Oh, tradition.

***

“Here’s the thing,” Kyle said. “Spencer and I have a perfectly nice apartment upstairs. How come we never hang out there?”

“Your apartment smells like boy.”

Spencer turned from the stove, offended. “It does not.”

“Are you putting onions in that?”

“No, I am not.”

“Hmm,” Kyle said. We were sitting around my kitchen, watching Spencer cook and thinking of ways to make Bette like me again. “You could bribe her.”

Spencer chuckled. “The best friendships are built on bribes, yes.”

“Or guilt!” Kyle suggested. “You know, like ‘Bette… you never gave me a birthday present…’” He pouted and batted his eyelashes.

“Again, guilt: what good friendships are made of.”

“I think I probably just shouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “Bette has this sort of… sense of entitlement where she truly believes that she deserves a certain amount of time to be angry with a person. I can at least grant her that.”

Kyle clucked his tongue impatiently. “I don’t see why you think Bette deserves so much. I think Bette’s great, but…”

“But you don’t know her as well as Alice does,” Spencer said, turning from the stove. “And so you can’t really say.”

“Well, I love Alice-”

“I love Alice, too, so-”

“Well, I’m just trying to look out for her best interests!”

“So am I.” He began searching for a knife.

“Look,” I said, “you can break up the Alice love-fest. Everything’s cool.”

Kyle turned his gaze from Spencer to me. “It is?”

“Yeah. Bette will come to me when she needs me. She always does.”

He grinned. “You’re growing up right before my eyes! Spencer, Little Alice is growing up right-”

“Yeah,” said Spencer with a fond smile as he rifled through my silverware drawer. “I heard.”

Well, I was a whole year older.

“Al, do you have olive oil?”

I frowned. “Should I?”

He looked so offended I felt bad for asking. “How do you expect me to make Spencer’s Famous Pasta without-”

“Okay, okay,” I said, sliding off my stool. “I’ll go to the cornerstore.”

“Thank you.”