I want to tell you that in that moment I trusted him, that five years of watching him love my sister had inoculated me against suspicion.

But I am being honest in this account, and the honest truth is that in that moment every ugly thought I had ever buried came clawing straight back up to the surface, and I braced myself to have my worst fears about my best friend confirmed.

I am not proud of how quickly the suspicion returned, and I have had to sit with what it says about me, that five years of watching a man love my sister could be undone in a few seconds by a single ominous sentence.

But I think the truth of it is this: the old jealousy had never fully died, only gone to sleep, and fear is what woke it.