LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 1

       What do you do when you fall in love with your best friend’s boyfriend?

      There it was: the question I had been asking myself since that first day. The day I met him.

      The day that changed everything.

      It was the question I had analyzed endlessly, hoping to find some sort of answer. The only problem was, there was no answer. Because when you’re forced to choose between the two people you love most in the world, either way you lose.

      Sure, I know what you’re thinking. Best friends don’t fall in love with each other’s boyfriends. They can’t. It’s an unspoken rule. Even if the guy is downright perfect, the fact that he’s with your best friend prohibits you from falling for him.

      Right?

      I can honestly say that anyone who believes this has never, ever felt the way that I felt about David Whitman.

      My name is Justine Sterling. I grew up in Rockland, Massachusetts, a small town south of Boston that most people have never heard of. With a population of under 20,000, there wasn’t much to do in Rockland growing up, but when you’re young, you have no idea how much of the world you’re missing. I thought the rest of the world was just like Rockland. I imagined kids all over America living their lives exactly the way we did – riding bicycles, walking to the local convenience store, begging our parents to drive us two towns over to the nearest shopping mall.

      For me, Rockland was the greatest place on Earth.

      Still, there was always something missing, and I finally discovered what that was when I met Renee Evans. I never held an interest in sports or cheerleading, so in a limited-activity town like Rockland, my happiness stemmed from new CDs, new clothes, new posters. Only I never realized how much more fun those things were when you had someone to share them with. Someone who appreciated them just as much as you did.

      I met Renee during my freshman year of high school. She had just transferred from a local Catholic school, and seeing as how Rockland High didn’t have many new students, she was immediately scrutinized and labeled “the new girl.” Everyone in Rockland had grown up with one another, and their families had grown up with one another. No one left Rockland. It was an intimidating place to start over.

      When I first met Renee, she was a mess. Catholic school clearly didn’t exemplify fashion. Her hair was blonde and thick, and ended abruptly at her shoulders. It looked similar to the way a horse’s tail would look if you cut it to be six inches long. Like a bush that only grew sideways. And even worse, she had bangs too. I remember wondering what on earth had possessed her mother to give her that haircut, as her hair wouldn’t have been that bad if it was long and weighed down. We didn’t have hair-straighteners back then.

      Looking back now, it makes sense to me. Mrs. Evans, Renee’s mother, was a very sweet woman, but fashion was not one of her strong suits. As teens, Renee and I labeled her mother’s sweater collection the “Bill Cosby Sweaters.” Each of them shared the same blend of neon colors, knit together like an afghan. So it was of no surprise that Renee showed up to Rockland High her first day looking like she’d just stepped out of the Salvation Army.

      Even worse than her hair were her clothes. They weren’t bad per se, just much too big for her. It was like someone had dressed her up as a boy and forgot to tell her. Baggy clothes were the style in the nineties, with it being the grunge decade and all, but there were still ways to maintain your feminism.

      What I liked about Renee was that she didn’t seem to care. She was naturally pretty, but she didn’t know it. She didn’t give a second thought to her appearance. She was so happy to get the hell out of Catholic school and surround herself with normal people that she just took it all in. She was like a kid at Disneyland. She didn’t say much. She didn’t try to impress anyone. She just observed.

      After striking up a conversation with her, I learned that this little fashion-deprived creature was actually quite intelligent. She knew a lot about music. More than anyone I’d ever met. I think she was so isolated at her previous school that she befriended rock and roll and never left its side.

      I asked Renee once about Catholic school. She said that the kids were nice, just different. She told me that she wore an Aerosmith shirt to school on a casual day and all the kids teased her, chanting that Steven Tyler looked like an old lady. She said, “All I could think was that Steven Tyler was one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen.” It didn’t bother her that the kids made fun of her. She just seemed genuinely confused as to how these people could view the world so much differently than she did. I think it was then that I fell in love with her.

      Over time, Renee’s image slowly began to develop. We went shopping at the local favorites, Hot Topic and Newbury Comics. We bought blue mascara and purple lipstick, oversized moonstone rings and bicycle-chain necklaces. We replaced Renee’s skateboarder pants with tighter jeans, and her baggy band t-shirts with fitted ones. She grew out her bangs and put layers in her hair to offset the bush look.

      And thus, Renee Evans was born.

      Ironically, if you met Renee now, you’d never guess that she once dressed like a lumberjack. She has a very tall, modelesque presence, perfectly put together, like a stylist dressed her. Her thick hair is always immaculately curled, her makeup like a cosmetic ad, her scarves and boots matching the exact shades of her latest ensemble. But back then, Renee didn’t care what people thought of her. She didn’t try to fit in. Renee was who she was, without apology. And I loved her for that.

      I fell in love with David Whitman the first time I saw him. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but trust me, no one thought the concept of love at first sight was more ridiculous than me. Up until David, I was a self-proclaimed serial dater. Renee was more of the relationship type, and she somehow managed to find great guys who also happened to be single. I never had such luck. I always found the ones who were single for a reason. Needy, jobless, womanizers, alcoholics, not-really-single-pretending-to-be-single,

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