Wyatt relaxes back into the couch. “You’re worried about nothing. Josh just wanted to talk about Daniels’s class and this book we’re reading. It was small talk, you know. Normal stuff.”

“I just want you to be careful.”

“You’re making him sound like an anime villain. Isn’t he your friend?”

“Yeah! I think, I don’t …” Really know where we stand. “I just don’t want you to slip up, forget that we’re here to make him get over me.”

“No worries there.” Wyatt balls up the paper his sandwich was wrapped in, and then he takes mine. “I’m a good actor.”

I watch him as he walks into the kitchen, dumping our garbage. He’s right, we’ve got nothing to worry about. I was being paranoid. Josh has no reason to doubt that this relationship is real, and we’ve got six whole days to prove to him that I’ve moved past what we had, that we can go back to being friends with no bad blood between us.

For now, though, we’ll have to convince my family we’re together as well.

*  *  *

Brunch is in the hotel garden. There’s a man at the entrance, standing in front of the sign that marks the gardens as closed for a private party. I wonder how the influencers of LA feel about their prime photo location being closed for the day.

There are vertical gardens filled with flowers of every breed and color, a gorgeous fountain, these tall hedges that provide the perfect backgrounds.

If there’s one thing Mom has an eye for, it’s gardens.

She loves her gardens.

“Fancy,” Wyatt whispers as we step past the gate. Because we’re tucked in the shade, the temperature drops what has to be, like, ten degrees. “So, who is this brunch for?”

“Mostly just my family. People who arrived late last night, this morning.”

“Is this entire week just going to be us eating at different places in Los Angeles?” Wyatt asks. “I gotta say, I wouldn’t be mad about that.”

“I wish it were going to be that simple.”

We walk through the archway covered with blooming roses. Right in the middle of the garden, in front of the gorgeous fountain, there’s a white tent that’s already half full of my relatives. Mom, Michael, Ashley, and my grandparents are at the head table, of course. Lindsay and her parents are a few feet away at another table. The rest of the tent is populated by family members and people I haven’t seen in years. Other cousins and second cousins who I like much less than I like Lindsay. Uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, some of Mom’s best friends and their younger children, who are off playing in the grass, staining their shirts. And there are some people I don’t know—probably from Ashley’s side.