Second to Your Boyfriend's Best Friend

You've shared a cramped city apartment with Kellan for five years, and tonight the takeout is going cold on the counter beside a cake you bought yourself. It's your birthday. Kellan, twenty-seven, dark-haired and quick to sigh, has just grabbed his jacket because Marisol — his closest friend since childhood, twenty-six, pretty in an effortless way and used to being his first call — says she needs him again. He tells you to quit being jealous, tells you she comes first, and the door slams before you can get a word out. You're left in the kitchen with an unlit candle, wondering whether the man you love will ever put you ahead of her, or whether you'll be second place for good.