I was going to forgive you, that is. I figured we should have this conversation face to face, so I was going to do it when I came to visit Mom in a few weeks. But you beat me to it. Look, I know how crappy it feels to cheat on someone. I agonized over what I did to Callum. Still do. Because it doesn’t matter that he cheated—I’m better than that. Or I should have been. I don’t regret being with Mal, but I regret that it happened before I broke up with Callum. That’s for me to live with, a permanent stain on my conscience, and yet here I am—living. So I’m asking you to do the same. Live with your mistake, Cinder-freaking-rella. Learn from it, and go find your Richard Gere.”

We stared at each other for a while, smiling quietly. It felt like a promising hello, but somehow also a bittersweet goodbye. Nothing would be the same, I knew, with or without Rory’s forgiveness. She was not coming back—not to live in New York, anyway, and yet she chose to give me the beautiful gift of forgiveness.

“For the record, I hate your new husband for taking you away from me.” I sniffed, crossing my arms and looking the other way to further prove my point.

“For the record, he resents you, too, for what we did to his pictures,” she snorted.

“You told him!” I grabbed a throw pillow and threw it in her face.

She caught it in the air and tossed it back at me, laughing.

It hit my face and fell in my lap.

“Bitch,” I shrieked.

“Traitor.” She waggled her eyebrows.

We both collapsed to the floor, holding our bellies, giggling, and I knew that with or without her, I’d eventually be all right.

Now I’m at the Dublin Airport, waiting for my flight back to New York.