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    *
     
    “Open up, Mel. I saw your truck. I know you’re in there.”
    Melanie had known who pounded on her door even before Evelyn shouted. Despite Kendall’s assertion that she didn’t know where she’d go, Melanie suspected she would eventually end up at Evelyn’s.
    After Kendall had left, she’d curled up on the couch and let go. She’d pulled a blanket over herself and cried, as if releasing her tears could also purge her heart of the grief and guilt. When she’d finally quieted, her throat felt raw and her eyes swollen, but her emotions remained.
    She wasn’t ready to deal with Evelyn yet and debated not answering the door, but Evelyn probably wouldn’t give up. Unfortunately, she couldn’t let her continue to yell and wake her neighbors. So she stood and used the few steps to the door to compose herself, pushing back her shoulders and taking a deep breath. She glanced in the mirror in the hallway as she passed. She didn’t have time to fix the mess her face had become, but she swiped at her cheeks and straightened her hair anyway. Evelyn barely waited for the door to open completely before she strode inside.
    “What’s going on? I just spoke to Kendall and she’s a wreck. She says you two are splitting up.”
    “It’s complicated.” She turned away.
    “Relationships are complicated.” Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Or so I’ve been told.” She skirted the coffee table and blocked Melanie’s path back to the sofa. Melanie changed course and avoided eye contact. “What happened?”
    “Nothing. I mean, nothing specific.” She picked up a stack of mail off the foyer table and began to flip through it. Though the task occupied her hands, she stared unseeing at the envelopes in front of her.
    “You don’t just end a seven-year relationship for no reason, right? Come on, Mel. What happened?”
    “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
    “You don’t—Kendall’s at my place crying her eyes out. Tell me—”
    “It’s really not your business, Evelyn.”
    “The hell it isn’t.” Evelyn ripped the stack of envelopes from her hand and tossed them on the counter behind her. “You guys are my closest friends.” Evelyn took her by the shoulders and guided her to the couch, then sat down on the edge of the coffee table facing her, their knees nearly touching.
    She met Evelyn’s eyes and choked back a sob. She looked away, unprepared for the compassion so at odds with the harshness of Evelyn’s tone. She took a deep breath. “We’d been holding onto something that was no longer there.”
    “You can get counseling.”
    “We tried it once.” She heard the echo of failure in her own voice.
    “What? When?”
    She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, it didn’t work.”
    “Maybe if she knows it’s her last chance, Kendall will try harder this time.”
    “It’s not—she didn’t—” Therapy had been Melanie’s idea, but she hadn’t expected to feel so uncomfortable. They would talk to someone and fix their relationship, or so she’d thought. But they couldn’t find a solution by talking to a stranger about the intimate details of their life together. Or maybe she just didn’t want to accept the answers she’d discovered. Though she didn’t want to discuss this, she also couldn’t let Evelyn blame Kendall. “Counseling didn’t work—for me, Ev. This was on me.”
    “You can try again.”
    She surged to her feet. “Seven years. Do you think I’d just let that go without being sure?” She sighed. She’d rehearsed that conversation with Kendall dozens of times before getting up the nerve to initiate it. But she hadn’t thought about how difficult talking to Evelyn might be.
    “We lost touch. I mean, I know the relationships in those romantic comedies she loves so much are fiction. But do you think the passion can last?”
    “So this is about sex?”
    “Not sex. Well, not just sex. Intensity, maybe. Kendall and I had become little more than friends. We