People always said Lindsey and I were like two peas in a pod. Peanut and jelly. Time would reveal we treated one another more like sisters than best friends.

There was this one time, not at band camp—though I have some stories to tell about that, too—when we were maybe sixteen years old. We both worked at the local Dairy Queen.

Lord have mercy on us. It was the dead of summer and if you’ve smelled the mix they use to make soft serve when it starts to go bad, then you’ll know what I mean when I say the refrigerator went bad.

I’d been tasked with cleaning out the mix barrels. Had to wear a handkerchief over my nose just to make it bearable. I gagged every time I had to lean down, sticking half my body into the barrel, to scrub out the remaining chunks.

As I was cleaning, Jim Boles, one of the kitchen boys and the bane of my existence in those days, decided it would be a good idea to dump one of the barrels I hadn’t started on yet.

On me.

Have you ever feel lukewarm, chunky ice cream mix flow over your feet and ankles like lava? Well, I have. And I am here to tell you: it is the worst sensation imaginable, especially once the stench hits you.

I’m not proud of it, but I barfed. Right there, in front of Jim. And he had the audacity to snap a picture of me and post it to Insta with the caption: Ashley the vomit face.

The moment Lindsey saw the post, she drove to his house, knocked on his door, and punched him right in his tender spot before he even had a chance to get out “hi.” She took a video of him groaning on the ground.

And that was just the type of relationship we had. We took care of each other.

Like when she found out she was pregnant during our senior year of high school. I held her hand when she told her dad and shared my room with her when he kicked her out.

She named her daughter, my godchild, after me: Ashley Rose.

We survived the ups and downs of life. All of them. Until now.

She kissed my ex. And when I say kissed, what I really mean is got full on hot and sweaty, leaving steam on the mirror kind of kiss.

And they weren’t even drunk when it happened. She made the conscious choice to see him.

And what she doesn’t know... what he doesn’t know... is that I’m pregnant.

She didn’t even talk to me about it. I found out because they were stupid enough to take pictures, which Ashley Rose found.

Some things can be forgiven. But this isn’t one of them.