Patience.

Patience.

"You really won't tell me anything?"

Blythe sighs and shakes her head as she pointedly stares out the window, ignoring me. For the rest of the ride, I bounce my legs, fidgeting, wondering what in the world she wants to show me, how in the world it relates to having seen Ollie last night, and if my heart will ever beat normally again.

I follow her out of the cab mutely, huddling close as she nods to the security guard and waits for the butler to pull open the front door for her. Suddenly, we're safe from the frigid winter wind, inside the Upper East Side palace she calls home. The air smells like brandy mixed with a wood-burning fire. I'm immediately thrown back a hundred years, the same way I was the first time I walked in this house-if you can call it that. Everything about it oozes old money-the crystal chandeliers, the gilded molding, the fact that it's a four story single-family mansion in the middle of Manhattan.

"What are we doing here?" I whisper harshly.

Blythe ignores me and leans over to the butler, asking softly, "Is my brother here?"

He nods. "On the patio, I believe."

A somewhat devilish grin crosses over her lips, on my behalf or on hers, I'm not really sure.

"Did you say your brother?" I murmur, voice turning into a squeak. "As in Patrick, my ex-boyfriend?"

Blythe grabs my hand, sensing I'm about to bolt, and tugs me up the stairs. "Come on."

"But, but," I say in vain as my feet stumble to follow. Not sure what to do, I glance over my shoulder at the butler, pleading. Amusement passes over his wrinkled face and he shrugs, as though he too doesn't understand, but unlike me, doesn't really care. And then he disappears as we turn with the steps, approaching the second floor, then the third, then the fourth.

I wrench my hand from her grip just as we crest the top step.

"Blythe!" I say. "Patrick doesn't want to see me, really, he doesn't. And to be honest, I'm not sure this is really how I want to see him for the first time, like some creepy stalker."

"He's not going to see us," she says resolutely and pushes me deeper into the hall, deep enough that I can see out the windows and onto the aforementioned patio, gorgeously lit with bulbous industrial lights that twinkle against the night sky. Suddenly, I hear music playing, light guitar strums, and notice a tray sitting alone in the dark with two glasses of wine.

"Oh my god, is he here on a date?" I back away, but Blythe is an unmovable roadblock.

"If you follow me, I promise he'll never know you're here. Or stay there like a deer caught in headlights and hope you blend in." She stares at me utterly straight-faced. "Newsflash, you don't."

I'm torn between my desire to run and my strange need to know why the heck Blythe brought me here.

Footsteps sound lightly in the distance.

The wooden floor creaks.

Laughter trickles toward me.

I jolt.

And surprise, surprise, in that split-second decision, my traitorous curiosity wins out, and I hurriedly follow Blythe as she cracks open a door and disappears into the shadows on the other side.

"Where are we?"

"A guestroom," she answers nonchalantly, crossing the space quickly and opening the blinds. The light from the patio floods the room, illuminating the bed and furniture. But that's not what I see. What I see is Patrick, five feet away, staring right at us.

"Oh my god."

I drop to the floor, banging my knees on the rug in my haste to get out of sight.

Blythe snorts.

"Get down!" I whisper.

"He can't see you," she says, rolling her eyes.

My own narrow. "How do you know?"

"For one, because I was and still am a nosy little sister, and I've spied on him from this spot a million times. If he didn't see any of those times, he won't now. And two, because my parents paid a lot of money to install these top-end privacy windows so guests could see out, but people on the patio couldn't see in."

I breathe for a moment, a mess of limbs on the floor, and then stand, brushing the dust off. "Okay."

Blythe turns back to the window, pressing her face close to the glass, looking outside. I sort of want to copy her, but at the same time, I really do feel like a stalker and uncomfortably voyeuristic and just plain awkward. So I hang back, gazing at the floor.

"Okay, so what did you want to show me? Patrick?" I ask.

"Just watch."

I peek out from beneath my eyelids. All I see is Patrick. Same honey-brown eyes. Same charming smile. Same chiseled features. And then I notice something odd, he's wearing a winter coat, but his legs are totally bare beneath the hem, and he's hopping from foot to foot, staring at something to the side, smiling. I follow the trail, noticing his date for the first time. Her back is turned to me, and she has a hood up, but I see her head is shaking. And his is nodding.

