Page 73 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

But thankfully, he didn’t press me any further. Dinner was served as soon as Jo and Peter returned with the photographer, and afterwards they rose for the first dance. One of the live musicians sawed out a rendition of “Thinking Out Loud” on the cello. Under normal circumstances, I probably would have turned to Declan and cracked an Ed Sheeran joke, just to get under his skin—wow, I can’t believe your cousin wrote this—but it didn’t feel right, at the moment. Nothing felt quite right, but I was going to have to work past that, because I needed to come up with a solution. Damage control.

On a chalkboard propped up by an easel, beneath Jocelyn & Peter in elegant white calligraphy, someone had written out the schedule. But they might as well have wiped it clean because the longer the reception progressed, the more things seemed to be happening out of order. It was impossible to catch Jo to pull her to the side and tell her what was happening because there were at least two hundred people packed into the ballroom and every last one of them seemed to be vying for the couple’s attention, eager to offer congratulations and well wishes and to compliment her dress. I was pretty sure I was supposed to make the maid of honor toast half an hour ago, but tapping my fork against the champagne glass had zero effect on the crowd, so I’d just downed it and gone back to the bar cart for something a bit stronger. Around the same time, Jo decided to toss the bouquet. It plopped right into my mom’s waiting arms, and she beamed like a kid on Christmas as she approached me at the bar cart.

“Look,” she said, winded and a bit sweaty from dancing with Tony and then squabbling with a bunch of twenty-somethings over the bouquet, but she looked radiant nonetheless. “I don’t think Jo threw it at me on purpose, but maybe she did. It should be yours though.” She started to hand the bundle of lilies to me, but when I made no effort to accept it, she seemed to think better of the idea. “Why are you over here by yourself? Where’s your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said glumly. “And I’m kind of doubting he ever will be, after today.”

“Hey.” Her hand found my shoulder and squeezed. “What’s wrong? Talk to me. Let me help.”

“I appreciate the offer, Mom. Really,” I added, when she didn’t look reassured. “But it’s not the sort of thing you’d be able to help with.”

“Can I get you anything?” the bartender interrupted. “Because you’re holding up the line.”

A handful of guests in crisp button-downs and summery floral prints had racked up behind us. “Something that doesn’t taste like alcohol,” Mom said.

The bartender pulled a face that suggested alcohol was always going to taste like alcohol, but under Renee’s watchful eye, she was obliged to recommend something anyway. “We have Buffalo Milk.”

“Okay, can someone actually explain to me what Buffalo Milk is?” I interjected. “Because I’m pretty sure no one’s driving out there each morning to milk the bison.”

“It’s sort of our local version of a White Russian, I guess. Kahlúa with vodka and a couple cream liqueurs.”

But despite having asked, I barely heard the bartender’s explanation; Jo had broken away from dancing with a few of her cousins to approach the band. Now was my chance to talk to her. I didn’t expect her to help me solve anything here and now, but I needed to tell her what had happened.

“Ooohhh, I’ll take one of those,” Mom said, turning to me. “What about you, do you want one?”

But I was already excusing myself and hurrying across the dance floor, my heels clicking on the polished wood as I wove between couples. I caught Jo by the arm just as the guitarist was starting up an acoustic version of “Suavemente,” his fingers caressing the neck of the guitar. “I need to talk to you,” I said over the amplifier.

She’d kicked off her heels and there was a sheen of sweat across her forehead from dancing. “Can it wait?”

“Not really. It’s kind of an emergency.”

She cast a wistful gaze at Peter, who was loosening his tie and rolling up his sleeves to come join her on the dance floor.

“You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,” I added. There was a beat, and then she nodded.

We pushed through a pair of French doors onto the open-air promenade that wrapped around the upper level of the Casino. Ivory pillars framed the sapphire bay dotted with sailboats and private yachts, and beyond that, the houses and hotels of Avalon clung to the hillside. A breeze rolled in off the water, stirring the wispy sleeves of Jo’s wedding dress. Curled tendrils framed her face, and she tucked them behind her ears before folding her arms. “What’s up?”

“Whoever stole my phone used it to post a link to all of our social media.” No sense in beating around the bush. I leaned my back against one of the pillars—something to stabilize me, to keep me from tumbling right over the railing and washing out to sea. Washing out to sea might’ve been simpler, at the moment. “It’s an article. About me.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “About you?”

I felt a pang of irritation at her surprise—as if Jo and her wedding were the only ones worth writing an article about—but that wasn’t fair. Today was her wedding day. She had every right to be surprised that someone had picked today to write about me, and I needed to be empathetic. “I mean, you’re involved in it. There are screenshots and stuff,” I said, racking my brain to remember if there was anything incriminating on her part, but I was fairly certain there wasn’t. “But it’s more about me and Declan. They’re framing it like I’m some sort of mastermind, dating him just to … I don’t know, stir up drama for the podcast, or something.”

She blew out a long breath. “Shit.”

“I know.”

“I told you this was a bad idea from the start.”

And just like that, my empathy was shot to hell. I gave her a murderous look. “Oh, you told me?” I repeated scathingly. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t decided to go off and get married—”

“Oh, is that what we’re making this about.” Jo sputtered a laugh, but it was devoid of any humor. She turned like she was going to walk away, hands going to her hair in a frustrated motion, but she seemed to remember that it was styled, a beaded veil trailing from the half-knot at the back of her head. She rounded on me again, dark eyes narrowing. “So all your support, your encouragement through all this—standing up there with me today—all that was just for show?”

This conversation was going off the rails. I should have known better than to bring it up with her today, of all days, but I didn’t know who else to turn to. “I support you. Of course I do.”

“Then you can’t get mad at me for wanting to live my life!”

“I’m not mad,” I said, but I was so frustrated that it came out sounding angry anyway. “It just sucks that it had to come at my expense. At the expense of the podcast. I mean, we lost sponsors—”