ZOEY’S PHONE PINGED with yet another picture from her daughter. Hazel was the maid of honor at Zoey’s ex-husband’s wedding that sunny Saturday afternoon. Her daughter seemed to be having a great time, sending a new photo every few minutes now that the reception had begun. The cake. The happy couple. The rest of the bridal party. The venue at a lakeside vineyard in Geneva. She was happy for Hazel. And she supposed she was happy for Chris, too.

That feeling was a little tougher to hang on to. Not being happy for him felt petty. That didn’t make it any easier to see all the photos of his blissful wedding day.

But she answered every single text from Hazel with heart-eyes emojis and once in a while an OMG! All that mattered was that Hazel was happy.

“You don’t have to read every text as it comes in, you know.” Mary put her hand over Zoey’s phone on the table. “I feel like I’m watching you die a little death with each one.”

Tani was on the opposite side of the booth at The Spot, nodding in agreement. “What I don’t get is why you care so much. It’s not like you’d ever want Chris back, right? So let the bastard go get married to his cute young thing. You’ve got your own—” she caught herself “—uh...life, now.”

Zoey sighed. “Mary knows about Mike and I.”

Tani’s eyebrows rose. “And does Mary approve of her brother’s nighttime activities with his bestie?”

Mary took a sip of her soda. “Mary very much approves. Mary thinks they waited too long in the first place, and Mary would like to see them come out of the shadows and make it official.”

Zoey couldn’t help laughing. “Mary seems to have a lot of opinions.”

This was why she’d asked her friends to have lunch with her today—to distract her from the wedding updates.

“I love you both,” Mary answered, now serious. “I don’t want to see either of you hurt, and I have a feeling that all this slinking around is going to lead to just that—someone getting hurt. The deeper you get into making it feel like you’re doing something wrong, the worse it will be if it blows up.”

She was right. Things had moved way beyond casual. They’d admitted they were “falling” for each other, but—at least in Zoey’s case—it was more than that. She was in love with Mike McKinnon. She was supposed to be focusing on making sure Hazel had some stability in her life, but love had other plans.

“It feels like I’m being...” she started, “I don’t know—selfish?—to fall in lo...” She tried to stop, but it was too late. Mary moved her hand from the phone to Zoey’s arm.