“Oh. Cool,” she replied, then held up her phone to show me something in her shopping cart. “Hey, do you think this dress looks cheap?”

It was all very anticlimactic, and I’m sure Cate had forgotten what we were talking about by the end of lunch. But I remember every detail from that exchange because it was from then on that I vowed to stop getting my hopes up. To stop wanting more—from others, for myself. I had people to sit with at lunch, people who were nice to me, a relatively secure position on the social ladder, and that was enough.

So I’m not expecting much when I tell Daisy in a restaurant bathroom that I kissed Cyrus.

She almost drops the paper towel in her hand. “You did what?” she asks, whirling around to face me, eyes wide. “Oh my god, when? Are you guys together now?”

And maybe I hadn’t managed to throw my hope away completely, because when I start talking, every unimportant detail spilling from me in an excited rush, Daisy nodding fast and clapping a hand over her mouth at all the right parts, I feel it rising up beneath my ribs. The delight of finding a real, true friend, someone you can talk to about anything, no matter how serious or silly.

“I’m so happy for you,” Daisy gushes, then pauses, scanning my face like a bridesmaid seeing the bride in her wedding gown for the very first time. “Are you happy it happened?”

“I … don’t know,” I confess. Now that the initial giddiness from the kiss has had time to settle, and my brain cells aren’t being compromised by my hormones, more questions have popped up. Do I still go through with my revenge plan? Do I make him my boyfriend? Are we dating now, or are we something else?

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Daisy asks.

“There’s just a lot for me to process,” I say. “It happened so suddenly and it wasn’t what I expected and … I’m still not sure where to go from here.”

She doesn’t push me for details, but she does offer me a gentle smile in the mirror. “Well, if you ever want to talk about it—I’m here.”

“Thank you,” I tell her, which feels too light, insufficient. It means more than she could possibly know.

As Daisy finishes drying her hands, I unzip my makeup bag and start gently dusting powder around my nose and cheeks. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice her watching.

“Where did you learn to do that?” she asks.

“What? This?” I swish the brush I’m holding in midair.