Page 111 of Never To Be Mine

“Yeah. My dad gave me this one before he went on deployment.”

“That’s cool. What branch?”

“Navy.”

I nodded, focusing on a particularly stubborn knot. “My brothers and I used to fly kites down here all the time. I can’t count the number of tangled strings we dealt with.”

The kid looked curious. “Really?”

“Really.” I finally got the last knot free and handed the kite back to him. “There you go. Good as new.”

“Thanks, mister!”

He ran off toward his mom, who mouthed “thank you” at me. I waved and headed back down the beach toward my house. I decided to walk. My legs were going to be feeling that run later.

It was a long, slow walk back home.

The simple act of helping that kid had given me a moment of peace. A reminder that not everyone was mad at me. But the moment I stepped through my front door, reality came crashing back.

I showered, threw on sweats, and spent the rest of the day brooding on my couch. I checked my phone compulsively, hoping for a message from Juno that never came. The internet continued its feeding frenzy, and I couldn’t stop reading the comments even though each one felt like a knife twist.

Pictures from the last twenty years were flooding social media. Me at Disneyland when I was eight eating a corndog. Me eating a cheeseburger when I’d probably been sixteen. Someone had apparently taken a picture of me at a bar stuffing myself with loaded nachos.

I had no idea there were so many pictures of me eating. In one of them, I had sour cream on my lip. I vaguely remembered that night. We were celebrating Micah’s twenty-first. Or maybe it was Drew’s.

Some of these pictures might have been AI.

I was in a dark place. I’d barely slept the night before. My mind had been running through worst-case scenarios on an endless loop. B Well was done if I couldn’t turn this around. My reputation was shot. I’d lost Juno. Everything I’d worked for had evaporated because of one stupid burger on the wrong day.

Micah showed up around noon without calling first. He had a key. I’d given all my brothers one for emergencies. I looked up from where I’d been sitting on the deck for the last hour staring out at the ocean.

“You look like shit,” he said, walking in and dropping into the chair beside mine.

“Thanks. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.”

He crossed his arms and cocked his brow when he noticed the bottle of beer in my hand.

“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” I said.

My laptop sat open on the middle table with about fifteen browser tabs visible, all of them showing different social media platforms where people were still tearing me apart.

“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Hollis.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re spiraling.” He reached over and shut my laptop with more force than necessary. “Get up. We’re going to lunch.”

I laughed, but it came out bitter. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”

“Why not?”

“Because apparently everything I eat is newsworthy now.” I gestured at my phone. “Did you see the photos people have been digging up? They’re analyzing my childhood diet like it’s some kind of expose.”

Micah picked up my phone and scrolled through the feed. His expression darkened. “Okay, that’s ridiculous.”