Page 12 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

Frankly, it was bullshit. People didn’t fit into neat little boxes. Just because someone’s life choices didn’t look like your choices, that didn’t mean they were the wrong choices. They were just different.

But if people didn’t fit into boxes, maybe they didn’t fit into a neat list of rules, either. Maybe we were putting people into boxes in our own way.

I took another bite of French toast and reread the last comment in the thread. The rules are stupid and you’re stupid for following them. Either you want to stay single or you don’t.

Maybe for Seven Rules to move forward, we needed to challenge whether we needed the rules in the first place.

I switched over to my recent calls and scrolled back a week or so, to my last phone conversation with Jo. I clicked call. She answered on the first ring, her voice breathless. “I’m almost ready. Give me another …” Something clattered in the background. A fumbled makeup palette or straightener. “Fifteen minutes or so.”

“I’m not calling about that.” I still looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. My damp green hair was plastered to my neck and there were probably dark circles under my eyes to rival a panda. I’d need at least an hour of my own if I was supposed to be photo ready.

“Okay,” Jo said slowly. “So then what’s up?”

“I have an idea for some new content.”

“We deliberately break the rules,” I explained, my voice low. “Or I do, anyway, seeing as you’re …”

I inclined my head at Peter, who was busy snapping photos of the two of us from several yards away in an attempt to get the cabana in the picture. We were lounging in the shade, overlooking the imported sand and rented lounge chairs parked in front of the glittering blue water of Descanso Bay.

Jo frowned. “I don’t know. Does that really make sense with our brand? And how do you purposely break the rules, anyway? It’s not like you can go out like, ‘I’m going to find a guy who never texts back, and then I’m going to text him first.’ ”

“I have a feeling that guy would be easier to find than you think,” I pointed out.

Peter frowned at the phone. “It looks too …” He wobbled his head back and forth, trying—and failing—to conjure up a word. Any word.

“Cluttered?” Jo offered, reaching across my lap to rearrange the throw pillows on the wicker furniture. “Something with the lighting?”

“Awkward,” Declan interrupted, returning from putting in our orders over at the bar—a task he’d been all too happy to volunteer for, like he wanted to put as much distance between himself and this photoshoot as possible. He was wearing a pair of swim trunks that showed just the right amount of lean, well-muscled leg and a gray T-shirt with a little palm tree logo stitched over the chest. He’d stayed uncharacteristically quiet on the golf cart ride from the hotel and the whole time we were taking photos, but now, he plunked into a cushioned wicker armchair and kicked his long legs up on the ottoman. “Jo, you’re doing something weird with your face. And Margo looks like Gumby.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” I grumbled.

“You know, the little claymation guy, he’s green, stands sort of like—”

“I know who Gumby is.” I couldn’t tell if he meant my posture or if he was making fun of my hair, but I didn’t care to find out. I’d never quite gotten the hang of posing for pictures. I didn’t always know what I was supposed to be doing with my legs. Or hands. Or any other part of me, the moment someone picked up a camera. Jo was always more comfortable in her own skin. Maybe it was all the theater she did in school. Hard to feel self-conscious after you’d worn a fake mustache and pantaloons in front of half your graduating class.

We were interrupted by a server with choppy, sun-bleached hair delivering our drinks. She set a pair of photogenic red drinks on the low table in front of Jo and me, and handed bottles of Pacífico to the guys. “Cheers,” Declan said to her before tilting the bottle to his lips.

At a simple look from Jo, Peter resumed snapping photos. I’d ordered my drink more for pictures than out of any real desire to catch a buzz, but I picked it up anyway and took a sip through the paper straw—for the sake of doing something with my hands, if nothing else. It was like drinking strawberry syrup straight out of the bottle.

Peter’s phone chimed, and he lowered it in the middle of taking a picture to check it. “Autumn’s here,” he announced, turning to Declan. “Want to hop in the golf cart with me to go pick her up from the landing?”

“Happily.” Declan pounded his brand-new beer and set the empty bottle on the table, all too eager to put some distance between himself and what he probably saw as a bunch of narcissistic bullshit. People without social media often saw it that way. Like they were somehow morally superior because they’d voluntarily failed to keep up with the times. Sometimes I wondered if my great-grandparents had felt like they were better than everyone for not watching TV or using the phone.

Peter gave Jo a swift peck on the lips, and then they were off.

“AirDrop me the pictures,” she called after them. When Peter didn’t seem to hear her, she grabbed his half-finished Pacífico and slumped back into her seat, all pretenses forgotten. “Whatever. Maybe we should ask Autumn. She’d probably give better direction, anyway.”

“I’m not sure Autumn has quite the same vision,” I said, thinking of her Instagram full of Chanel bags and blurry flash photos of runway models. Autumn was successful at what she did, and I respected that about her, but her style was a lot different from ours.

Jo sipped the beer. I wouldn’t have minded something to wash down the sickly sweet drinks we’d ordered for our pictures, but the server was nowhere in sight and Declan had pounded the rest of his bottle. I would’ve gladly drunk after him and risked whatever cooties if it meant washing this syrupy taste out of my mouth.

“Okay, so maybe I don’t go out of my way to break the rules,” I said, reverting back to our former conversation now that we could speak more openly. “Maybe I just go two weeks without worrying about the rules and whatever happens, happens. We could frame it as a sort of social experiment.”

Jo nodded thoughtfully. “Challenging whether or not they matter in the first place.” She got this pensive, faraway look in her eye as she gazed out at the water. I knew that look. She was already envisioning how we could spin it for social media, start promoting it before Season Seven was due to air in September. “Two weeks without rules.”

“Why two weeks?” I asked.

“Two-week vacation, seems like the perfect time to step outside your comfort zone.” She shrugged, beer poised at her lips so that her next words echoed inside the bottle. “And it’ll make it easier to go back to normal, once the experiment’s over. Not like you’re ever going to see these people again.”