She gives me a pitying look. “I’m sorry you’ve experienced infidelity, Ever, but that only means you didn’t know the person you were with. If you do—if you truly see past the onion layers, if you touch the core—you always know. Don’t tell me it’s not the truth. Because you and I both know that when you left Spain, and that Joe guy stayed there, you didn’t for one second think he’d cheat on you.”

I’m pathetically close to breaking down and crying. She’s hit a chord, and now my freshest, rawest wound is wide open and bleeding.

She is right. Maybe the problem was that I never truly peeled all the layers of Dom’s onion. Because I did know Joe would never do this to me. I only assumed Dom wouldn’t. Dom was always a bit of a mystery to me—What’d he see in me? What made us work?—while with Joe, it just felt right.

“Maybe you’re right,” I mumble.

“There’s no maybe about it. I’m always right.”

I reach for a french fry. Pippa grabs my hand and tugs it. “Hold up. You’re engaged? Bitch, details. All of them. Right now!”

Maybe Renn doesn’t tell her everything in their talks.

I tell her about Dom. How we met. How he died. How it was yet again my fault. About the stupid tampons. About the guilt that doesn’t let go. And everything in between. About Joe, and how we are each other’s muses, but we’re not in touch, because we can’t trust ourselves to keep our pants on when we’re together, and also because I low-key don’t want him to die, and everyone I love dies. Pippa’s face changes expressions about twenty times a minute when I relay my last five months to her.

Once she is all caught up, she signals the waiter to get us more cocktails and some shots for good measure. “All of this happened and you didn’t pick up the phone to consult your main squeeze? What the heck did I ever do to you?”

“About that . . .”

Gulping, I tell her the truth. That I was ashamed to give her a call. Embarrassed. That I disappeared because she’d asked too many questions. And also that she had offered me love and support I didn’t feel I deserved.

“Salem was a punishment for me. All I wanted was to slip under the radar and merely exist. I worked. I ate. I showered. And I repeated. This whole time, I thought I was only punishing myself. I didn’t realize I was punishing everyone who cared about me too. I’m sorry. So sorry, Pip. I feel like I need to spend the next decade apologizing to people for the way I’ve behaved.”