Pinky Promises
Copyright© 2026 by BareLin
Chapter 1: The Thing About Pinky Promises
So, you’re reading this book.
Let me guess, you saw the cover. Four very naked women, a clothed guy in an open meadow, at what appears to be a wedding, it was. No clothes, lots of skin, and you thought, ’Well, that’s not something you see every day,’ and here we are.
Welcome. Pull up a chair. Get comfortable. I’d offer you a drink, but since this is a book and not an actual gathering, you’re going to have to provide your own beverages. Might I suggest something strong? You’re going to need it.
I’m Kaitlin (Kellington) Newman. That’s me on the cover, the bride, the one with dark hair and the expression that says, “Yes, I know I’m naked, and yes, I dare you to make it weird.” The blonde on my side is Madeleine Meadows. We call her Maddie. The compact, fierce-looking one is Marnie Reyes, and the redhead at the end, the one who somehow manages to look elegant even while completely exposed, is Grace Serrano.
We’ve been friends for thirty years. Thirty years of secrets and sleepovers, of triumphs and tragedies, of seeing each other through everything life could throw at four women who refused to be ashamed of who they were.
Yes, that includes being literally, completely, unapologetically naked at my wedding.
All of us. The whole weekend. From the rehearsal dinner through to the ceremony to the afterparty, when things got ... well. We’ll get to that.
Before we get to the wedding, before we get to the photos that ended up all over social media, the internet, before we get to the scandal and the fallout and the surprising aftermath, I need to tell you how we got there.
I need to tell you about the pinky promises.
Because that’s what this story is really about. It’s not about nudity, despite what the cover suggests. It’s not about shock value or exhibitionism or any of the labels people tried to slap on us when the blurred-out and unaltered photos went viral. It’s about promises. About the ones we make when we’re too young to understand what they mean, and the ones we keep when we’re old enough to know exactly what they’re costing us.
It’s about the people who see you, really see you, all of you, every inch, and love you anyway.
So settle in. This might take a while.
If you’re here for the dirty parts? Keep reading. A fair warning: the nakedness is the least interesting thing about this story. The interesting part is what happens when you stop hiding.
A Brief Note Before We Begin
I should probably address the elephant in the room, or rather, the lack of clothing on the elephant.
Yes, I’m going to talk to you directly throughout this book. Yes, I’m going to break the fourth wall like I’m in a sitcom and you’re the live studio audience. Yes, I’m going to make jokes about my own body, my friends’ bodies, and the general absurdity of the human experience.
Why? Because that’s who I am. I’m a journalist by trade, which means I ask questions for a living. However, I’m also a woman who spent thirty years learning that the best way to deal with discomfort is to name it, mock it, and then drag it into the light where it can’t hide anymore.
Also, my editor said I should “establish a voice.” So here it is. My voice. Sarcastic, occasionally profane, and fundamentally incapable of taking itself too seriously.
If that’s not your thing, there are approximately seven billion other books you could be reading. No hard feelings.
Is it your thing? Welcome. You’re my people.
Now let’s talk about pinky promises.
The Thing About Pinky Promises
The thing about pinky promises is that it’s supposed to be about little things.
You pinky promise to save someone a seat at lunch. You pinky promise not to tell your mom that they were the ones who left the Capri Sun in the freezer until it exploded. You pinky promise to be friends forever, which at eight years old means approximately until the end of the school year, or until someone gets a better best friend, whichever comes first.
That’s what pinky promises are for. That’s what I thought, anyway.
Still, I was eight, and I didn’t know yet that some promises wrap around your bones and stay there. I didn’t know that the smallest moments, the ones you don’t think twice about, can become the architecture of your entire life.
I didn’t know that a pinky promise could be stronger than family. Stronger than fear. Stronger than shame.
I didn’t know any of that yet.
All I knew was that Maddie Meadows was crying in the girls’ bathroom at Woodland Hills Elementary, and when Maddie cried, the world felt wrong in a way I couldn’t fix.
“You can’t tell anyone,” she said, her voice hiccupping around the words. “Promise me, Kaitlin. Pinky promise.”
I’d hooked my pinky through hers, small, warm, trembling, and said the words that would bind us together for the next twenty-two years and counting.
“I promise.”
I didn’t know what I was promising. I didn’t know that this was the first thread in a web that would catch us over and over again, that would hold us when nothing else could, that would demand things from us that seemed impossible and then make them possible anyway.
I didn’t know that by the time I got married, I’d be standing at an altar in absolutely nothing, no dress, no veil, no shoes, with my three best friends standing naked beside me, while our families watched and photographers clicked and the whole world, eventually, would see every single inch of us.