Pulled in, I lean a little closer to Blythe, still keeping my body half turned away from the scene as if that makes the spying any more socially acceptable.

It doesn't, obviously.

But really, can you blame me? It's like putting a steak in front of a dog and telling it not to eat-yeah, good luck with that.

Suddenly, Patrick rips his coat off, and for a second I really think he might be naked. I wish I could say I tried to divert my eyes, but let's be honest, I don't. I do, however, breathe a slight sigh of relief when I realize he's in a bathing suit a moment before he launches over the side of what I'm only now realizing is a hot tub. The steam was a dead giveaway, but excuse me for being too concerned by the possibility of seeing my ex-boyfriend's bare ass to notice.

I turn my attention on the girl.

Is this what Blythe wanted me to see?

That Patrick moved on?

But what does that have to do with Ollie? Unless, in some epic plot twist, they decided to have a gay love affair behind my back and complete the incestuous little circle I inadvertently started.

Okay, I was only kidding, but...

My eyes immediately zone in on the exposed ankles, suddenly horrified. The skin is pale like Ollie's, but decidedly feminine. Lean, hairless, sort of graceful. Actually, they look almost familiar, almost- "No!" I gasp.

Blythe looks at me with concern. "Yes."

But I'm gaping in shock, shaking my head in denial. "No!"

And then I give up all pretense of self-respect and press my face to the window, squishing my nose against the glass almost painfully as the need to get closer takes over my entire body.

Because I know those ankles.

I recognize those dancer's calves.

And then the coat drops to the patio floor, revealing a bikini-clad body I probably know better than my own and an exploding mess of red curls.

"Nooooooo!" I moan, a long stream of syllables that's probably a little over dramatic, but I can't help it. I'm trying to hold on to my disbelief for a few moments longer. But I can't. There's no denying what I see with my own two eyes.

Bridge.

My Bridge.

With Patrick.

I stare, eyes burning yet unable to blink as she bounds effortlessly across the stone tile and jumps elegantly into the hot tub, sitting a foot away from Patrick. But that doesn't last long. He stretches his arm across the space, dripping water over her skin as he reaches across her shoulder and pulls her closer. She melts into him, eyes blazing with affection, and a moment later they seal their betrayal with a kiss.

"Oh, god," I gasp, finally tearing away. "My eyes!"

"Skye, are you okay?" Blythe asks softly.

"It's Bridge!" I blurt, still not comprehending, still not understanding how any of this is possible. "It's my Bridge!"

"Yeah, your reaction is kind of confirming my suspicions."

"Bridge and Patrick?" I ask. And then without giving her time to respond, I shake my head, spitting, "Bridge and Patrick!"

"Skye, I really think you should breathe or blink or, I don't know, sit down?"

But my head whips back toward the couple making out in the hot tub, totally unaware of the heart being trampled on just a few feet away. But that's how it feels, like Bridge reached inside my chest, tore it out, and stomped on it.

How could she do this?

How could she date my ex behind my back?

How could she betray me like that?

All the questions bubble up like a tsunami about to crash and wash everything else away. But then a wall comes up, blocking the hurt and the pain and the confusion and the undeniable fear that I've really lost my best friend for good.

Something else takes over.

Rage.

Because for weeks, I've been totally ripped up inside thinking she hated me, thinking I ruined things between us, thinking the rift between us was totally my fault. And here she was the entire time, dating Patrick behind my back, letting me carry all the guilt and all the blame, not caring at all about my feelings. And let me tell you, being pissed off is a hell of a lot easier than being broken. So I embrace the fury and forget everything else.

"Oh, screw this," I growl, tone unrecognizable. And then I latch my arm through Blythe's, ignoring the concerned and befuddled way she's watching me, and say the first thing that comes to mind. "I'm officially appointing you as my new best friend, and your first job is to take me to a bar, any bar, whatever's closest. Because I need a fucking drink."

I've always put Bridge on a pedestal. And maybe that wasn't fair, but in my eyes, my best friend could do no wrong. Prettier than me. More popular. So talented. With a personality I secretly sometimes wished was mine-confident, take no prisoners, yet funny and warm. I'm the screw up. Not Bridge. Me. So maybe that's why seeing her with Patrick shocks me to my very core, because I never in a million years saw it coming.

