“The part that makes me maddest,” she hisses when we’re out of earshot, “is how Chase and I were both equals in this bullshit. We had sex with each other. Together. But for some reason, I’m a slut. I’m a slut because I’ve had sex one time with one person.” She walks faster, not looking at me.

“You’re not a slut,” I say, because I feel like I need to say something.

“Well, obviously,” she snaps, turning her head to me. “That’s the whole fucking point.”

Andrew’s parents are having a date night in Burlington, so he’s decided to have a guys’ night—something with tacos, because guys seem to have an inexplicable obsession with them. It’s too risky to have a party, so tacos are a safe compromise. Cheese and ground beef aren’t illegal, even if they horrify our vegan parents to their core.

“I’m not coming,” I tell him when he invites me, but we both know I’ll end up there anyway. Still, I tell Andrew I’ll help him shop for supplies, so we find ourselves at Costco, piling gargantuan ingredients into our cart—whale-sized tubs of guacamole and sour cream and a jar of hot sauce that would outlast the apocalypse. The bag of shredded cheese we buy is legitimately bigger than I am. Andrew stands it up next to me to take a picture.

“Why did you invite Ryder?” I ask, jumping onto the front of the cart. I know Andrew hates Ryder as much as I do, and yet he always seems to be everywhere.

“Chase invited him,” Andrew says, pushing me and the bag of cheese down the aisle. “And I can’t just tell Ryder not to show up. Hey, ready for warp speed?” He starts running, pushing the cart faster, building momentum as we go. The aisles at Costco are about the size of city blocks, so there’s plenty of room. As we gain speed, he jumps onto the back. I scream and put a foot down to brake us before we crash into a ceiling-high stack of Chips Ahoy! cookies.

Once we’ve slowed down to a steady roll, I jump off the cart and move around to the back so I’m the one pushing. He jumps off and walks beside me.

“You were downstairs that night, right?” I say as we turn into the refrigerated aisle. We pause in front of the juice.

“What night?”

“My birthday.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“What happened when Danielle and I were still upstairs?” I don’t know why I haven’t thought to ask him before. “How did everybody find out about it? Chase must have said something, right?”

“Somebody could’ve seen Chase and Danielle go into the room together,” he offers.

“But then how did everybody know so fast?”