Page 9 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

“Will Tony be at the wedding?” I asked.

Peter nodded. “I think so.”

“Backside,” Jo said, and I flipped the paper over to see Tony’s name toward the top of a list labeled other guests to know. “Though he hasn’t responded to the invitation yet,” she added glumly. She’d built one of those fancy wedding websites where people could RSVP online and then proceeded to complain every day about how few of them had RSVPed. I might’ve understood if she was paying per plate, but the whole grand thing was being covered by Castaway Catalina, so in this instance, I thought her need for control was maybe getting the better of her.

I grabbed my phone off the table to text my mom.

Margo: You’re never going to believe who’s invited to the wedding

Mom: Who?

Margo: No, you have to GUESS

“Could you pass me the salt?” Declan asked.

I looked up, the wedding party list in one hand and my phone in the other, ready to juggle things as needed to grab the saltshaker. Only it was sitting squarely in the middle of the table. “This table is like three feet across. I’m pretty sure you can reach with your spider monkey arms.”

“My arms are a perfectly normal length,” he protested.

“They weren’t in high school.”

“Everyone’s disproportionate in high school.”

“Peter wasn’t,” I pointed out, with a nod across the table.

“That’s because I’m genetically blessed,” Peter chimed in.

Jo nodded. “It’s true, he is.”

I shook my head and turned my attention back to my phone. While I waited for Mom to answer, I switched back over to the social media calendar. Jo had left a series of vague comments over the next couple of weeks—things like kayaking, which I knew referred to the trip I’d booked out of my own pocket as an early wedding present to Jo because she’d always wanted to go. And there were other options for keeping our socials active. Liv would likely be on board for cross-promoting, as we’d done several times in the past. And we could always ask Autumn, but she tended to make more of a fuss, like it was greatly disruptive to her own scheduled Instagram posts to make room for a post on our behalf.

Declan and Peter were exchanging increasingly creative jabs from opposite sides of the table. “Some of us are late bloomers. Haven’t you ever read The Ugly Duckling? Oh, I forgot. You don’t know how to read.”

“I’ll have you know that I read at a fourth-grade level,” Peter shot back.

“How was the last Animorphs, by the way?”

“Great. I liked the part where he turned into a weasel. Reminded me of you.”

In the middle of sipping from my glass, I snorted, and water went straight up my nose. Declan reached over and patted between my shoulder blades. “Now look what you’ve done,” he shot at Peter, voice dripping with feigned worry. “You made Margo choke.”

“I bet you—”

Someone kicked beneath the table and the whole thing clattered, drinks sloshing out of their glasses. Peter looked like he was holding back laughter, his brown eyes glittering with amusement. Declan’s only reply was a faint shake of his head. I glanced at Jo, who only shrugged, apparently as nonplussed as I was. It was like we were teenagers again, never quite in on the joke.

I cleared my throat. “Sorry. It, um—” Declan’s hand was warm on my bare skin, and it lingered a few seconds longer than necessary before sliding back to his water. We hadn’t been on the island a day, and already we’d had more physical contact than the entirety of the time we spent in high school. “The water went up my nose,” I finished lamely, like anyone actually cared.

After that, the moment passed as though nothing odd had happened, but I couldn’t quite shake that feeling that I was an outsider, long-dormant insecurities bubbling to the surface. Dinner lasted a lot longer than planned, but not on my account. I was the first to clear my plate and had since asked the waiter for three refills on my water, just so that I had something to keep my hands occupied. Meanwhile, it only took a few drinks for Peter to start reminiscing about his glory days. We listened to his version of the infamous senior prank (apparently, he drove Declan to the U-Haul store on Foothill Boulevard for bubble wrap because the one on Cherry Avenue ran out) and Jo nodded along to stories about the soccer team that she had probably heard a hundred times already.

I found myself wishing I had ordered a glass of wine after all. I didn’t have many funny stories of my own from high school, and the ones I did have, I wasn’t interested in sharing. But my tolerance level was only so high, so after a while I set down my water and grabbed my bag from where I’d slung it across the back of my chair, excusing myself to the restroom. Declan scooted his chair into the table to let me by, but I was forced to brush against him anyway to avoid bumping the people seated at the table behind ours.

The restroom was outdoors and around the corner, empty except for a woman who had flipped upside down to stick her damp hair beneath the hand dryer, fluffing it with her fingers. I crossed the damp tile floor to one of the stalls and locked the door behind me, where I stood for a few minutes with my arms folded, not entirely sure what I was doing. There was no reason for me to be feeling this way. On a logical level, I knew that, but I was annoyed anyway. At some point, the hand dryer shut off and I was left alone in the restroom. I was just debating whether I should leave the stall to check my reflection above the sink when the main door creaked open.

“Margo? Are you in here?” Jo’s voice echoed off the tiled walls.

“Just finishing up,” I lied.

Her shadow shifted in the gap beneath the stall door. “Unless you’ve recently discovered how to pee standing up, I don’t believe you.”