Page 4 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

Ughhh I’m sorry but I’m SO over this podcast. Like I was into it at first but they’ve been recycling the same content for the past two years and now this? @margoanderson

girl you used to be funny but it’s getting old now. And

@JoHo_in_NoHo, pretty sure you’re just fake.

CHAPTER2

Things that are news to no one: Twitter is fucking brutal.

When we first started the podcast four years ago, I’d been at least peripherally aware that cyberbullying happened. It was one of those things that we heard about, that my mom was super paranoid about after watching too many episodes of Dr. Phil, but none of my immediate friend group had actually experienced it. I think we were too irrelevant. It wasn’t until the first season of the podcast went viral that I felt the full, brutal brunt of the internet. Mostly, people liked us. But the people who hated us really hated us, and that hate drove them to be way more vocal than any of our actual fans. I’d learned pretty fast to ignore them. Over the past few years, I’d formed semi-healthy social media habits—as healthy as they could be, at any rate. Avoid the cesspool that is Tumblr at all costs. Quit obsessively refreshing the feed every time you post on Instagram. Don’t get into arguments in the comments section on TikTok. And don’t read the replies on Twitter.

But in the wake of yesterday’s livestream, I found myself reading the replies on Twitter.

To be fair, I was in the middle of trying to piece together our weekly analytics report from the IKEA desk in our apartment in North Hollywood. I didn’t go looking for trouble, but trouble had a way of finding me on the internet. Often in the form of the “trending” section, which this morning included #7R4BH and mentions of Jo Hernandez among a slew of other inspiring topics like #HarryStylesIsCancelledParty and something about Senator Montpelier’s son. It was always a good idea to double-check why we were trending, although this time I was fairly certain I knew. Yesterday we went live on Instagram to share Jo’s plans to get married, and so our fall from grace had begun.

As much as our listeners had been blindsided by the news, I was little better. I’d known Jo most of my life, but she still had a way of throwing me curveballs. We’d met the first day of kindergarten—an event I remembered more by our incessant retellings of it than by any real, tangible memory. She was crying in the corner because it was her first time away from her mom. I tried to cheer her up by smearing Crayola washable paint all over my face and clothes, an effort that inexplicably earned both of us a time-out (I mean, it was washable). At any rate, one fifteen-minute time-out and a lot of scrubbing our hands in the sink later, we were friends.

And we’d been glued at the hip ever since. Except for the minor blip where she jumped into college straight out of high school while I was busy working two jobs to help my mom pay the bills, we’d tackled life side by side. Friends, at least, you could count on to stick around.

Except, apparently, you couldn’t. Apparently, friends could be bought, snatched right out from under your nose, and all it took was a—

“ ‘All-expenses-paid destination wedding on Catalina Island, courtesy of Castaway Catalina Events,’ ” Jo read off her phone, sensual as one of those ASMR girls whispering sweet nothings to their listeners. She looked up for approval, but I only shrugged. “Am I saying it weird? I feel like I’m saying it weird.”

“Maybe try for less Marilyn Monroe, and more …” I swiveled in my chair away from the computer and steepled my fingers like a Bond movie villain, minus the cat—thanks to an exorbitant pet deposit, I’d been forced to leave Cat Benatar at my mom’s. “Katharine Hepburn?”

Jo adopted a flawless mid-Atlantic accent without missing a beat. “ ‘All-expenses-paid destination wedding’—well, that’s terrible,” she said, clearing her throat like the accent was something physical she had to dislodge.

“I’m sure they’ll tell you how they want you to say it.” The wedding—and the cushy two-week vacation leading up to it—was being paid for by a sponsor in exchange for name-dropping them on the podcast’s social media channels and shooting a few promo materials, a handful of which Jo was headed to the island early to record. Just use code JOANDGO15 at checkout and get fifteen percent off your next major life event! “It’s not like it’s going to be showing at Sundance.”

“You’re right.” Jo feigned a wistful sigh. “And here I thought this was going to be my breakthrough.”

“Chin up, darling, that’s Hollywood,” I said, trying and failing to do a mid-Atlantic accent of my own.

Jo looked appalled. Hey, some of us were too busy learning the Hawaii Five-O theme on the tuba to perfect an accent for a high school production of The Philadelphia Story. “Please never do that again.” She pocketed her phone and wheeled her suitcase over to the door, flapping her free arm at her side like she wasn’t sure what to do with it. “Okay,” she exhaled. “I guess I’ll see you in two days?”

Time apart had been scarce these past few years, mostly occupied by Jo’s weekend trips to see her abuela in Mexicali. We lived together, recorded together, and went to promotional events together. We took girls’ trips complete with strategic photos to populate our Instagram feeds. When she’d first started seeing Peter last year, I noticed a shift—nights spent away from the apartment and romantic weekend getaways up to wine country, complete with Instagram pictures I wasn’t tagged in, for once—but I chalked it all up to the excitement of finally snagging the unattainable popular guy she’d had a crush on in high school.

But the wedding was a harbinger of real change, something more permanent. Whatever that meant, I didn’t want to hold Jo back from it, if she felt it was the right choice for her future. But I couldn’t help feeling I was being left in her past in the process. A keepsake to stick in her pocket as a reminder of who she used to be, but with no practical use anymore.

It was a silly thought. Jo was asking me to stand there beside her while she said her vows and signed her life away, and that had to count for something. We had shared social media accounts and contracts with Spotify and sponsors that extended through Season Seven (which we still needed to plan and record). Jo and I had always been inseparable, and our careers reflected that. In two days, I would join her on Catalina Island and be glued to her hip again, through two weeks of cake tastings and rehearsal dinners and God only knew what else.

As much as I dreaded being left in the past, I might have dreaded the reality of the future more.

“Two days,” I confirmed.

Two days passed way too quickly.

“You have to book it through the website,” I said, trying to sound patient as I shuffled up the ramp to the ferry, phone pinned between my ear and my shoulder so that I could steer my luggage in front of me. An attendant scanned my boarding pass and waved me aboard. “There’s a code. I forwarded you the email.”

On the other end of the phone, my mom clacked around on the computer. “On the ferry’s website?”

“No, on Castaway Catalina’s website.” I deposited my suitcase and tote bag in the luggage room and used my newfound freedom to switch my phone to the other ear. “There’s a link to the specific page in the email, and then you enter the code to claim your ticket.”

“Technology,” Mom sighed, followed by more keyboard noises.

The ferry wasn’t glamorous. Nothing like the cruise ship my parents had dragged me on for their fifteenth anniversary. This was more reminiscent of a mid-nineties bowling alley, with plastic chairs and colorful patterned carpet like something out of a mushroom trip. There was even a concession stand, right at the heart of it all.

“Okay, done,” Mom announced. “It says they’re sending me a confirmation. Where are they sending the confirmation?”