Can I trust you to keep my secret?”

“Of course!” I said, with eyes as big as plates.

She patted the bed for me to sit beside her, and said, “Remember at dinner when we told you guys how we met?”

“Yes,” and to prove I’d been paying attention I added, “Michael set up an online date with an aerobics instructor who stood him up and you also had a date scheduled at the same coffee shop a half hour later with a goon you’d never met and you took one look at him and wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to go, so you sat with Michael until the goon guy finally left.”

Nicki smiled. “Exactly.” Then she said, “Don’t tell anyone, but that entire story is bullshit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I catfished Michael.”

“Whaaa?”

“There was no Chrissy the aerobics instructor. I made her up.”

“Wait! You’re saying—”

“The profile, the pictures, the online conversations with Michael…all phony.”

“Omigod!”

Nicki laughed. “And of course, I didn’t have a date with the goon. In fact, there was no goon. I just pretended there was.”

“Does Michael know?”

“Nope. Like I said, I’ve never told anyone. If you decide to tell him or your parents, you’ll scorch me.”

I thought about it a long time, then said, “Why did you tell me that?”

“Because I really like you, Jess, and want us to be friends. I’m taking a chance on you. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel I can trust you.”

“You can, I promise.”

“I believe you. So every time I come here, we’ll get together, and I’ll tell you a secret.”

“Does that mean I have to tell you my secrets?”

“No. But it does mean you can tell me anything, and know in your heart that no matter what happens, I’ll never tell anyone.”

“Wow.”

How could I not find her beyond amazing after an introduction like that? In less than an hour I felt closer to Nicki than I did to most of my life-long friends. And so I told her some of the silly things that didn’t really matter, little confessions about the stuff me and my friends had done, and she asked about my closest friends, and I told her about Ellie and Holly, and about how smooth Holly is with the boys and how awkward I am, and in the visits that followed, as we got closer and closer I confided bigger things, like how I smoked weed a couple of times and got sick, and how some of my friends did a line of coke at a party and made fun of me for backing out. And how me, Ellie, and Holly snuck out one night so Ellie could hook up with some random guy she met online who turned out to be a 30-year-old pervert, and how we realized he could have killed or raped us, and how terrified we were at the time, but laugh about it now.

Last March Nicki and Michael came for the weekend, and as always she and I talked in my room for hours, and she asked me about my friends, and I told her how cute Holly is and how brave Ellie is, and about all the friendship promises we made to each other. I told her how the guys at school have been coming on to us, and how Holly, me, and Ellie had a sleepover and snuck some beers and worked on our kissing techniques by kissing each other and pretending we were kissing boys, and how we couldn’t stop laughing about it, and how we took pictures and called each other gay and threatened to out each other on Snapchat, and— “Except that you weren’t pretending with Holly,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You enjoyed kissing her.”

For a split second I was mad. But the way Nicki kept looking at me with those big green eyes I could tell she really cared. Still, I didn’t want her to think less of me, so I was about to tell her she was wrong about my feelings, but then she said, “I wish Holly didn’t like the boys so much.”

“Why?”

“Because she’d be perfect for you.”

“I’m not gay,” I said, indignantly.

“I never said you were, Jess. But love is love.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means love is so fucking hard to find, I think our hearts should be open to all possibilities. Ask me if I’d consider having sex with a girl.”

“Would you?”

“Absolutely!”

“Whaaa? You?”

“Absolutely. Assuming I had feelings for her. And as my friend, I’d hope you’d be okay with that.”

“Of course I would. But…what about Michael?”

“What about him?”

“Would you ever cheat on him?”

“If I answer honestly, will it be our secret?”

“Of course! Always!”

8.

NICKI SAID, “MICHAEL and I fight all the time. It’s exhausting. If I had to place odds on us lasting another month, I’d bet no.”

“How come?”

“He wants to get married and have kids, and I don’t. So yeah, if the right person came along, I’d probably cheat on him.”

“What if that person was a girl?”

“A girl?”

“Or, you know, a woman.”

“I hope it is a woman…or a girl…of legal age.”

“Sixteen’s legal in Kentucky!” I blurted out.

She arched her brows. “Is it?”

I felt my face turning red. “I think so.”

“If the girl was that much younger than me I’d have to be convinced she found me super attractive.”

“How could she not? You’re gorgeous!”

“You’re the one who’s gorgeous, Jess. I’d kill to have your legs. Not to mention your cheekbones.”

I blushed like an idiot, then shocked myself by asking: “Will you promise me something?”

“Probably. But I need to know what it is first.”

“If you ever cheat on Michael, will you tell me?”

She frowned.