Rachel lunges for my shirt to try and pull it off.

Quickly I put down the penguin, hanging onto my shirt for dear life with one hand, swatting at her with the other. "You want to see b.o.o.bs, go look in a mirror."

"Take them off," she insists, "and put on real human clothes."

I wrench myself free. "I will. I'm not going back to this. It's not me anymore." So empowered, am I, thinks the Yoda voice in my head.

She studies me for a minute, then nods.

I pick up the penguin again.

She holds out her hand.

Sharing is easier than wrestling with her so I comply and toss her a couple of chocolates.

"Not bad," she says, munching. She idly picks up the newspaper on our coffee table and starts in on a crossword puzzle.

I peer over her shoulder. "Six down. *Betrayed.'"

"Get your own," Rach says.

"Which makes eight down-"

"*Alone,'" she finishes. "Yup. I'm good here."

Rachel tries to pull the paper away but I come around to sit beside her and hold out another candy.

She takes it.

I figure out another one. "Thirteen across. *Obese.' Oh. Eleven down? *In Hamlet, a rat was this for a ducat.' Dead." We just did Shakespeare in our poetry section in English, so I'm feeling pretty stoked about nailing that clue.

Also highly impressed with how adult I'm being about this. One of us had to be and it sure wasn't Sam.

Rachel isn't writing.

I glance over to find her staring at me.

"What exactly happened tonight?" she asks.

I set down the penguin and smother myself with a couch cushion, in a joking kind of way.

Rachel removes it. "Ally?" She sounds worried.

"I told Sam I love him. Stupid, huh."

I throw her a "dumb me" eye roll.

Maybe that eye roll uses up all my c.o.c.kiness because suddenly I can't fool myself any longer into believing that Sam didn't just rip my heart into a billion pieces.

I burst into tears.

"He didn't say it back?"

I shake my head as I s.n.a.t.c.h up a tissue.

"What did he say? Exactly?"

"That he never should have slept with me. That I am the *fall in love girl' and he thought I could change but now it's just affected our friendship."

The tears stream down my face, hot and salty. I take a deep shuddery breath trying to stop the snotty tide but I can't.

"Right there," Rachel exclaims. "He's worried about the friendship. He's worried about losing you. He loves you. He's just too scared to say it. I mean the last time he said he loved someone, his mom died on him."

"Yeah, well at some point, you've got to grow up. He said that too." To me.

"He needs time to deal with it. Everything is going to work out perfectly."

I start to protest but she shuts me down.

"No. I'm sure. He loves you."

I blow my nose and blink up at her, hopeful. "You think"

"It's so obvious between you two. How did it end?"

"I told him I was the perfect girl for him."

"Because you so are."

"And then I left."

"But he tried to stop you? Like, under the cover of telling you you're being dumb? He called you back?"

I shake my head again and look at her, hoping that she'll have a rationalization for this. Hoping I'm wrong and she's right and I'm just being silly. Of course he loves me.

Rachel looks at me sadly and gnaws on her lip as if she's trying to find the bright side.

"Sam knows me better than anyone," I hiccup. "And he rejected me. The real me. Not Ally, some girl he screwed."

"It has nothing to do with you," she soothes, "it's his stupid issues."

"Still feels a million times worse than Jeremy."

I want to die.

Rachel pulls me into a hug.

But she doesn't say it's going to be okay.

What's the point? We both know she'd be lying.

Chapter twenty-nine.

Nikki rolls off me and tries to be rea.s.suring. "It happens to everyone."

"That's the most bulls.h.i.t Hallmark sentiment ever." I'm in no mood to be humored.

She shrugs and slides off the bed. "You're right."

I watch her get dressed, not sure if I feel like bothering to try and get her back for a second, more successful attempt.

It was just a weird glitch. I'm seventeen. I get hard at changes in the weather. My biggest problem with a naked girl in my bed is supposed to be shooting off too soon. Not failure to ignite.

Maybe it's because she's in my bed. I was so p.i.s.sed off that I didn't even realize I'd invited her over.

That must be it.

Nikki pulls her sweater over her head, then checks her hair in my dresser mirror. As she does, she stops to examine the birthday photo I took of Ally and me, lying on the dresser top.

I don't want her touching it so I get out of bed, wrapping a sheet around myself, and try to grab the picture away.

As I get hold of it and see Ally with her stupid goofy grin, I suddenly get an erection, tenting out the sheet.

Nikki looks at me thoughtfully, before picking up her purse.

I drop the photo on the ground. "Come back to bed." Since I'm primed and ready.

Nikki doesn't answer. She picks up the photo and hands it to me then pecks me on the cheek.

"Good luck, Sam," she says and leaves.

I glance down at my monster hard d.i.c.k. No way is it because of the photo. To prove it, I toss the photo back on the dresser.

And promptly deflate.

I decide to just go to sleep. I must be ill. I'll feel better in the morning. But first I've got to lock the front door behind Nikki so I head out into the living room.

I bolt the door and am making my way back to my bedroom when I trip over one of my sneakers lying there. I know I kicked the pair into our front closet when I came home, which means Attila has been playing with it.

I bend over to pick up the shoe and am blinded by its reek of cat pee. "Attila," I snap, "you little p.i.s.sing monster."

Making sure the sheet is snugly wrapped around my waist, I carry the shoe out onto our back deck and dump it outside to deal with later.

I search the house for the cat, finally finding her under my bed.

I get on my hands and knees and try to coax her out. Nothing. She presses farther back into the shadows.

"Screw you too," I tell her, and hit the sheets to pa.s.s out and forget this whole day.

I'm still awake when sunrise hits.

Chapter thirty.

A night of sleep really does help make a girl feel better.

It's a beautiful day. I've invited Adam out for a run around the seawall, which is a winding path that runs along our waterfront.

I'm moving on. Adam and I are having a very nice time, running and chatting about potential universities and their application requirements.

We're two more smiling people of the many who are out jogging, cycling, and rollerblading along the path.

Then I see Sam, running toward us like a little black rain cloud, headphones in.

I ignore the thudding of my heart and buck up. There is no way around it. We're going to have to pa.s.s each other.

We slow down as we get near and glower. Since Adam isn't blind, he picks up on the hostility between us and just kind of hangs back, watching.

I stop in front of Sam, jogging in place and raise an eyebrow. Hinting that I'm waiting for him to make his next move. Like apologize for being such a douchebag.

Just because he doesn't love me doesn't mean he had to be such a jerk about it.

Sam snorts in a "get real" way.

I yank one of his earbuds out. "You owe me an apology, a.s.shole." If I have to spell it out, I will.

Sam glances over at Adam a few feet away, then lowers his voice. "It's not my fault you can't keep s.e.x and friendship separate."

"Wow. That was absolutely nothing like an apology, Dr. f.u.c.kenstein."

"Fine. I'm sorry."

He's so lying. I want to push him off the seawall into the water.

"Did you know the word *sorry,' used to be uttered sparingly, as a way of confessing both guilt and sorrow for a mistake?" I ask him.

"No, Einstein, but thanks so much for the enlightenment."