There was a long silence.

We have to get indoors, Christy thought. We have to get indoors before we both freeze.

But neither of them moved.

“All this time?” Alix’s voice was barely audible. “You’ve been thinking this, simmering over this, for all this time, and you never said anything? I asked you if we were okay, and you said yes.”

“Because that’s what I do, isn’t it? I pretend things are fine. I ignore difficult conversations. That’s on me. I need to handle that, and I’m a work in progress—”

“Seems to me you’re making a lot of progress.”

“But you knew me. You knew what I was like.”

“So you’re saying that it’s my fault for saying it in the first place and also my fault for not guessing you were feeling differently from how you said you were feeling? Am I supposed to be a mind reader?” Alix sounded fierce, but it was obvious she was close to tears. “You’re saying you felt this way for five years, and you didn’t talk to me about it once?”

Christy felt sick. Alix had fought for her in the past, but they’d never fought each other. It felt scary, as if her whole future was threatened. “I was trying to forget! It was my responsibility to fix my own thoughts, and I was trying to do that. The last thing I wanted was to rake the whole thing up again. But you put doubt in my mind. You wanted to put doubt in my mind. And I felt as if you were always watching, waiting to say I told you so. Whenever you visited I felt as if I had to prove how happy we were. I could never just be.”

Alix was shivering. “I have never said I told you so. You think that’s what this was about? Being proved right? Is that why you stopped sharing with me?”

“You stopped sharing with me, too. You never mentioned you kissed Zac.”

She regretted the words instantly. This wasn’t about Zac. This wasn’t about scoring points.

Alix was staring at her. Her rapid breathing clouded the air.

Christy waited for her to say something.

And waited.

And finally Alix spoke.

“You’re upset that I didn’t tell you about Zac? That there’s something about my life you don’t know? Think about that, Christy. Think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“Did it never occur to you that the reason I was emotional that day wasn’t only because I was worried about you getting married to someone you barely knew because you were pregnant, but because I felt as if I was losing you? You’ve been my best friend for almost my whole life. You were my family. We were everything to each other for two decades. Everything. There was barely anything that happened to one of us that the other didn’t know about. And then, suddenly, you had another family. In a matter of weeks you had a baby on the way, and you were getting married, and you were making a whole new life I wasn’t part of—” Alix’s voice broke “—and I couldn’t see how I fitted into that life. And yes, I was thinking about myself. I admit it—” she was struggling to talk and breathe “—and maybe that makes me selfish, but maybe it also shows how much our friendship meant to me. How much I loved you. How important you were in my life. I knew all the things you were to me, I was clear about that, but I didn’t know what I was to you anymore. I didn’t know where I fitted. I didn’t know what my place was or how you saw our friendship. And I still don’t know.”