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I kept repeating, “I know. I should’ve told you. I have no excuse. I’m so sorry,” as tears streaked down my face. It had been a week since I first begged Nicole to talk to me, to no avail. Today, she gave me a chance. And I let out all my pent up regret and guilt.

What seemed to me to be the easiest way out of a horrible situation proved to be the most hurtful thing I had ever done to a friend. She sat across from me, with the saddest expression in her eyes, calmly saying everything I knew she would say—that if I had told her the truth this wouldn’t have happened, that it would have been nothing if I had liked AJ too but what made it bad was that I lied about it, that she felt disappointed that I underestimated our friendship. I listened, not saying anything, her words familiar to me because I told myself the very same things every day this last week. I had no excuse for lying to my friend except that I was a big coward, a totally lame person who now wanted nothing more than for Nicole to take me back.

“I miss you, Katie” she finally said and I gave her a great big hug. We alternately laughed and cried. I told her that I only used to like AJ, and even though I only had the tiniest of doubts, I willed myself to make that absolutely true. She promised AJ would never find out. “I want for things to be the way they were again,” she added and I wanted nothing more than for that to be true. But in the weeks that followed, I started to suspect that, I was either imagining things or what Nicole and I had h oped wasn’t to be.

I noticed the change the very first time I saw Nicole and AJ together after she and I talked. The group, including Anne, Jill, and three of our classmates, was standing around by the lockers in a circle talking, with Nicole outside of the huddle. I walked towards my friends to say hi. Jill called out to me as she caught sight of me. I waved back and neared them, just as Nic slinked into the circle beside AJ and gravved hold of his hand. AJ looked at her with unmistakable surprise.

“I never would’ve thought Nicole would hold anyone’s hand in public,” Jill wondered aloud while talking to me on the phone that night, “especially after she said she thought it was a tacky thing to do. Then again, maybe AJ’s bringing out her PDA sensibilities, in which case that’s good. But are they even together yet?” she rambled on.

They weren’t. But that day was the first of many that ushered in a changed Nicole. At least to me. I never saw the two of them not holding hands, with Nicole initiating it almost always as soon as I joined the fray. She spent less time with us, and almost always remembered something AJ had to help her with whenever we’d ask him to hang out. I’d always sense her looking at me from out of the corner of her eye whenever he made small talk, from which she always seemed to find a reason to steer him away.

It wasn’t long before I made up my mind. The only thing that mattered to me really, was keeping Nicole’s friendship and earning her trust again. I decided to avoid AJ, and though it was, at first, difficult to do 180s whenever I caught sight of them, I knew, in the long run, all that effort would pay off. Before long, it was almost like the good old days. Nicole became considerably warmer to me whenever AJ wasn’t around. And I amde sure I was never with her when he was. I hadn’t spoken to AJ in weeks, but I couldn’t be happier.

That is, until he asked to speak to me, late one Friday night.