“Okay, bad analogy. But you’ll be fine, I promise. And if Luke loves you—which, duh, he always has and I always knew that, just saying—he’ll be patient.”

So instead of going in protected by preparedness, I did something much harder: I dropped my armor.

It seemed, somehow, that as soon as I’d made the decision to sleep with Luke, he knew. He came into my bedroom as he did every night, and yet everything felt different this time. He kissed me, and I told him I was nervous. He replied that he was too.

“Why are you nervous? You’ve done this before,” I said, trying not to let any bitterness creep into my voice.

“Because this is different.”

“How?”

“My first time wasn’t with someone I loved. It wasn’t you. I wish . . .” He trailed off and his voice faltered. He was nervous. My fearless friend. He’d had to lay down his armor as well.

“What do you wish?” I whispered.

“I wish I’d waited. For you,” he said.

Somehow, hearing this allowed me to let go of whatever else was holding me back. Luke ran his lips down my torso, but this time when he reached the edge of my underwear—our fail-safe—he slowly removed them. He kept kissing and went down between my legs. I think he registered my surprise because he looked up at me.

“I’m just going to . . .” He smiled and spread my legs apart. I felt his tongue and experienced a ratcheting of nerves, a thundering of blood. I wasn’t entirely naive. I’d had an orgasm before, but only on my own, furtively alone in bed thinking of someone—usually Luke—or in my dreams when I’d be taken by some faceless man. This was something new and breathtakingly intimate. This was my best friend, his tongue, his lips, his hands. What came next was painful in a way that was not unpleasant. Sex would get better, cease to be painful, become a path to discovery of new things the two of us could do with the finely honed machines of our bodies. But even that first time, it was like a miracle to be that close to him.

After that, it all felt much more serious, and we knew we had to tell Blair. The day we decided to come clean, there was fresh powder, so first, we skied. It was a perfect day: the sun was out and beaming down, and soon our jackets were unzipped. I wondered as I watched the two most important men in my life: Was this the last time we would be like this? What if telling Blair about Luke and me was the end of the three of us?

We ate in the lodge after a spectacular morning on the hill, and as we sat across from Blair exchanging glances, he finally burst out laughing.

“You guys are ridiculous, you know that?”