“I don’t know what that means, but I’m hanging up now.” Even though I can hear her spewing off a string of words, I end the call. I’ll deal with that later.

There’s still a giddy feeling about seeing Ryan’s name in my phone. I never deleted his contact information even though I blocked him, but I didn’t go looking for it, either. Honestly, I hardly even touched my phone after everything happened. There was no one calling me anyway, and every time I logged into my social media accounts, there were more and more angry messages from fans who had tickets to meet me and wanted their money back, as if I had anything to do with their ticket purchase. Once I deleted those accounts, blocked Ryan, and lost most of my friends, there wasn’t much for me to look at on there, so I just…didn’t. After a year or so, I noticed messages disappearing. One by one, they all vanished into technological oblivion. Not that I had been pining over old messages or anything.

Sighing, I push Ryan’s name and put him on speaker so I can wring my hands as I stare at the blue bicycle on my computer screen. He answers on the third ring.

“Hey, beautiful.” There is such tenderness in those two words that I almost do an about-face on the spot. They can have whatever cover they want if it means I get to be greeted like that when I call my editor.

No. Nope. This cover is bad, and I have to deal with it. “Did you see it?”

“See what? I’ve been knee-deep in your gorgeous book all morning. I should be sending it back to you tomorrow at the latest.”

“Well, this gorgeous book has a cover…” I trail off, hoping he can put two and two together.

“Oh no,” he groans. “Hang on.”

There’s some clicking and then silence.

Out of nowhere, he practically growls. “I will fix this.”

The sound is so out of character for him that I devolve into a fit of giggles. I’m laughing so hard that I fold in half at the waist, and my head hits the table.

“This isn’t funny, Scarlett. This is awful,” he says, but I can hear the edge of laughter in his voice. It’s so easy, the way we fall in sync. The way he knows exactly why I’m calling without me having to say it. The way we make each other laugh.

He always could make even the most serious problems seem lighter. It occurs to me that he could maybe make sense of everything that has been circling in my head since my last therapy session. I want him to.

But…one disaster at a time.

“It’s pretty bad.” I wipe at the corners of my eyes where tears have started to leak out.