Ty followed her in. “I brought shots.” He laughed and held up a big mixing bowl with a cover on it.

“What kind of shots come in a mixing bowl?” I asked.

“I tried to make Jell-O shots. But I didn’t have time to let the Jell-O set, so it’s more like vodka infused with strawberry-flavored sugar.” He followed Alexa into the kitchen, where both of them made themselves at home. “They’re really good. I’ve had like two of them already.”

“Three if you count the one you had while mixing the stuff,” Alexa shouted loud enough for me to hear. I heard the clanking of metal as someone dug through my utensil drawer.

“Where’s your corkscrew, lady?” Alexa asked again.

I sighed, replaced the lid on my pint of ice cream, and headed into the kitchen.

“You’re looking too hard, Alexa,” I said when I saw her digging around like a fool in my utensil drawer. Meanwhile, my corkscrew was out on the counter in front of her.

“Oh, there you are,” she said to the corkscrew, plucking it off the counter like it was her new best friend.

“Which one of you drove?” I asked.

“I did.” Alexa turned toward me as she worked the corkscrew into the cork. “I haven’t had anything to drink—yet.”

“And why are you guys here?”

“We were worried,” she said. “You tried to duck out on girls’ night.”

“So?”

“You live for girls’ night,” Ty said. “I knew there was something wrong the second Alexa told me you weren’t coming. So I said, ‘We should go check on her. She would do the same thing for us.’ So here we are.”

“So here we are,” Alexa echoed as she poured a glass of wine for me and another for herself. “So, what’s up?”

Oh crap. They were going all intervention on me again. Please, no.

“Can’t I just have a night at home alone? Does there need to be something wrong with me?”

“No,” Ty said. “But there is something wrong, I can tell by your lousy makeup job. You’ve got ten times your usual cover-up around the eyes, and I can still see they’re all puffy from crying.”

I frowned. I’d been tear-free for most of the evening, save for the tiny crying jag right after I got home. But I was getting better. In fact, just before they showed up, I’d decided that tonight was my last night of grieving. Tomorrow I would pull myself up by my bootstraps and suck it up. Tonight was my last night of self-pity. And apparently they weren’t going to let me go through it alone.

“I was having some PMS issues,” I said pointedly, hoping that the mention of girly moodiness would make him back off.

“You don’t get PMS,” Alexa said, “you said so yourself. If you don’t want to talk about it right now, that’s fine, but you’re drinking with us whether you want to or not.” She handed me a glass of wine and a lowball full of red liquid. “Drink,” she ordered.

I rolled my eyes at her and threw back the shot, almost choking on how sweet it was. “Geez, Ty, did you add enough sugar to this?” I chased the shot with some wine.

Alexa placed another shot in front of me, holding one for herself too. “We have to catch up to Ty.”

She held up her glass and I toasted her, throwing back another ridiculously sweet shot. My tolerance was better than either of theirs, and getting Alexa drunk was always fun to watch, so I decided to play along. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and went back to the mixing bowl to get us each another shot, ladling the jellied liquid out with a spoon.

Two hours and countless sugar/vodka shots later, we were all on my living room floor with a seriously juvenile case of the giggles. None of us could even remember what we were laughing about, but I was suddenly struck with how awesome they both were to have cared enough to come over and get me wasted in my time of need.

“I really love you guys. You know that, right?”

“Aw,” Alexa sang. “We love you too, sweetie.”

“I mean it. I needed this. Things were just getting too messed up at the gym, you know? Ever since the day I screwed up and let things get out of hand with Ian, he’s been all awkward with me, and now I’m hiding things from Chris.”

“Hang on.” Ty held up his hand to stop me. “You’re dating Ian, right?”

I shook my head. “I’m dating Chris. I just screwed up with Ian.”

Alexa’s eyes widened and she turned to me. “But if you never broke up with Chris, who was the blond girl Cade and I saw him with the other night? They were all over each other. Seriously, they needed to get a room.”

I thought back to the girl I’d seen come out of the office with Chris. It had to be Blondie, but if Alexa had confirmation that Chris was cheating on me, that could get back to Ian. And I needed everything to maintain status quo until his fight was over.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t Chris. Or the girl was his sister?”

Alexa frowned for a moment, looking like she was considering it. Maybe she was just drunk enough to go for it.

I looked down at my hands. Now I was lying to Alexa and Ty. First Chris, then Ian, and now my best friends. When had life become so complicated? How had things gotten this messed up?

One thing was for sure—I couldn’t maintain this much longer. As soon as Ian’s fight was over, I needed to end it with Chris, and maybe even find a new job.