I didn’t know any of that. I just knew Maddie was crying, and I knew I’d do anything to make it stop, so I promised, and that was the beginning.
Let me tell you about the first time I saw Maddie Meadows naked. We were eight, and it was summer, and Maddie’s parents had one of those above-ground pools that looked like a giant blue donut sitting in their backyard. The kind with the ladder that always felt slightly unstable and the filter that made a sound like a dying robot. Maddie’s mom, Mrs. Meadows, had set up a sprinkler system that sprayed mist over the patio, and we were supposed to be running through it in our bathing suits, shrieking like the feral children we were ... except Maddie had forgotten her bathing suit.
This was, in retrospect, the first sign of a pattern. Maddie forgot things constantly: her homework, her lunch, her shoes if they weren’t attached to her feet. Her brain moved so fast that the mundane details of existence just ... slipped out. Like sand through cupped hands.
“I can’t go in the water,” she said, standing on the patio in her shorts and T-shirt, watching Marnie and Grace and me shrieking through the mist. Her face had that particular expression of devastation that only an eight-year-old can achieve as the universe had personally conspired against her.
“Just go in your clothes,” I’d suggested, because even then I was practical to a fault.
“They’ll get wet,” Maddie said, pulling down on the hem of her T-shirt.
“That’s kind of the point,” I replied, not understanding Maddie’s reluctance to join in.
Maddie shook her head, and I could see the logic failing in her eyes, the way her brain got stuck on the rule (you wear a bathing suit in the pool) and couldn’t find its way around it.
So I did what I always did when Maddie got stuck. I found a way to unstick her.
“Then take your clothes off,” I suggested.
Maddie stared at me like I’d suggested we fly to the moon. “What?”
“You’re allowed to be naked in the pool. It’s your pool. Your parents won’t care.”
“My parents?” Maddie asked as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her.
“They’re inside watching TV. They won’t even know,” I told her, trying to convince her it was nothing special.
I could see the idea working its way through her brain, fighting against all the rules she’d internalized about what bodies were supposed to do and where they were supposed to be. Naked was for baths. Naked was for changing clothes with the door closed. Naked was not for backyard pools in the middle of the afternoon, but Maddie also really, really wanted to run through the sprinkler, so she did it.
She pulled off her T-shirt, her shorts, and her underwear. She did it quickly, the way you rip off a Band-Aid, and then she was standing on the patio in absolutely nothing, her small eight-year-old body pale in the afternoon sun, her arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to disappear.
Then Marnie, fierce, fearless Marnie, who had never been shy about anything in her entire life, grabbed Maddie’s hand and pulled her into the mist.
“Come ON,” Marnie yelled. “Stop being weird about it,” and Maddie laughed.
I remember that laugh. I remember the way it sounded, surprised and free and slightly hysterical, like she couldn’t quite believe she was doing this, like she couldn’t quite believe it was allowed. She ran through the sprinkler with her arms spread wide, water beading on her skin, and for a few minutes, she wasn’t the girl who forgot everything or the girl who got stuck on rules. She was just a kid, being a kid, in her own skin.
Grace joined her, then Marnie, then me. The four of us, naked as the day we were born, ran through the sprinkler in Maddie’s backyard while her parents watched TV inside, and the world kept turning like this was completely normal. Eventually, it felt normal.
That was the first time I understood something about bodies that took me years to fully articulate: nakedness is only weird until it isn’t. There’s a threshold you cross, a moment when the self-consciousness burns off like morning fog, and on the other side is just ... being. Just existing. Just skin and water and laughter and the absolute, uncomplicated joy of not caring.
We didn’t know we were learning something that day. We didn’t know we were building the foundation for everything that would come later. We were just kids, being kids, in a backyard pool.
We were also making the first pinky promise we didn’t know we were making. The promise that bodies weren’t shameful. The promise that we could be seen, all of us, every inch, and still be loved. The promise that we would always, always find a way to unstick each other.
The Pinky Promise That Changed Everything
The actual pinky promise, the formal one, with linked fingers and solemn vows and all the gravity eight-year-olds could muster, happened a few weeks later.
Maddie’s mom had found out about the pool incident. Not because anyone told her we were loyal to a fault, even then but because Maddie’s neighbor, a boy named Tommy Richardson with a face like a gargoyle and a personality to match, had seen everything from his bedroom window and told his mother, who told Mrs. Meadows, who sat us all down in her kitchen with glasses of lemonade and an expression I now recognize as “trying very hard not to laugh.”
“Do you girls have anything you want to tell me?” she asked.
We sat in silence, four small statues of guilt.
“Because I heard something interesting from Mrs. Richardson. About some ... nakedness. In the pool.”
