Page 77 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

She huffed a laugh. “You’re not as important as you think you are. Just some girl with a microphone and too much time on her hands.”

The realization washed over me all at once. I wasn’t gullible. And it wasn’t trusting people that was the problem. I wasn’t to blame for shitty people who turned around and used that trust as an excuse to take advantage, and I wasn’t about to let Shelley ruin this for me, when I was barely learning to trust again. The damage was done, but that didn’t mean I had to go back to my old ways. It felt better to give people the benefit of the doubt, and if they chose to go and screw that up, at least they only had themselves to blame. “I’m a person,” I snapped. “Isn’t that enough?”

Shelley just shrugged, either because she didn’t know how to answer or simply didn’t care. Someone’s hand found my arm, warm and reassuring. “What’s going on?” Jo asked as she came up beside me and gave Shelley a quick once-over.

“Nothing worth mentioning.” I turned to leave. Renee had hurried over to see what all the commotion was about, standing a few yards away and wearing a confused expression. “Might want to screen your contractors a little better,” I said as I pushed past her. “I think one of your bartenders has sticky fingers.”

CHAPTER27

I’d only been back on the mainland for seven days when I finished boxing my things and wrote the check to break the lease, but it felt a lot longer. For seven whole days, the only notifications that lit up my new iPhone were Bath & Body Works sales and my YouTube subscriptions, and the occasional text from Jo or Mom. I hadn’t bothered downloading Twitter or Instagram yet. Jo had wiped the URL from all our profiles the morning after the wedding and consulted Peter’s mom to see if there was anything we could do about the GossipHub article. But in the meantime, I figured it was best that I steered clear of social media, at least for a while.

I slammed the tailgate on my dad’s old pickup and climbed up into the driver’s seat. Everything that mattered, I’d fit into the bed of the truck, and I’d sold everything else on Facebook Marketplace. The couch? Seventy dollars. The TV? Traded it for a hundred-dollar gift card to Klatch Coffee. I even gave the shower curtain to some lady who made splatter art and claimed that she went through these things like toilet paper.

The IKEA desk had been moved to Jo and Peter’s new one-bedroom apartment in Rancho, along with the rest of her stuff this past weekend. I thought maybe there was a chance I would bump into Declan while carrying boxes up the stairs, but it seemed he’d coordinated with Peter to schedule around my appearances.

“Just give it time,” Jo said while we were unpacking dishes on the floor of her new kitchen, surrounded by an ocean of cardboard and bubble wrap. “He’ll come around.”

That was what she kept telling me, but I was starting to wonder where people in relationships got all their patience from. Or maybe it was precisely because they were in a relationship that they were so patient—it wasn’t like they were the ones waiting around for a text or a phone call that would probably never come.

Jo had offered to help me with my own move, but I’d talked her out of it. I’d made up some excuse about how she should take the time to settle into her new home with her husband, but really, it was because I thought maybe it would be easier without any distractions. Now, as I reached the interchange to hop onto the 210 East and passed beneath a sign indicating the turnoff for La Cañada Flintridge, I was regretting that decision. To distract myself from turning west for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I grabbed my phone out of the cup holder and asked Siri to call Jo.

“Are you busy tonight?” I asked as soon as she answered.

“We’re over at Tío Oscar’s house for the Dodgers game.” I had to keep my phone on speaker because there was no Bluetooth built into the truck, but it sounded like maybe she had me on speaker as well—a TV chattered in the background, and forks scraped against plates. “Why, what’s up?”

I winced, already anticipating the verbal lashing, but this was why I was calling her. “How bad would it be if I texted him again?”

I’d sent Declan a couple texts this week, the same day that I activated my new phone.

Margo: Hey, it’s Margo. Got a new number. Figured I’d let you know, just in case you ever wanted to talk.

Margo: And again … I’m really sorry. For everything.

He didn’t text back.

“I know you’re really committed to the whole fuck the rules thing these days, but maybe you don’t need to break that one,” Jo was saying. “If he wants to talk, he knows how to get ahold of you. Right? Like I said. Just give it some time.”

“But what if I don’t have time?” I asked wildly as I flicked my blinker to merge with traffic. “What if he turns around and meets someone else, and they start dating, and things get serious, and I’m over here—shit.” The lifted truck behind me sped up to stop me getting over, forcing me to swerve into the shoulder. I slammed my hand on the horn.

“Everything okay?”

“Fine, just drivers being assholes.”

There was a pause, and then she asked, “Are you on the 210?”

“I’m heading east, I promise.”

“Margo,” she sighed, “I don’t—”

She broke off when Peter mumbled something in the background. I couldn’t understand him between the chatter of their TV and the rattling of my clunky truck. “What was that?” I asked, holding the phone closer. “What’s he saying?”

More muttering. “Hold on,” Jo said. “I’m giving the phone to Peter.”

There was a series of rustles, and then the line went quiet. For a split second, I thought maybe they’d hung up, but then I realized that Peter had taken the phone off speaker. “Listen,” he said, more authoritative than I’d ever heard him sound—Jo definitely wore the pants in that relationship. “Declan is my best friend and I know you’re madly in love with him or whatever, but first of all, my dude has no game. Notice how he spent ten freaking years not knowing how to talk to you until you gave him an opening. So I don’t think you need to worry about him picking up girls at the nearest bar or anything.”

I sputtered a laugh despite myself, remembering the story about Declan waiting after my concert and shoving the carnations at Jordan Gardner.

“But second of all, I don’t think a text is going to win him over. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you hurt his feelings pretty bad. And a text is easy to ignore.”