The restaurant was pretty packed with last-minute Christmas shoppers from the nearby mall, and I went to the restroom while she asked for a table.

We didn’t have to wait too long. After the waiter took our drink orders and plopped down fresh bread, Andrea picked up the huge knife and pointed it at me. “Okay. So now that I’m not driving and am paying attention fully, you and I need to talk.”

I leaned back against the cushion. “Do you need to be holding a knife when you do it?”

“Oh, yeah, probably not the greatest thing to be waving in your face. Sorry.” She placed it down on her napkin slowly. “All right, we need to talk about Kyler.”

I blinked, not expecting that. I hadn’t told her a thing about Kyler. I hadn’t told anyone. “W-what do you mean?”

“You’re stuttering. That alone tells me a lot.” She picked up her glass and took a sip. “I know something went down between you two because Tanner called me this morning.”

My eyes practically popped out of my head. “Tanner called you?”

“Oh yeah,” she replied, looking like she was carrying a bucket full of secrets.

I gripped the edge of the table. “What did he say?”

“More like what he didn’t say.” Andrea cut a slice of bread and dropped it on my plate, but the balls of nerves were taking up too much room for me to even think of eating. “He called to ask me if I knew what happened between you and Kyler in Snowshoe. I assumed he meant the psycho redneck, but when I said that, he was like, ‘oh, hell no.’ He said he knew something went down between you two.”

My mouth opened, but I didn’t have a clue what to say. Heat swept across my cheeks, which was a dead giveaway.

Andrea’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, you dirty hussy, something did go down and you’ve kept quiet. I should disown you!”

The older couple across the way looked over at our table, and I wanted to hide under it. “Andrea, come on.”

“I’m your best friend foreva,” she said without a trace of shame. “You’re required by the laws of feminism to tell me these things.”

I snapped out of my inability to speak. “Whoa. I think you have the idea of feminism wrong.”

“Whatever.” Her eyes rolled. “You need to tell me what happened, because Tanner said Kyler looks like he’s done died and went to hell and hung out there for a while.”

My heart spasmed. “Really?”

She nodded. “Supposedly has been on a two-day bender, and today is the first day the guy has been sober. So whatever went down obviously didn’t end with a Disney happily-ever-after. All I have to say is that you need to tell me what is up, and it better include some rated-R stuff.”

My brows knitted.

“What?” She raised her hands. “A girl can live vicariously, right? I mean, every chick out there wants to star in a porn video with Kyler, so I’m dying to know if he’s that good.”

“He’s that good,” the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Andrea smacked her hands down on the table. “Oh, my God, you slept with Kyler?”

I looked around, cheeks burning. “Okay. Can we keep the sound volume down?”

“Sorry, but I’m just excited to hear about this. Not that I’m excited that he obviously fucked up, because I know it wasn’t you that screwed this up. It was him—it’s always the guy’s fault.”

Shaking my head, I released my breath. In a weird way, it felt good to unload this. Things still felt raw and abrasive and I prayed to God I didn’t start crying like a freak in the restaurant, but it was a relief to finally put some of these things into words. I gave her the quick and not-so-dirty version of what’d happened, glossing over some of the details that I’d die before I spoke out loud. Andrea waved the waiter away when he returned to see if we were ready to order, leaving me to tell her about Sasha and why Zach had started messing with us in the first place.

When I finished, I slumped in my booth, absolutely exhausted. “So…there you have it.”

Andrea opened her mouth and closed it several times like a fish out of water. “Holy shit…”

I took a sip of my Coke. “Yep.”

“Whoa, okay, let me get a grip on this.” She tugged her curls off her face. “You got drunk and tried to come on to him. He turned you down, and then later said you deserved better than a one-night stand while he was feeling you up? Then you two caved to your wild monkey lust and had sex several times, doing it in a way that he claimed he’d never done it before?”

Thank God she kept her voice low on that one. “Sounds about right.”

“And you guys spent over a day in pure sexual bliss, eating crackers and being all lovey-dovey, and it wasn’t awkward or anything?”

I shook my head.

“Hmm…” She fiddled with her straw. “And he didn’t act weird, right?”

“No. The exact opposite, Andrea. He was…he was perfect. I thought that he must’ve really wanted to be with me, you know? And that morning, we even took a cold shower together. He was…he was so sweet and then…” I sighed, feeling stupid. “He did seem off that morning, but then all of this happened.”

Andrea’s lips pursed. “So he obviously went over to Sasha’s, but how do you know he did anything?”

I gave her a bland look.

“Okay.” She raised her hands. “It is Kyler, but you don’t know what he did over there. Sure, it looks suspicious, and I can see why you’d think that, but you really don’t know.”

It wasn’t like I hadn’t considered that maybe Kyler hadn’t had sex with Sasha that day. Once I’d gotten home and calmed down a little, that had crossed my mind every five seconds. I shook my head again. What if my initial suspicion had been true, but I convinced myself otherwise, and then found out I’d been right he first time? My heart would be broken all over again.

“But he lied to me, Andrea. I asked him about Sasha and he said they weren’t like that.” I picked up a piece of bread, wanting to throw it. “He’s never lied to me before.”

“There is that,” she agreed as she pulled on a coppery curl, straightening it all the way out. “And the fact that psycho redneck hurt you because of Kyler’s never-ending sexual escapades. That’s hard to get past.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled and popped the bread in my mouth, wondering where our waiter had disappeared to. Andrea had probably scared him away.

“But…” Andrea let go of the curl and it bounced back into a perfect spiral. I was jealous. “That’s really not his fault, right? I mean, yeah, he might’ve slept with a chick and pissed off a boyfriend a year ago, but do you really think that’s the first time he’s done that?”

“I hope so.” Then I rolled my eyes. “No. That’s probably not the first time.”

“And I know it bothered you before—I’m not saying that it didn’t—but you still cared deeply for him.” Her eyes met mine. “I guess what I’m getting at is that he really needs to make it up to you for putting you in that position, but I don’t see any of this as being insurmountable.”

A tiny flare of hope kindled in my stomach, and I smashed it. “Okay. Let’s say that he didn’t sleep with Sasha a couple of days ago, and I can get over the fact that he didn’t tell the truth about his past with her, and the shit with Zach, but I don’t think it meant that much to him. That’s the problem.”

“I don’t know if I agree. Look, it’s been obvious to everyone that you’ve been madly in love with him. And it’s the same for him.”

“Really,” I said dryly. “It was so obvious with the bus terminal that is his pants?”

Andrea snorted. “Guys are totally stupid when it comes to unrequited love. We females pine away and keep our thighs closed for the most part when we love someone we can’t have. Guys swing their shit around at anything that has a hole, trying to forget the one they want.”

“Wow.” I laughed. “So eloquently put.”

She flashed a quick grin. “It’s true. Sort of like the laws of physics. It’s just the way it is, which brings me to a very important question. Do you still love him?”