Page 181 of While You Were Trending

“A few months before I broke up with Alex, I did an interview about being on the show as a kid and then turning eighteen and finding out that my mom hadn’t saved what she was supposed to be saving for me from the show profits.”

“Mm,” I murmur.

I remember.

I overheard her talking to Alex about it when I was at their place for dinner. Flow wouldn’t leave Ginny’s side.

Saw the article later, and it wasn’t hard to pick out whoone former child star who wished to remain anonymouswas.

I was glad she did it.

Especially since her mother had swept into town like a tornado recently and stressed even Alex out.

Dude’s normally pretty chill.

“Cricket wrote it,” Ginny tells me. “She interviewed me, and she made me feel safe in a way that I usually don’t when I’m talking about all of those things, and then she wrote the article in a way that my mother never would’ve known I was ratting her out, which was both good and bad, but exactly what I asked her to do. So when Mabel mentioned that Cricket was going viral—like the worst, biggest, most awful kind of viral—I convinced everyone else that we needed to invite her.”

“Good decision?”

“The best decision. Poor thing was an absolute wreck when she got here, but she’s found herself again, and she’s always so happy and positive andwe can do it. We wouldn’t be making our own wine this year if it wasn’t for her coming when she did. She’s the reason Winona’s letting us keep the grapes and giving us so much help. That was all Cricket’s doing.”

I make a mental note to find out Cricket’s favorite everything and send her a box of all of them.

If they weren’t making wine,Iwouldn’t be here.

And even with all of the complications—I wouldn’t trade this time with Ginny for anything.

“You decide if you want to claim a wine?” I ask Ginny.

“Wedding Wrecker Rosé has a nice ring,” she grumbles.

“That your idea?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

“I—I want to. Watching Cricket talk about Cheeky Beaver Chardonnay, watching her completely own it like the trolls don’t matter—she’s been so inspiring. Empowering too. But I also know if I do, with the documentary and the notoriety all of us already have—it’ll pull Alex back into the spotlight too, and I don’t want to do that to him.”

Ah,fuck.

I swallow hard.

“He knows you live here,” I say.

She’s pursing her lips and staring straight ahead.

“And he suspects I’m here,” I add. “NDA. I can’t confirm or deny it. All that fun stuff.”

“We shouldn’t be doing this.”

I rub my neck and stifle a sigh of my own. “Our pasts make us who we are. And we get to choose how we let that influence us.”

Her hands rest in her lap, balled in fists so tight that her knuckles are turning white. “It’s not justmypast.”

“Then maybe it’s time you talk to him.”

Out of my peripheral vision, I see her jerk her head in my direction. “He wouldn’t want to talk to me.”