Page 49 of While You Were Trending

Ginny

The tasteof vulnerability and regrets sits heavy on my tongue as I hide in my bedroom, texting with my siblings, making sure Caro’s still enjoying her honeymoon and that Ten’s not planning to do anything stupid to take the attention off of me.

Samantha knocked a few minutes ago and insisted I take a plate of lunch from her, and now Mabel’s strolling across the threshold, breaking thedo not enter without knockingrule to join me in the disaster that is my bedroom, wading around all of my junk to climb onto my unmade bed with me.

“We’ve got you,” she tells me as she grabs me in a firm hug. “No matter what anyone does or says, we’ve got you.”

I lean into her, feeling the weight of the world lessen with her next to me now.

There’s nothing like a best friend to solve problems, even if she can’t solve all of them.

“My mother was the leak, wasn’t she?” I whisper.

Caro and Ten both think she was.

I wanted to believe she wasn’t—I wanted to blame Declan—but I think it was her.

As Caro said, she craves attention, and she’s been out of the spotlight for too long.

“I don’t know who it was,” Mabel says. “We might never know definitively.”

“She can’t get to Caro because she’s intimidated by Mike. And Ten—he stands up to her. I’m the weak link with a viral moment that she can capitalize on.”

Mabel strokes my hair. “Not so long as I have breath in my body, she can’t.”

This is helping.

It’s helping far more than Declan chasing after me and insisting he wasn’t the leak.

I breathe in the comforting scent of Mabel’s favorite apricot body wash and let myself lean on her more while I shiver harder.

“I can’t believe she said that to Cricket,” I say.

“Of all of us, Cricket has the healthiest attitude about how she went viral. She’ll be okay.”

Maybe so, but I still owe her for what my mother said.

Dish duty for a year.

Washing all of her laundry forever.

Watching Lavender, Heath’s daughter, as often as they want so that they can have private time.

Their cat too.

“Scale of one to when you got here, how are you?” Mabel asks.

No one arrives at Makepeace in good shape.

I arrived with two broken teeth, double black eyes, swollen lips, and all of the shame and guilt and regret to ever exist in the entire universe sitting on my chest like a garbage truck.

“At least I can eat and my face doesn’t hurt,” I whisper.

She hugs me again. “We’ll get her out of here.”

I squeeze her back. “I love you.”

“Love you too. And we will get you through this.”