The first goes to Max.
I don’t know if you remember when we first met. I thought you were the coolest person I’d ever seen in real life—how you walked into class and made those two guys by you crack up. But that was always the problem: I saw you as a whole person, and you only saw me as a girl. Lesser. Stupid. Teachable. Controllable.
I used to put you on a pedestal so I could keep myself down. But you went along with it every time. I never listened to “the right” music. I never knew “the best” TV shows. I was always a little wrong. I think that’s why you picked me, too. I was already insecure about having ADHD and being from my hometown, and you could enjoy feeling superior to someone who you weren’t threatened by. I’m sure when you read this, you’ll roll your eyes and find an excuse to write it off, too, because that’s what you do. You’re too cool to be real. Too chill to be earnest.
You said I never let anything go, but you haven’t grown in the six years I’ve known you.
I don’t want to work with you again. I don’t want to be an “ad agency with style.” After today, you aren’t going to hear from me. You’re going to wonder, though. One day, in twenty years, I’m going to cross your mind, and it’ll click that you lost the best friend you ever had because you viewed women as below you.
And when you reach out to me, I won’t reply.
The second email is for Arthur.
I’m coming to Bob’s wedding. If you would like to talk there, then we can.
After that, I write a reply to my birth mom.
It’s long, rambling. At some point, all sentence fragments. I describe how I’ve felt haunted by her refusal to acknowledge me, how I grew up silent because she’d taught me that was safest. How her behavior had conditioned me to seek out a partner like Max, who corralled me and controlled me. Put me in second place.
And then, when I’m happy with it, the truth gleaming in black text on a harsh white background, I delete each word, one after the other, until the page is blank and I’m free.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Champagne?”
I hold up my glass of sparkling apple juice. “Learned my lesson last time.”
Delaney shrugs one pastel blue shoulder. “Smart,” she says, finishing her flute. “As the last man standing, I’ll take one for the team.”
“Cameron is also still employed.”
“Was he ever standing?”
When the three of us were choosing when to attend the wedding of Ignition’s owner—after Sarah revealed that she’d been placed on temporary leave by Holmes for “marketing negligence”—we’d unanimously decided to skip the vows. It seemed too awkward to sit through syrupy sweet nothings and timed dove releases if we were planning on attending Bob’s big day at the Royal Villa simply out of spite. “I read the Habsburgs built this place,” I whisper to Sarah.
“That’s nice,” she whispers back. “Who are the Habsburgs?”
I keep my palace history lesson short. I don’t know who Bob talked into marrying him, but when we spot the happy couple in front of the black-tie crowd, lifting twin bottles of Veuve Clicquot as horses bow behind them, I have to muffle a laugh. True to his Texas roots, Bob has paired his glossy black tuxedo with white cowboy boots and a Stetson hat on top of his beaming head.
“Ridiculous,” Delaney grumbles as we pass by a long harvest table draped in white silk and not one, not ten, but thirteen wedding cakes.
“You don’t like cake?” Sarah asks.
“I don’t like thirteen cakes.”
“There have to be, like, two thousand people here. Thirteen isn’t enough.”
“Remind me again why I’m here?”
“You like me, unfortunately,” I say. “And you wanted to help us make a point, since Sarah and I wouldn’t have made it past the guards up front.”
A smile threatens Delaney’s mouth. “Oh, right. I’m the employed friend.”
To no one’s surprise, the inside of the neoclassical palace isn’t less ridiculous. Small spotlights are nestled in the villa’s lush golden interior, highlighting the swirling gilded wallpaper and illuminating the various chandeliers, candles, drink glasses, rows of cutlery framing each porcelain plate. As we get closer to the many tables, I square my shoulders and clench my hands at my sides so I don’t tug at my brand-new floor-length black dress. This is me being brave, facing my fears, and standing tall under the judgmental glances from the Formula 1 elite, living my one life. I smile as Delaney and Sarah introduce me to an endless assortment of people—F1 staff from every country, sculpture artists, chemists, a billionaire’s wife who moonlights as a girls-in-STEM activist, an actor who’s convinced that he knows me from a childhood gig. “I swear I’ve seen you somewhere else,” he says.
“It’s the glasses.”
“Are you a DJ?” a professional horse trainer asks me. “You look like a DJ.”
