They hug me even tighter. “He told me to start the paperwork to give the café to you once Mimi’s done with it.”
I suck in a breath. “I don’t want the café.”
“Okay, Queen Gossip of the Tooth.”
“I don’t. I told him thatand I meant it.”
“All I got out of him before he left was that he needed to find closure.”
“He left?”
Zen lets me go and rolls their eyes. “And this is why I didn’t want to tell you anything.”
“Is he coming back?”
They wince.
My heart thuds to the floor and makes a bigger mess than the mashed potato fight mixed with the powdered cheese incident.
“Can you give him my phone number?” I whisper. “I never did.”
“Are you—of course you’re not kidding me.Of course. You two are ridiculous.”
The Valentine’s Day skate sucks.
Everyone else has fun, but Emma and I work the hot cocoa booth with Devi for the small business owners’ association, both of us staring glumly at everyone on the midnight ice, the lake lit up with fairy lights. The only bright spots for us are Laney and Theo—Laney on the ice in a wheelchair that Theo’s pushing—and Mimi and Grandpa Harry.
“I figured out a better revenge than ruining Bean & Nugget,” Em tells me as things are shutting down. “But now Grey’s gone and we don’t know why and I can’t help anymore.”
“Would it makeyoufeel better to do it?” I ask her.
She grins.
It’s an honestEmmagrin that makes me feel a decade younger.
An then she shakes her head. “Not as much as it would help him, but I’ll consider it solo if he doesn’t come back.”
“You think he’ll come back?”
“I think I hope he does, since I’ve never seen you hung up on a man like this before.”
“We had a fling in Hawaii my last night there,” I whisper.
She gasps. “Oh my god, and you’rejust nowtelling me this? Details, Sabrina. I needallof the details.”
It feels awkward at first—So, Em, I felt like an absolute heel after your wedding and needed to do some good deeds—but as her face lights up more and more as I tell her everything I remember from the time I met him to the time I ghosted him, I feel something breaking free inside of me.
The guilt.
The guilt is going away now that we can talk about it.
“He…was there to cause trouble at your wedding,” I tell her.
“Do you know what Chandler did to him?”
“I do.”
“Did Chandler deserve it?”
