She smiled wide and turned from Shane back to me. "You guys totally fucked, didn’t you?"

"Alice, come on." I tried walking by her and down the hallway in the path that Shane had taken, but Alice took hold of my arm gently to keep me there to talk.

"Katie! You did?"

I couldn’t help but smile, despite how embarrassed I felt about the whole situation.

"Alice, it was a mistake and it won’t happen again."

"You mean like it won’t happen again again, because this IS the second time, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like you spent all day with Shane at WAX in that hot ass outfit with your new hot ass hair and she didn’t fuck you?"

"Alright, it won’t happen again again, ok?"

"But what’s the problem? I don’t get it."

I looked down trying to come up with a good reason to tell her.

"I’m in a bad place right now, you know? I would only regret trying to medicate myself with sex. It won’t make the pain go away."

"So?"

"She’s going through the same thing."

"And?…"

"She loves that woman still."

"How do you know that?"

"She fucking told me, Alice. Let it go, alright?"

I walked down the hall and heard Alice say ok behind me. I knew I had hurt her feelings, I hadn’t meant to. It stung to think about Shane’s ex lover. The one who tamed her. Shane had changed everything for her, she absolutely did love her. I couldn’t ever compete with that.

Why would I want to compete with that? Shane wasn’t anything special to me. She was a nice friend, she was helping me through a rough time, but why would it matter to me that I couldn’t compete with Carmen?

The fact is, it didn’t matter and I worked that into my head the whole way back to the kitchen, convincing myself of that truth.

Once in the dining room I noticed that there were still a few more dishes that had to be brought into the kitchen and I grabbed them, hearing Shane and Aunt Tina talking in the other room.

I walked in to a hurried hush of their voices, the kind where I knew that they had just been talking about me. The look on my face obviously showed that I was aware what the sudden silence meant and Tina took the lead.