I don’t know why I did it. He was never interested, anyway, and I don’t tend to like telling lies very much.

Because, as most situations like this one have taught me, I usually end up getting in trouble.

There was a knock on the door. “Alice?”

I froze. Maybe I should pretend to be asleep.

Bette knocked again. “Alice, open up.” She sounded impatient.

I opened the door, faking a huge yawn. “Oh, hey,” I said casually, “I was just gonna go to bed.”

“It’s eight o’clock.”

“Early day tomorrow. You understand.”

Bette closed the door behind her. She didn’t look very happy. In fact, her arms were crossed over her chest. This is my least favorite of her poses. And her jaw was doing that thing where it looked like she was going to start grinding her teeth. This is my least favorite of her facial expressions.

“Alice.”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you tell Kyle we slept together?”

I laughed shortly, nervously. “Did you believe him?”

“I was all set not to, but then your eyes started darting around the room like you were hiding a dead body.”

Dammit. I need to learn how to be smoother. “Uh…”

Bette threw her hands up and shook her head. “I’m just-” She looked to the ceiling for support and scoffed. “I’m just trying to figure out why you would do that.”

“You know, Bette,” I said, “that’s just what… we do. I didn’t expect them to believe me. If I believed Kyle every time he said he slept with someone, I’d be operating under the belief that Kyle had bedded every ***** in Los Angeles. It’s just… something we do.”

“Who does that?” Bette asked, exasperated. “I don’t like the idea of your friends thinking we slept together. I don’t-”

“Oh, well, you know, you could do worse.”

She stopped, giving me a sharp look. “That’s not what I meant.”

“You’ve never, like, told your friends that you scored with someone when you didn’t?” I asked her in disbelief, neglecting to finish with the rest of my thought, which was, you know, maybe when you were in college and still a human being?

“No,” cried Bette, like I had just insulted her or something. On second thought, maybe I had. “First of all, I don’t kiss and tell, Alice, and I certainly don’t kiss and tell when no kissing or otherwise occurred.”

“I-” I was going to argue the point, but then I realized what Bette wanted. “I’m sorry.”

A long beat passed.

She sighed. “I just wish you hadn’t.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” I said again.

“And it makes me uncomfortable that your friends probably think I asked you to move in because we slept together. That’s… that’s…”

“They don’t think that,” I assured her. Which was only a half-lie: I was pretty sure Spencer didn’t think that, at least.

Bette blew out this big whoosh of air, like the weight of the world was on her shoulders alone for my little transgression. But she seemed to be over it. Except, she apparently couldn’t help asking, “How many other people know about this?”

“Jesus, Bette! Chill out. I just told Kyle and Spencer and who’re they gonna tell?” Like they have any other friends?

Bette shrugged. She looked at me for a long, disappointed beat, and then shook her head. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay.”

In the long run, it was probably just a little event, and we got over it fairly quickly-I think mostly because Bette respects honesty and I at least gave her that. But Bette is not the most forgiving person in the world, which I knew when I met her and saw the way she reacted to Kit. I’m sure that the whole thing had to change Bette’s opinion of me somewhat, even if she didn’t really let on.

Anyway, that was the first thing.