Marnie, bless her fearless heart, had spoken first. “It was my fault. I dared them.”
This was a lie, and we all knew it, but Marnie lied with the conviction of someone who genuinely believed she could make something true just by saying it hard enough.
“Marnie.” Mrs. Meadows’s voice was patient. “I’m not angry. I just want to understand.”
That was the exact moment when I understood that some adults were safe. Some adults could be trusted with the truth. Some adults would hear that you’d done something weird and embarrassing and vulnerable, and they wouldn’t punish you for it. They’d just ... listen.
“We forgot Maddie’s bathing suit,” I’d said. “She wanted to play, so we all got naked so she wouldn’t be the only one.”
Mrs. Meadows had looked at me for a long moment. Then she’d looked at Maddie, who was studying the table like it held the secrets of the universe.
“Baby,” she said gently. “Did you feel okay? Did anyone make you do something you didn’t want to do?”
Maddie shook her head. “It was fun. We were just playing.”
“You didn’t feel ... embarrassed? Or scared?”
Maddie thought about it. “At first, but then we were all the same, so it didn’t matter.”
Mrs. Meadows nodded slowly. Then she said something I’ve never forgotten.
“That’s a special thing, you know. To have friends who will stand with you. Who will make themselves vulnerable, so you don’t have to be vulnerable alone.” She reached across the table and took Maddie’s hand. “Those are the kind of friends you keep forever.”
We didn’t understand what she was really saying. We thought she was just being nice, just being a mom, just smoothing over an awkward conversation.
Later, after the lemonade was gone and we were in Maddie’s room, building forts out of blankets and pillows, Marnie had crawled into the center of the construction and held up her pinky.
“Pinky promise,” she said, “that we’ll always be those friends. The ones who stand together. No matter what.”
Grace hooked her pinky through Marnie’s. Then Maddie. Then me.
“We promise,” we’d said in unison ... and that was it. That was the moment.
We didn’t know what we were promising. We didn’t know that “no matter what” would eventually mean careers, families, reputations, and the entire internet. We didn’t know that standing together would sometimes mean standing naked, literally, actually, completely naked in front of people who would never understand.
We didn’t know any of that, but we promised anyway. The thing about pinky promises, when you make them at eight years old with your three best friends in a blanket fort in suburban Ohio ... they stick.
Elementary School: The Education of Minds
Looking back, I’m amazed at how quickly nakedness became normal for us. After the pool incident, something shifted. Not dramatically, we didn’t start running around town nude or anything. However, in the privacy of each other’s houses, in backyards and bedrooms and basements, clothes became ... optional.
It started small. Changing in front of each other without turning away. Running from the shower to the bedroom without bothering with a towel. Swimming in the buff whenever adults weren’t around to object. Then it grew.
Marnie’s family had a hot tub. By the time we were ten, we had an unspoken rule that bathing suits in the hot tub were stupid. Why sit in wet fabric when you could just ... not? Marnie’s parents worked late, and we had the house to ourselves for hours after school. We’d do homework in the hot tub, naked as jaybirds, our textbooks balanced on the edge, steam rising around us while we argued about math problems and who had a crush on whom.
Grace’s house had a trampoline. We discovered, through trial and error, that bouncing naked was exponentially more fun than bouncing clothed. Something about the freedom of movement, the way your whole body could fling itself into the air without anything holding it back. Also, trampoline burns hurt less when there’s no fabric to rub against your skin.
My house had a basement with an old couch and a TV that received exactly three channels. We spent entire weekends down there, watching movies and eating popcorn and not wearing clothes, because why would we? It was warm, it was private, it was ours.
We didn’t talk about it. That was the strange part. We never sat down and said, “Hey, let’s establish a norm of casual nudity among our friend group.” It just ... happened. Organically. The way any friendship develops its own language, its own rituals, its own rules that no one ever actually writes down.
By the time we were twelve, being dressed in each other’s presence felt slightly formal. Like we were performing. Like we were hiding something that didn’t need to be hidden, and maybe that was the point.
Maybe, without knowing it, we were teaching each other something that the world would spend decades trying to unteach: that bodies are just bodies. That skin is just skin. That the thing that makes you vulnerable isn’t the nakedness itself, it’s the fear of being seen.
We were learning to be seen. We were learning that being seen didn’t kill you. We were learning that being seen by the right people, in the right way, could actually make you feel more real. More alive. More yourself.
Middle School: The First Test
Middle school was where the promise got tested for the first time, because middle school is where shame moves in and makes itself at home. Where bodies start changing in ways that feel alien and embarrassing. Where the simple, uncomplicated nakedness of childhood becomes complicated by hormones and comparisons and the dawning awareness that other people are looking at you differently than they used to.
