Page 50 of While You Were Trending

She doesn’t tell me it’s not that bad.

She doesn’t tell me I’ve been through worse.

She doesn’t tell me I should be grateful that I’m already here.

She doesn’t tell me to clean my room.

Justwe’ve got youandyou’re not facing this alone.

And that—that’s exactly what I need.

She’s right. I’ll get through this. My friends and I—wehavebeen through worse.

But never while my ex’s best friend watched.

And freaking took the fall for what my mother most likely did.

HisI didn’t do it—I believe him.

And I hate that I believe him, because it makes him look soperfect, so heroic,again, when he was such an ass to me for all of those years.

But I’m the sucker who believes him.

And the sponge for any positive-attention-soaking-up that I mattered enough that he cared to tell me he didn’t do it.

To let me goad him into popping off insults that he clearly didn’t mean.

But that—that’s not my most immediate problem.

I pull out of Mabel’s hug and press my palms into my eye sockets. “We can take charge of the attention and start talking about reopening the winery. Use the press to our advantage.”

“No.”

“Mabel—”

“We’ll get the attention back.”

“How? We just had a secret celebrity wedding here. We can’t pull that off again. Not with the same degree of surprise. And we don’t have any other events booked yet, do we?”

“We will.”

“I know you can work miracles, but you can’t pull this kind of publicity out of thin air.”

“Manifestation has kept us going this long. Don’t discount it.”

I huff. “Can you manifest me a new mother and a different documentary host and the world losing interest in me?”

She grabs me and squeezes me in a hug again.

I close my eyes, mentally take myself back to the pottery wheel, and I start to breathe a little easier.

We will get through this.

Good things will happen.

But my brain is still spinning. “We need to decide our new branding?—”

“We have time. We don’t have to do it today.”