She thought she saw tears shining in Caitlin’s eyes.

“Yeah, okay,” said Caitlin finally. “I get that. I do. I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job with that. I really am.” She touched her artfully messy bun. Caitlin, Alexa had to admit, had always been really good at a messy bun, which, like most things, was harder than it looked.

“Thank you,” said Alexa.

“I wanted to talk to you about something else too. About Tyler.” She ducked her head. “We’ve sort of been—talking. Hanging out.” She squinted at Alexa. “Does that bother you? Does that make you mad?” Her voice rose a little bit, pleading.

“Well, it doesn’t surprise me,” said Alexa. “Let’s put it that way.” Caitlin had had her eye on Tyler since freshman year.

“I mean,” continued Caitlin, “if you have to know . . .”

“I don’t,” said Alexa. “I don’t have to know.”

“All he wants to do is talk about you,” Caitlin continued anyway. “He’s pretty broken up about how things ended with the two of you.”

Alexa rolled her eyes so hard she thought one might roll right out of her head. Bullshit, she thought. “I’m sure he is,” she said. Her voice sounded shaky. Another car rolled into the parking lot and she craned her neck to get a good view of it. She looked around for Morgan and Katie. They had finished their ice cream and were practicing cartwheels on the patch of grass.

Caitlin had always been so transparent about what she was thinking: she had no poker face, only tells. For a slice of an instant, Alexa missed their friendship with an intensity that gripped at her core. She felt herself softening further.

“Hey, listen. If you do start hanging out with Tyler, or whatever you want to call it—”

“Yes? What?” For a split second Caitlin looked like the old Caitlin, the anxious middle school Caitlin, who was the same Caitlin who’d once laughed so hard at Alexa’s imitation of their algebra teacher during lunch in eighth grade that milk shot out of her nose.

Alexa paused. Her heart was still hammering and her insides were jumbled but this felt important enough to force all of those parts to be quiet for a moment.

“If you do hang out with Tyler, just be really careful, okay? He wasn’t always that nice to me. Just—just watch yourself. Take care of yourself.”

Caitlin nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks, Alexa. I’ll talk to you soon?”

“Yeah. Okay. Soon.”

Caitlin went through the side door into Haley’s, and as soon as she was gone the drumbeat started up in Alexa’s brain again.