I hit puberty early. By twelve, I had breasts that required actual bras and hips that made my jeans fit weird and a constant, low-grade awareness that my body was now something other people felt entitled to comment on.
Maddie hit puberty late, and she hated it. She watched the rest of us change while her body stayed stubbornly childlike, and she felt like she was being left behind. Like she was failing at being a girl somehow.
Marnie embraced puberty like she embraced everything: aggressively and unapologetically, with maximum attitude. She was the first to need a real bra, the first to get her period, the first to have boys actually notice her, and she treated each development like a personal victory.
Grace’s body changed quietly, modestly, the way Grace did everything. She grew into curves gradually, almost apologetically, as if she didn’t want to draw attention to herself.
Our naked time became different during those years. More complicated. More loaded.
I remember the first time we were all in Marnie’s hot tub after the changes started. I was hyperaware of my own body in a way I hadn’t been before, aware of the weight of my breasts in the water, aware of the dark hair that had started growing between my legs, aware of the way Maddie kept her arms crossed over her flat chest.
We sat in the steaming water, not talking, and the silence felt heavy in a way it never had before.
Finally, Marnie said, “This is weird now.”
We all looked at her.
“The naked thing,” she continued. “It’s weird now, because everything’s different.”
“It’s not different,” I said automatically, even though I knew it was.
“Yes, it is.” Maddie’s voice was small. “You all look like ... like women, and I look like a kid.”
“You don’t look like a kid,” Grace said gently.
“I do. I look like I’m ten. You look like you’re ready for a magazine cover.” Maddie’s eyes were shiny with tears. “It’s not fair.”
The hot tub bubbled around us. Nobody knew what to say. Finally, Marnie did what Marnie always did when emotions got too heavy: she made a joke.
“Well, if it makes you feel better, my boobs are already starting to sag. So, you’ve got that to look forward to.” It was such a stupid, ridiculous thing to say that we all laughed. Even Maddie, through her tears.
Somehow, the laughter broke the tension. The weirdness didn’t disappear; it couldn’t, not really, but it became manageable. We could name it. We could joke about it. We could acknowledge that things were changing without letting the changes destroy what we had.
Later, after we’d toweled off and put on our clothes, Maddie caught my arm.
“Kaitlin?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. To make it not weird.”
I didn’t know what I’d done, exactly, but I nodded anyway. “That’s what we do, right? We make it not weird.” Maddie smiled, and I knew we’d passed some kind of test. The promise had held.
High School: The Education Continues
By high school, our nakedness had become something we barely thought about.
It wasn’t sexual, that’s the thing people always misunderstand. It wasn’t about titillation or exhibitionism or any of the labels adults tried to slap on it when they found out. It was just ... comfortable. Just normal. Just the way we were with each other.
We studied naked. We did homework naked. We watched movies naked, ate pizza naked, and painted each other’s nails naked. When one of us was sad, we crawled into bed with her and held her naked because fabric between the skin felt like a barrier we didn’t need.
We developed a kind of shorthand around bodies that most people never get. We knew each other’s scars and stretch marks, each other’s birthmarks and beauty marks, each other’s shapes and sizes, and the way we changed throughout our cycles. We could look at each other and tell who was bloated, who was cramping, who was in the fertile window of her month. We could see the subtle shifts that even we didn’t notice in ourselves.
We also developed a kind of protective instinct around each other. When boys started treating our bodies as things to be commented on, touched, possessed, we had each other’s backs in ways that surprised even us.
I remember when Tommy Richardson, the same gargoyle-faced boy from elementary school, now grown into a particularly obnoxious form of teenage male, commented on Marnie’s body in the hallway. Something crude, something about the size of her breasts, and what he’d like to do with them.
Marnie could handle herself. Marnie always could, but before she could respond, Grace had stepped forward quietly, modest Grace, who never raised her voice and never started fights and said, clearly and calmly, “If you ever speak to her again, I will tell everyone about the time you wet your pants in third grade and blamed it on the water fountain.”
Tommy’s face went red. The rumor about the wet pants was true, and everyone knew it. He slunk away without another word.
We laughed about it later, but underneath the laughter was something deeper: the knowledge that we would defend each other. That our bond wasn’t just about the comfortable, easy moments. It was about the hard ones, too. The moments when the world tried to reduce us to our bodies, to make us objects, to take something that was ours and turn it into something for other people to consume.
Our nakedness, our comfort with each other, our refusal to be ashamed, these weren’t just quirks of our friendship. They were weapons. They were armor. They were the things that made us strong when the world tried to make us weak.
The Slumber Party Incident
The first time our nakedness became truly public, in a way that could have destroyed us, was the summer before senior year.