“What do you think?” Luke said with a laugh, both avoiding and implying the answer. The last place Blair would expect Luke to be was in bed with me. I suddenly felt the grip of nerves; how would we tell him? How would he take it? It felt like we’d violated some unspoken pact.

“You dog,” Blair said, and then the two proceeded to go into their training schedules like nothing was out of the ordinary.

Dismayingly, at first, it seemed that nothing was out of the ordinary, at least not when we were around other people. At night, Luke would sneak into my bedroom, where we’d make out for hours. We’d let ourselves get down to our underwear but no further, burning ourselves up with unsated desire. In retrospect, I’m glad I had this time with Luke. Making out is best done by the young, where the fear of going too far adds an extra kick of adrenaline; and we were both junkies for that.

But when we were with Blair or our teammates or Luke’s freeskier buddies, it was the same as always, which left me feeling confused and isolated. I couldn’t very well talk to my best friends about it, since one was Luke and the other was Blair. My mom and I were close, but we didn’t have the kind of relationship that some girls have with their moms, where they can talk about things like love and sex, and I certainly wasn’t going to talk to my dad about it. This left me with Penny, weird religious phase or no. I called her one evening to break the news about Luke, and she was delighted.

“I knew it!” she said. “Emily, my sister hooked up with Luke!”

“Jesus Christ, Pen, really?”

“Emily is dancing around our apartment right now, just so you know.”

I laughed despite myself. It felt like such a relief to tell the two of them: my two big sisters.

“I’m putting you on speaker. Tell us everything!”

They were thrilled that we’d broken through the friendship barrier, but clucked knowingly at his confusing behavior around everyone else.

“He wants to have his cake and eat it too,” Emily said. “I hate it!”

“Katie,” Penny asked, her voice serious, “do you want Luke to be your actual boyfriend?”

I paused; it felt strange to put it in those terms.

“I don’t know . . .” I said. “I mean, he’s my best friend.”

“But you’re into him!” Emily crowed. “I called this, by the way, I forgot to mention that. Penny had her money on Blair.”

“I’m glad my love life is so hilarious to you two.”

“Of course, it is,” Penny said. “Listen, you obviously like Luke as more than a friend. I know you’re in a committed relationship with your skis and all, but I think you want him to be your boyfriend.”

“Definitely,” Emily chimed in.