Having to tell Grant the truth now was even scarier than that day Joey gave up everything she’d tried for so many years to want.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Joey

Florida
2019

“You remember I told you about Leo?” she said quickly because she was going to lose all her nerve if she didn’t.

“Leo. No? Should that name ring a bell?” Grant walked back over to the door to check out the mezuzah. He seemed pleased with his handiwork.

“He’s my old boyfriend. From Corfu.” She wiped her sweaty palms on her sweater. “He came to Florida to see me yesterday.”

Grant’s eyes caught hers. They flickered with shock. “You saw your ex from Corfu yesterday? And you didn’t tell me?”

“Kind of.” She walked over to the couch and sat down, hoping he’d follow.

He didn’t. “You either saw him or you didn’t, Joey.”

“I did,” she admitted. “But he had a crazy thing to tell me, about—”

“Crazy, like, he’s still in love with you?” Grant laughed, but it was a laugh with an edge of maybe I’m right, tell me I’m not right.

“More crazy, like severely fucked-up stuff about my family.”

“So he’s not still in love with you?”

She opened her mouth, willing the right thing to come out. But nothing did.

“He is. God, Joey! I can’t believe you went and met with him without telling me. How would you feel if I was telling you the same story about Lauren?”

Lauren was Grant’s tiny blond yoga-instructor ex who also owned a gluten-free bakery in Hollywood that Joey sometimes stalked on Instagram and once had even gone to and confirmed Lauren’s tiny blondness. She’d pretended to herself she was just getting a cake to surprise Siya for a lunch date on her birthday, even though Siya was all about gluten. To add insult to injury, sweet, bubbly Lauren had insisted on adding one of their new peanut butter chip cookies free for the road. It had, of course, been delicious.

“I’d feel shitty,” Joey admitted. “Really shitty.”

“That about sums it up for me right now,” Grant said. “Do you…I mean…do—”

“No! Of course not. I love you. Only you. Look, I need to tell you the full story. What I learned about my family. The real reason Leo came back was to tell me why—” She had been about to say why he broke up with me. “Why our families stopped going to Corfu. Basically, my mom was having an affair with his dad, Rand, for like, the entire decade we summered on Corfu.”

Grant froze, hovering over her, still not sitting. “Your mom was cheating on Scott?”

“Yeah,” Joey said quietly. “For ten years. And that’s not the worst part. Lily is their daughter. She’s not my dad’s. Can you believe it?”

Finally Grant sat beside her. He didn’t say anything.