Page 6 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

Go: Better safe than sorry.

CHAPTER3

The boat docked about an hour later. The hilly cliffs of Catalina rose out of the sea, grasses fried a faint gold by the summer heat. Avalon was a medley of colors and architectural styles dotting the hillside. On an outcropping of rock sat a massive Mediterranean building known as the Catalina Casino, but then turn your head and there’s a Craftsman-style house straight out of the thirties, or a tawdry ice cream shop complete with Grease-level mid-century nostalgia.

It was no Maui—which Jo and I had been lucky enough to visit two summers ago for a photoshoot as part of an Instagram partnership with a swimsuit boutique—but Catalina wasn’t terrible. It was an easy escape from the constant buzz of the mainland, an illusion of being miles away from your problems, and perhaps that was the root of its charm. Unlike my family, who’d visited every summer, Jo had only visited twice: once for a field trip in elementary school and once with me and my parents in high school. When Castaway Catalina had reached out for a partnership promoting their new social media campaign—“cast off your cares”—I’d scoffed. Catalina was as much the real world as anywhere else, twenty-six miles across the sea or otherwise.

But Jo, who unbeknownst to me had already been talking to Peter about the possibility of getting married, still held on to a shred of that fantasy. She’d bought into the false promise. Before I knew what hit me, she was flashing me a white-gold ring with a teardrop diamond and telling me that she wanted to email Castaway Catalina back about the deal.

A dry heat beat down on the open deck of the ferry as passengers herded toward the exit. It was the sort of Southern California weather that was God-awful when inland but perfect for a day at the beach. I peered over the side of the boat at the crystalline water, where bright orange flecks darted between seaweed and craggy rocks: garibaldi, our state fish, flocking around the ferry.

Back in the storage room, I slung my tote bag over my shoulder and dragged my suitcase behind me. A queue had formed down the ramp, where a distressed employee tried and failed to stop impatient passengers from shoving their way to the front. From the top of the ramp, I spied Jo and Peter with a colorful hand-drawn sign that read hernandez-figueroa wedding party. I let go of my suitcase to wave, just for a second—which was apparently a second too long. Someone bumped me. My suitcase teetered, but I managed to catch it before it plummeted to the water and I turned, ready to give the stranger an earful.

It was the guy in the Caltech hat. He had a gym bag slung over a broad shoulder and it looked like maybe he’d been pushed into me by a gaggle of high school students jockeying to get ahead. His lips parted like he was about to say something, his expression unreadable behind dark sunglasses, but then one of the workers ushered us down the ramp.

“Hiiiii!” Jo sang, flying across the pavement and wrapping me in a hug as soon as I reached solid ground. She wore a fringed swimsuit cover-up and her damp hair smelled like salt water.

“Passengers only beyond this line,” a dock worker snapped. A passenger pileup was happening on the ramp behind us, people with armfuls of luggage grumbling and shooting us scornful looks.

“Sorry.” I hurried behind Jo to where Peter was waiting a few yards away. For reasons unknown, the guy in the Caltech hat tagged along. Probably waiting for his opening to apologize for almost knocking my suitcase into the bay.

“Peter, you remember Margo.”

I gave Jo’s fiancé a close-lipped smile. Despite my awareness of their courtship, Jo had spent the past year and some change sneaking around and avoiding the apartment like a teenager hiding her boyfriend from her strict parents. Which meant I hadn’t actually seen Peter since high school. I was sickened to see that he still had a full head of thick, dark hair, and adulthood had hollowed out his cheekbones so that he was even more reminiscent of a Greek god than before.

“Of course. Welcome to the island life,” Peter said cheerily. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and one of those cheap plastic leis, which gave the impression that he was a little confused about which island he was on. A few thousand miles’ worth of confused, by my estimate.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

“Autumn booked the ferry tomorrow and Liv can’t be here until Thursday,” Jo was explaining, but I was hardly listening. I watched over her shoulder, mystified, as Peter greeted the hat-wearing stranger, pulling him into a rough bro-hug.

Something in my brain clicked into place. “You must be one of the groomsmen,” I said.

He removed his sunglasses, hooking them on the neck of his T-shirt. He looked like California’s own take on Jamie Fraser, with his faded black Vans and peach-colored board shorts. He smiled guiltily, which only served to deepen his dimple. “Sorry about bumping into you. You know how it gets. They herd people off these things like cattle.”

He was taller than me, which at my height was always a plus. “Margo Anderson.” I extended a hand, batting my eyelashes in a way that probably would have been helped by a hint of mascara, but I’d neglected even that today.

“Ah.” He didn’t bother removing his hand from the pocket of his shorts. “We know each other, or …” He exchanged an awkward look with Peter. “Used to.”

I racked my brain, but came up short on hot Outlander doppelgängers. No, pretty sure I’d remember if I had met any of those. For a few seconds, it felt like my brain was running on dial-up internet, registering—a few seconds too late—the dusting of russet-colored freckles across his nose, and the short red hair tucked beneath the Caltech hat.

“Declan Walsh,” he prompted. “From high school?”

My hand hovered between us for a beat, still waiting for him to shake it, before I registered what I was doing and returned it to the handle of my suitcase. “You look …” I struggled to find something semi-appropriate to say. “Different.” Which was an understatement. Either he’d experienced the glow-up of the century or I was remembering him through the opposite of rose-tinted glasses.

“You look the same,” he said, which was obviously meant as a jab, because high school me had been deeply unfortunate-looking. Okay, so he didn’t shake my hand, and he was insulting me. So much for a fresh start. He might have looked different on the outside, but safe to assume the inside hadn’t changed.

Jo must have picked up on some of the awkwardness. “I figured it would be good for the best man and maid of honor to arrive first,” she interjected, “to get a feel for things, you know, go over your duties and answer any questions you guys have. How about we get you guys to the hotel, and then maybe we can all go out for dinner tonight? Get down to business?”

“Sounds good to me,” Declan agreed.

He caught me staring at him and gave me a faint smile, oblivious to the resentment I’d harbored for the past decade or so. I exhaled through my nose. I had promised Jo that I could be fine with this, and I was going to be fine with this. High school was full of all sorts of petty crap because everyone was still figuring out who they were supposed to be. Like that one time Jo wore a pair of fake wolf ears to school and I was too embarrassed to talk to her until the next day. (I immediately apologized; the wolf ears mysteriously disappeared from her wardrobe; we haven’t spoken about it since.)

Not far from the docks sat a worn-down golf cart, its paint chipped and upholstery fraying. Peter jangled the keys. “Our ride for the next couple weeks.”

It wasn’t exactly glamorous, but I’ll admit, the grouchy “Seriously?” that escaped my lips was probably a little ungrateful. I was getting a vacation, after all. A free vacation. Declan seemed to be the only one who heard me, because he quirked his head in my direction, like band kids were some sort of rare bird he rarely had the chance to observe in the wild.

But we weren’t in high school anymore. I was a grown woman. I’d reinvented myself the moment I set foot in college, three years behind schedule and with my far-fetched dreams of auditioning for the Los Angeles Philharmonic well behind me. I shouldn’t have been fazed by the washed-up high school soccer player my best friend was marrying, or by his equally washed-up best man. Though it was a bit unnerving that neither Peter nor Declan were looking very washed up at the moment.