What actually came out was a pathetic sob.
I slapped a hand over my mouth, mortified, and collapsed back into my desk chair as tears stung at my eyes.
Great. Wonderful. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of anyone, let alone Audrey, who knew my sister and my mom and would be able totell them.
Unfortunately, I didn’t seem to have a choice.
“Theo,” Audrey said in clear alarm, approaching the desk, stepping around it to hover beside me. “What’s wrong?”
I looked up at her wide eyes, my own burning as tears welled in them, and sobbed again. The reminder of everything that’d happened over the weekend was too much for me.
“Oh no,” she said, perching on the edge of the desk, reaching out to me. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay. None of this was okay, not even a little.
All the same, when she put a hand on my shoulder and bent toward me, I let her pull me against her and buried my face in her shoulder, sobbing again.
She shushed me, rubbing circles over my shoulder blade and rocking side to side. Like I was an overtired toddler at the end of his tether.
That probably wasn’t so far from the truth. I was being a baby about this.
“Can I call someone for you?” Audrey asked when my sobbing slowed down again. “Simon, maybe?”
I sobbed again. God, I waspathetic.
So what if my heart felt like it’d cracked in two? I should have been able to handle it. I’d been heartbroken before.
Except it’d never been like this. It’d never felt like the end of the world.
Simon had always been there for me. Now he wasn’t.
“Okay, not Simon,” Audrey said, checking behind her before she sat herself more firmly on the edge of my desk. “Guess I’m up. Tell me about it.”
I stared at her, half-aware my mouth was hanging open but unable to make myself close it.
“This isn’t your problem.”
Audrey shrugged. “I walked in on it. And if it’s about Simon, well... I like him, actually. First impressions aside.”
“First impressions?” I asked, distracted from my own misery by the unfathomable idea that anyone wouldn’t adore Simon instantly.
Audrey’s red-lacquered lips quirked into a wry smile. “I hated him so much when we first met. You know, back when you two were in college.”
My brows drew together so hard they must’ve been touching in the middle. “What? Why? He’s the world’s number one sweetheart and you barely spoke a word to him.”
“And my best friend’s hot older brother looked at him like he’d hung the moon,” Audrey said.
I blinked at her. Individually, I knew what all those words meant. In context, aside from me looking at Simon like that—which I could admit I probably did—they didn’t make any sense.
“Is it so hard to believe that an impressionable young woman mightjusthave a thing for a cute older college boy who was a little shy and always had his nose in a book and had a kind of attractively brooding air of mystery going on?”
“Cute?” I asked.
“You were cute!” Audrey insisted. “Still are, for what it’s worth. That was why your mom was trying to set us up. She overheardDelilah teasing me about you being at the wedding, if I was still interested.”
“But why wouldshecare?” I asked. I still hadn’t figured out what Mom had been imagining she’d get out of all this.
Audrey shrugged. “She wants a grandkid. Neither Madelaine nor Delilah are in a hurry to have one. I’ve already got one.”
