Page 51 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

It was a solid few seconds before my brain registered the euphemism. Dicks. She was talking about dicks. “Okay, ew, I did not need to know that.”

“There’s a game, it’s like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, I’ve seen it in movies—”

“Mom—”

“Where they make a little cutout that looks, excuse the clinical language, but, well, it looks like a penis—”

“Mom!”

She made a tsk sound. “I thought you guys were all cool with this kind of talk. That’s what the whole podcast is about, isn’t it?”

One of the first ground rules I’d laid out for my mom was that she was never allowed to listen to the podcast. She knew what it was about, but so far as I knew, she’d never gone and listened behind my back. I was pretty sure she didn’t want to. “Yeah, my podcast with my best friend, not with my mom.”

“You know, it’s the twenty-first century. Girls can talk about sex with their mothers. It’s natural.”

“I would sincerely rather we didn’t,” I said. But then my smart ass got the better of me. “Anyway, what do you know about any of that, it’s not like you’ve been getting any.”

“Margo!”

“You said you want to talk about it,” I promptly reminded her.

There was a stern silence on the other end, but if I knew my mom, she was suppressing a laugh. Finally, she said, “I’m divorced, not dead.”

I jolted upright in bed. “Wait, does that mean you’ve been seeing someone?” I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it, if she was. On one hand, good for her. About time she let go of all the tainted memories with Dad and moved on to someone new. On the other hand, this was Mom. The idea of her dating around was kind of freaky. Like watching a dog walk on its hind legs.

“No, of course not,” she sighed. “What I meant is that I remember those days just fine.”

“Do you think you ever would? Date again, I mean.” It wasn’t a subject we’d ever really broached. And while it was difficult—and more than a little strange—to imagine, maybe I wouldn’t mind seeing my mom get back out there. Maybe it would instill some semblance of hope back into my generally bleak outlook on love.

As though she had read my thoughts, she said, “You’re one to talk. You know, most parents of twenty-somethings hope they live long enough to meet their grandkids, but here I am hoping I live long enough to see my daughter have an actual boyfriend.”

I knew where I got my dry humor from, at least. “Thanks for that.”

“I’m serious. I swear, you were more put off by the whole situation with your father than I was. So what if one man turned out to be a bad egg. That doesn’t mean marriage is a waste of time.” She heaved another sigh into the phone, and abruptly, I felt a little guilty. Like my pessimism had somehow been burdening my mom all this time, and I was too caught up in my own feelings to see it. “If I could take it all back, I would,” she continued. “Not the marriage, I don’t mean. But all the lies. Keeping it a secret. Everything you were exposed to afterwards. A kid shouldn’t have to see their parents like that.”

A fist-sized lump had formed in my throat and I swallowed, picking at the sheets. “I don’t actually hate marriage, Mom,” I tried to reassure her, but it came out sounding pretty unconvincing, given my long history of cynical comments. “I’m just … not sure it’s for me.”

“All I’m saying is, don’t count your chickens before they hatch. You never know. You could meet the right person and change your mind.” She didn’t sound particularly hopeful. A part of me wanted to cheer her up, to offer some tiny glimmer of hope. I thought about mentioning Declan. He did just ask me on a date, after all. But it would be false hope, at the end of the day. Fool’s gold.

I shook my head, an unsuccessful attempt at rattling the thought loose. “Now you sound like Jo,” I joked, hoping instead to lighten the mood.

“Then Jo is a good friend. I wish I had a friendship half as strong as you two. When your dad and I split, I swear it felt like I didn’t have a friend in the world. Not Diane Feldman, that’s for sure. You shouldn’t take real friendships for granted. They’re harder to come by than you think.”

Okay, mood not lightened, despite my half-hearted effort. “I know,” I mumbled.

She must have caught on to the fact that I wasn’t exactly enjoying the conversation anymore, because she said breezily, “Well, I’m sure you’ve had enough of me for one day. But try to call me again before the actual wedding?”

“Will do. Love you.”

I hung up and stared at the crack running down the home screen. My wallpaper was one I’d pulled off Google ages ago: a picture of the Palais Garnier in Paris, which I’d wanted to visit since I was fourteen and saw it in one of my mom’s coffee-table books. But for all our sponsorships, nothing had earned me an invitation to any concert halls. Opera houses didn’t need my flimsy social media posts and name-dropping. I thought briefly about changing my wallpaper, then thought better of it. What would I even change it to?

I remembered the day Jo had come home from the gym, about five months into seeing Peter, and set her phone on the kitchen counter while she poured a glass of water. I hadn’t meant to look. It was only a passing glance at the lit-up screen, but it made me do a double take to look at her new wallpaper: Jo and Peter at a Halloween party, her dressed as Morticia Addams and him as Gomez complete with a penciled-on mustache, their smiling faces squished together so that they could both fit into the frame.

That was when I’d known. If not known, then started to suspect. Something was different. Everything was going to be different.

And I was right. It had been different ever since.

Tossing my phone aside, I dragged myself out of bed and stripped off my tank top to change into my outfit for dinner.