As they got more serious, it was like Stevie pulled a curtain across their relationship. I was always happy to talk about what was happening with her and Beckett, but at some point, she wasn’t. I didn’t get this at all—I still wanted to tell her everything, and sometimes for me, it was almost like what happened wasn’t as important as her reaction to it. The first time I slept with anyone (Beau), I drove to Stevie’s afterward, even though it was past midnight, and we stayed up for hours in her kitchen, eating whatever we could find in the fridge and talking about every detail. But the first time Stevie and Beckett slept together, she didn’t even tell me for three days, and even then, she didn’t want to go over every moment like I had. Which was fine—Stevie had always been a little more private than me, and it always took her a while to sort out her feelings. But it was also why, when she told me they’d broken up, I was so thrown for a loop—I hadn’t seen it coming.

The night before school started, Stevie showed up at my house, sobbing. I’d been in the middle of clearing the table, but my mom took one look at the situation and had relieved me of my chore—and what’s more, ten minutes later, knocked on my door bearing ice cream.

We’d gone up to my room, Stevie still hysterically crying, telling me that it was over with Beckett. She didn’t go into specifics, just told me that he’d broken up with her at the Boxcar Cantina, which had up until that moment been her favorite restaurant, but that I now understood was a place we’d never go again. I’d asked gently for details, trying to figure out what had happened: Had he given a reason? Did it have anything to do with Annabel, Beckett’s best friend, who I’d long suspected had a crush on him?

She didn’t answer any of this. All Stevie would say was that Beckett had broken up with her, and that it was over.

I had always liked Beckett a lot, but just like that, all my good friendship feelings toward him curdled. He was clearly the asshole here. He thought he could just dump my best friend out of the blue and suffer no consequences? Expect me to still be friends with him?