Alice stood watching Dana and Tonya, resisting the urge to scream and tear her hair out.  If I have to see them together one more time, I think I’ll puke!  Tonya is beyond annoying, and she’s dragging Dana down with her.

Truth be told, Alice didn’t just find them annoying.  Gnawing at the back of her mind was another, unexpected emotion.  She tried to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t there, but it kept coming back to bite her in the *****.  Jealousy.  Pure, seething, sickening jealousy.  Every time she saw Tonya possessively grab Dana’s arm, Alice felt sick.  And she didn’t know why.

Okay, she did know why.  She just didn’t want to admit it.  Alice was jealous because she wanted desperately to be in Tonya’s place. 

She didn’t understand when it had happened, or how, or even why.  But that didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that Alice Pieszecki had fallen in love with Dana Fairbanks, who happened to be her best friend.  Her very attached best friend, unfortunately.

Alice didn’t know when it had hit her.  It wasn’t one of those love at first sight sort of things you saw in the movies.  It was a different type of love – the kind of love that slowly built and then jumped up from behind you to announce its presence at the worst moment.  In this case, at the very worst moment, considering Dana was engaged.

It wasn’t that Alice hadn’t noticed Dana before.  From the moment they first met, Alice had immediately noticed that Dana was gorgeous.  Add that to her awkwardly cute personality, and Dana Fairbanks looked to be the nearly perfect girl for Alice to date.  But it hadn’t happened that way. They’d immediately bonded as just friends, and Alice never thought of her as anything but.

But then things started to change.  It was a slow transition.  One day, Alice found herself staring at Dana’s shapely ***** in her tennis shorts.  Okay, no big deal.  Sometimes friends notice the other is attractive.  Since that seemed normal, Alice allowed it to continue, occasional checking Dana out on the sly, noticing different things about her.  Then things changed.  Soon Alice caught herself staring at Dana’s lips and wondering what it would be like to kiss them.  That was when Alice began to realize that her feelings towards Dana might be changing.  She just didn’t know what to do about it, if anything.