“It was just hi, that’s it. She wouldn’t have read anything into it. One word wouldn’t have given you away.” I didn’t want to hear her excuses. “It’s not like I would have said or done anything to out you,” I whispered.

But I could see from the look in her eye that even that would have been too much to ask for.

I paused. “Did you think I would?”

She didn’t answer me directly. “Maybe I did it for myself, too,” she said. Her eyes slid away from me, but I’d already seen the sheen of wetness. She didn’t blink, and I knew why. “I told you before I left that I just wanted a clean break, that I didn’t want to hang on to … to anything from here. And I meant it. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t spend the last year regretting it.”

Meanness burned inside me. “You feeling sorry doesn’t change anything.”

“No, no. Of course not.” She seemed startled. “I … I should join my friends.” She lifted her cup, still unblinking. “Um, I’ll see you around, I guess.”

“I guess,” I echoed, watching her drift back to her table. The tips of her dark brown hair skimmed the waist of her high-rise shorts, swaying as she walked. She might have gotten her dark curls and light brown skin from her dad, but the extent to which she cared about other people’s opinions was all from her mom.

“Thank God I missed all that,” whispered Lucy as she joined me behind the counter. She dumped a tray in the sink and turned on the faucet. “You could cut the tension with a knife. ‘CalArts, that’s what we in California call it.’ Jeez, how pretentious.” Lucy punctuated the sentence with an eye roll. “And what was all that clandestine whispering going on between you two? Why did she say—were you two, like, together together?”

“It was nothing. Just some stupid drama from last year that we never really resolved.” It wasn’t my secret to tell, anyway. I hoped Elodie could feel the holes my eyes were boring in the back of her head. “Trust me, Lucy. I couldn’t care less about her. The sooner she goes back to California, the better.”

“Hey, sweetie, what’s going on?” was the first thing Mom said when she answered her cell phone. Then, fainter, “Abby, it’s my daughter. No, no, don’t pause it.” Mom’s breath came across the phone line, along with the distinct sound of a closing door.

“Did I interrupt your movie?” I asked, punching buttons on the microwave to reheat last night’s dinner, four-cheese macaroni with truffle oil.

“No big deal, sweetheart. Abby’s just nursing a bit of a broken heart, and you know Katherine Heigl movies always cheer her up.”

“What happened?”