“Yeah. I mean, I sort of dragged it out of her, she didn’t really want to, but it’s done now.”

“I can’t believe she told you,” I say, half to myself.

Molly ignores me. “So, be honest with me. Right now. Do you actually care?”

I flounder. “It’s none of your business,” I say. My head is spinning. How could Danni have told her? I trusted her. Deeply, in fact—more than I trust most people. More than I probably had any right to trust someone I’ve known for so little time. Why am I so shocked? What was it about Danni that had me so convinced she would never share something so private, so important?

“Danni’s my best friend, so if you hurt her, it’s my business. So: do you give a damn about her?”

Is Molly even the first person she’s told? What if she’s shared this with other people? I have no way of knowing. How could she do this? How could she?

“Rose?” Molly asks, a little too loudly, and I scrape my way to the surface of my swirling thoughts.

“Of course I do,” I snap. “I wouldn’t have been with her at all if I didn’t care about her. Not to mention, I don’t know if she left this part out, but she broke up with me.”

So if she’s sharing this around in some sort of ill-conceived revenge against me, it’s not even fair. I never wanted to break up. I all but begged her on my knees not to. No, I realize, she’s not doing this out of revenge. That’s not Danni. So, what, then? Did she simply forget the stakes?

“You wouldn’t have … what?” Molly asks. “She broke up with you?”

“Yes,” I repeat. “She did.”

Molly could not possibly look more bewildered if she tried. Her confusion catches at me and slows me down, a parachute against free fall. Why does she look like that? Is it that hard for her to believe Danni broke my heart, and not the other way around?

She narrows her eyes like she has incoming migraine. “Wait, I’m lost. Are you telling me there was something between … you and Danni?”

The world stops as the implications of her words hit me. I frantically replay our conversation, and realize my mistake too late. At no point did Molly specifically confirm she knew about our trysts. I keep my mouth shut for once, unwilling to implicate myself further.

Molly bicycles her hands while she speaks. “Danni told me that she had a one-sided crush on you, and you knew about it, and that’s why there’s been weirdness between you two.”

Ah. Well, that’s something I can much more imagine Danni saying. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been quite so quick to believe her apparent betrayal of me.