Mari and Alex had "something else" for years, until Mari casts Alex aside without warning and disappears to parts unknown. Broken-hearted and full of sorrow for herself, Alex finds herself in the company of Joey, a surprisingly charismatic nice guy who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. They strike up a fast friendship, and soon enough something more develops between them.When Mari returns from her vanishing act nearly a year later, she spreads a web of lies, expecting her friends to accept her fiction as the gospel truth and permit her to reclaim her place in the group. Her stories quickly fall apart, however, when Andrea, Megan, Jordan, and Alex compare stories and realize they've been duped yet again.When the truth finally does come out, it shocks them, and is nothing that any of them had seen coming. Is it too late for Alex to forgive and forget? What secret is so shameful that Mari would rather lie to her best friends about where she'd been than fess up to what had really been going on?