“Mere, I—I can’t.” I choke on the words, choke on the knives in my throat, choke on every second that has ticked past in the last twenty-four hours. “I fucked everything up.”

“Yeah.” Meredith draws out the syllable. “You kind of did.”

“God, Meredith!” I sit up in my nest of used Kleenex and the blood rushes to my head. “You’re not allowed to agree with me! You’re the one who said it would be easy to fake a relationship for money!”

“I did,” she agrees. “But I believe I also told you to stop fake-dating Andrew once things got complicated with Jack.”

I throw the duvet back over my head. “I never would have gone along with Andrew’s plan if not for you!”

“It’s good to see you’re learning from your mistakes and owning your choices like an adult.”

She’s right, of course. She always fucking is. But the anguish is so big inside me, so debilitating, that I crave somewhere else to put the blame. “I can’t believe I failed so epically,” I admit.

“Wait.” Meredith flops her entire body across mine. “What does failure have to do with anything?”

I squeeze my eyes shut and try not to picture Jack shouting at me in the snow. You’re a self-fulfilling prophecy. “I failed at being Andrew’s fake fiancé,” I tell the inside of my blankets. “I failed at getting the money. I failed with Jack. I’ve lost Katherine, and the grandmas—”

“I’m struggling to see how any of that is failure. Fuck-uppery, sure, but not failure.”

“You wouldn’t,” I snap at her. “You’ve never failed at anything in your life!”

Meredith rips the blanket back again. “Where the hell did you get that idea? Everyone fails!”

“You don’t! Look at you! It’s Christmas, you just flew across the country on a last-minute red-eye, and your study notes are still all over my house.” I gesture wildly to the stacks of yellow legal pads and textbooks she’s already unloaded.

“Yeah, I’m studying!” she shouts at me. “Because I failed the bar exam!”

I cough derisively. “You didn’t fail the bar. You haven’t taken it yet. The test is in February.”

“I took it in July,” Meredith corrects. “I took it without telling you, and I failed.”

I stare at the flushed face of my best friend. “You…you what? Wait. Why?”

Meredith takes a slow, deliberate breath, gathers her red curls into a pile on top of her head, and holds them in place using the scrunchie on her wrist. Her face looks vulnerable, exposed.

“Meredith, why would you take the bar without telling me?”

“Honestly?” She sighs. “Because you have some really toxic ideas about failure, and I was worried about how you might react if I failed the first time, which was likely, since a lot of people fail the bar. And I did.”