Page 91 of While You Were Trending

“Good. Because the way I remember it, you weren’t her biggest fan.”

I don’t correct him.

By all appearances, he’d be right.

“It’s baggage you don’t need to keep carrying,” I reply. “All I’m saying.”

“Tell that to the internet.”

“Tell that to the millions about to join your bank account when you take those endorsement deals.”

Flow whimper-whines again and crawls into my lap.

“Is that your dog?” Alex asks.

“She doesn’t like it when people are mean to me.”

He huffs. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. You’re being a fuck.”

More silence lingers while light stripes of clouds drift across the blue sky over the fields. I have a clear view of the stone house that I’m staying in, more rolling fields across the way, and the path up into the mountains separating Sonoma from Napa.

Been a lot of places this year, since I finally retired when my agent couldn’t find me a new team.

They’re all special in their own ways, but here—here’s gorgeous.

The vineyards.

The mountains.

The architecture.

The weather.

“You doing okay?” Alex asks after a long pause.

“Eh. Been better, been worse.”

“Your TV show—that’s really happening?”

“Yep.”

“Good. You deserve it, man.”

“Thanks.”

“But I swear on my great-grandma’s peach cobbler recipe, if you’re with her and you’re giving her another chance at being famous, you’ll wake up with cow shit in your bed every night for the rest of your life.”

I bite my tongue again.

Ginny avoided cameras as much as she could the entire time Alex dated her. They were together for six months before she’d let him take a selfie with her, and even then, she made him swear up and down that he wouldn’t post it to his socials.

She got a little bit of coverage for dating him—impossible to avoid it entirely—but she never sought it out.

And while she should’ve realized people would be recording his wedding, she didn’t ask for people to post their videos of her trying to stop it either.

“Nice game last night,” I say instead of telling him to get therapy like I want to, and we spend the next ten minutes catching up on hockey instead of talking about Ginny.