"Plus, she's Alfred's childhood sweetheart. Back at Cloudvale University, everyone who saw them together called them the golden couple."
"People swore up and down they were dating. The rumors were everywhere."
"But the two of them never said a word about it. Flat-out denied the whole thing." She paused for dramatic effect. "Maria, do you think it was actually true?"
Sophie was an old classmate, but we'd been living in different cities for years.
She had no way of knowing.
About my three-year secret relationship with Alfred.
I nodded, even though she couldn't see it. "Yeah, I know who she is. But whether they were together or not, I really couldn't say."
Maud Matthews.
I turned the name over in my mind, and the bitterness swelled again.
When I was nineteen, I saw it with my own eyes: how close Alfred and Maud were. How deep that childhood bond ran.
When Maud got her heart broken by another guy, Alfred was the first one there, offering his shoulder to cry on.
When Alfred got into trouble, Maud was the first to come running.
Their relationship was intimate. More than that, it was something hard to define. More than friends, not quite lovers. A bond that lived in that impossible space between.