I blink in surprise, feel another trickle of cold soft serve slide between my fingers. Now that the initial shock has worn off, I’m relieved. Relieved and . . . reminded, I guess. This is awkward, but it’s not awful. I like Avery. I liked her when she was my client. I don’t have any reason not to like her now, and I don’t have any reason to have the kind of frantic, fight-or-flight response I’m trying to get better at ignoring whenever things get tense.

“I will, absolutely.” But deep down, I know I won’t. I’m out of the wedding business. I know how good those sketches I’m going to present are. I know, somewhere in my bones, that I’m on the cusp of something brand new.

Avery turns her head toward Reid now. “I wondered why you weren’t at the office,” she says, her voice friendly. “I stopped in to see my father.”

There’s a too-long pause, and for the first time I shift my eyes to look up at him, too. I don’t know what I expect to see—maybe a version of the set, vacant mask he had before, the one he gets when he’s uncomfortable. Maybe something closer to her expression—something warm and unbothered, the face you’d expect to see on half of a couple who split amicably, mutually, in all the ways that Reid said.

I don’t expect him to look so . . .

So wrecked.

My stomach swoops and turns. My eyes dart around the sidewalk, desperate for a trash can, where I can get rid of this Salty Pimp. It’s possible I’ll never eat an ice-cream cone again.

Reid is still looking at Avery as though he’s seen a ghost.

The most beautiful, powerful ghost.

He blinks, clears his throat again. “I stepped out for a dinner break,” he says, as though he owes her an explanation.

She smiles. “Good for you. You always had terrible work-life balance.”

He still does! I want to say, but that, of course, is ridiculous. This isn’t a women-who’ve-dated-Reid street fair. I stay quiet, clutching my cone. I have never felt more out of place in my whole life, and given my personal history, that is really saying something.

“I still do,” he says, his voice grim.

Avery rolls her eyes. “That’s Daddy’s influence on you.”

Reid’s Adam’s apple bobs with a heavy swallow.

“Yes,” is all he says.

Avery looks back and forth between us, entirely unbothered. “Well, good to see you both,” she says, stepping toward the curb, where a dark sedan I didn’t even see waits for her. She’s already half-hidden behind the door being held open for her when Reid manages to speak again.

“Yes,” he repeats. “You as well.”