“You should give Simon another chance, Bea. He makes you happy. He makes you laugh. He makes you look more alive than I’ve ever seen you.That’swhat Margot deserves too. She’s family, even if my parents aren’t. And when you love people, you have to do the things that you might not like and the things you might not want to do when you know it’s what will make them happy.”
Hudson’s staring at her now too.
My brother and I make eye contact, and we both keep saying nothing at all.
Him, likely because he wants to tell her Simon doesn’t deserve me.
Me, because I’m suddenly back in Madame Petty’s fortune-telling tent, where she’s telling me that one day, Daphne won’t come home.
Not even for the first time this hour, my eyes start stinging. “Just—just be careful, okay?” I grab her in a hug. “You’remyfamily, and I don’t like seeing you hurt either.”
“I want to be wrong, Bea. I want so bad to be wrong that she’s taking him back. How can she really trust he won’t hurt her again? Even if she’s serious when she says it would just be a business arrangement, how can she really think she’d be happy?”
I swallow hard. “How do you know Simon won’t hurt me again?”
“Because he’s sorry. Oliver’s not. Simon’s a normal guy who got accidentally rich and famous in his mid-thirties. Oliver’s had a silver spoon in his mouth since before his mouth even developed. Simon could lose his career by not turning in this script, but he canceled it for you. Oliver couldn’t handle dating and his job at the same time, and he picked his job over Margot. They’re not the same. Not anywhere close.”
My heart cramps again.
But it’s not fear for myself.
It’s worry for Daphne. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.No. Bea. Stay here. Where it’s safe and people love you and no one will care if you show up to a party in a dress that’sso last year. I just—I have to doone thing. I’ll be back before the sun’s up on Sunday morning.”
“But will you be okay?”
“I’m Daphne fucking Merriweather-Brown. There are some things my familycan’ttake from me. Like who I am.”
“She’s really scary when she says stuff like that,” Hudson muses.
“We’re lucky she’s on our side,” I agree.
Daphne laughs. “Of course I am. You’re the best family I’ve ever had.”
“Does this mean you’re not protesting at Jake’s restaurant tonight?” Hudson asks. “I was really excited for the signs about how he fucks over and cuts out his business partners.”
She shakes her head. “I’m heading to the city to stay with an old friend before the party in the Hamptons tomorrow night. But I think a few people are carrying on without me.”
I swallow thewe should’ve just protested the restaurant in the first place.
Because it’s not true.
I don’t regret asking Simon to take me there for dinner. It’s the first time in my life I’ve stood up and took a stand for myself against the shitty ways my exes have treated me, and honestly?
Jake deserved it.
In the past week, three of Jake’s other ex-girlfriends have contacted me to tell me about the ways he stepped all over their hopes and dreams and plans while they were dating too, spurred on by Daphne’s protest of the restaurant and the whispers that have started in town about where the idea for JC Fig truly came from.
He’s gotten away with thinking he’sthe manfor entirely too long.
Being someone who made him uncomfortable?
Someone who’s regularly telling himnonow?
It’s powerful.
And Simon knew what I was doing that first night, and he went along with it anyway.