It's amazing how getting drunk can bring two people closer together.

"I haven't always been a bitch, you know?" Blythe slurs, leaning across the table and grabbing my hand.

Okay, stop right there.

I know what you're thinking.

And yes, we have reached that portion of the evening-alcohol-induced word vomit. Because we got to the bar hours ago and immediately did two vodka shots, absolutely necessary to halt my rage-induced panic attack. And then Blythe coerced a few guys at the other end of the bar to buy us cocktails. And then we got trapped into playing a drinking game with them, which didn't seem to involve many rules, but did involve many drinks. And then the bartender gave us two more shots, just because. And now we're here, sipping on cosmopolitans, which I actually don't think taste very good, but Blythe thinks they look sophisticated.

So...yeah.

Here we are, confessing our deepest, darkest secrets in garbled, almost incoherent words that we somehow perfectly understand.

"You're not a bitch," I tell her.

Blythe frowns.

"Okay, you're sort of a bitch," I say. "But it's okay. I like it. I should be more like you."

"No," she whines, shaking her head. "You're so sweet, and nice, and-"

"I'm not that nice," I argue. "I'm lying to my best friend. I'm spying on my ex-boyfriend. I'm forcing the love of my life to be a secret. I'm a mess."

"Well, at least you're not a bitch."

We both pause, taking another sip, lost in our own heads.

"I wasn't always this way, you know," Blythe blurts, repeating herself. But that's sort of what drunken arguments do...go in circles. "Well, maybe I was, but it's this city, growing up here, you can't help but be a bitch. You know, when I was four, I was told I was too stupid to make it into my brother's preschool, that I needed to get a tutor or I wouldn't amount to anything in life. I was four. Four! My parents pulled some strings, but I never forgot. He was the A student, I was the B student. He was the star athlete, so I had to be the Queen Bee, no matter how many girls I made cry to get there. He got into Harvard, and I only got into Columbia, as if that's a bad school to go to!"

"That's tough." I nod.

"It was tough," she agrees, sitting up. "I mean, poor little rich girl or whatever, but you don't know the pressure until you're in it, until you're always second best. Nothing less than perfection is acceptable. Nothing. And now he's this hotshot banker, bringing in major money, following my dad's footsteps, and I'm still just an assistant at a newspaper. You know, if you had been anyone but you, and you started dating my brother, I would have been over the moon, because finally, just one time, I would have been number one in my parents' eyes."

"Hey," I say, because I know there was an insult in there somewhere, but my brain is processing too slowly to realize what exactly it was at the moment.

"Sorry," she grumbles, rolling her eyes and taking another swig. "That's why I hated you, you know, because that column was supposed to be mine, Victoria had already started talking to me about it. I'd fought so hard, taken down so many other girls who wanted my job at the paper, only to have you-no fashion sense, fresh off the farm, you-take what I wanted. And then you got with my brother, and it was just, no, not happening."

"I didn't grow up on a farm," I mumble. There was, however, a farm down the street from me...

Blythe widens her eyes with exasperation. "You get my point."

"So why did you become nice all of a sudden?"

"I didn't," Blythe states matter-of-factly. I suck in a sharp breath, but she doesn't notice and continues without pause. "I was still totally set on taking you down when I saw you after Christmas break, but Patrick wouldn't give me anything. I begged and I begged, but, of course, he has to be better than me at that too. And then you came in that day and were talking about your friend and your boyfriend, and I realized that the sort of anxious, sweet, mildly pathetic act you put on isn't a sympathy ploy, it's just who you are, and that took all the fun out of it. I mean, it's like, if you're hunting, you want to take down a bear, not a bunny rabbit, you know? You need a formidable opponent or else it's just sad. So I figured I'd try something new, give you some of my wisdom, take you under my wing."

Blythe shrugs, unable to push aside the superior air that always seems to linger around her, and takes another sip of her drink. She skims the rest of the room, pausing long enough to wrinkle her nose at the girls who just walked in, before resting her gaze back on me.

I, on the other hand, drop my jaw, gaping.

This is being taken under her wing?