“My therapist always tells me to meditate. I’ve tried a few times, but my mind is too crazy.” Her mind was a pressure cooker now, about to blow up between her ears. Joey thought about how Leo had once sat there with her zigzags. How she’d felt like she could control the things pulsing inside her because he had witnessed them.

Leo said, “I have this guru in Monaco. Jim. He’s Australian. The kindest, wisest guy. He says the crazier your mind, the more you need to meditate.”

“Well, my mind’s been an insane asylum ever since you got into town so…”

They both laughed. And as Joey picked at the hole in her jeans and her head continued to pulse, she wondered why it had never occurred to her to give herself an ultimatum too. “I think I let it all define me,” she said.

“What?” asked Leo, slurping up the last of his cinnamon-y milk.

“Nothing.” But suddenly Joey couldn’t pretend anymore. She kneaded her hands together. “You know, after we broke up, the pain was so…well, bad. Not to make you feel guilty. It was just a really dark time in my life, and to cope, I used to…well, binge.”

“Binge as in, eat?” Leo stacked their cereal bowls and leaned back on his elbows on the pavement, seemingly unfazed at her confession.

“Yeah. I had gotten it under control finally, you know? It took years, but it felt handled. Behind me. And then with you coming back and all this stuff about my mom and Rand and Lily, not to mention the wedding, I’ve…well, I’ve—”

“You’ve eaten some stuff?” Leo wasn’t trying to be funny, she knew, but he was smiling.

Joey gave a small smile back. “Just once. But yeah.”

“You wanna know what I think, Jonesey?”

“I do,” she said quietly.

“I think you’re not perfect,” he finally said, and for the briefest of moments, he put his hand on top of hers. “And I think you’re perfect that way.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Joey

Florida
2019

The morning after her bachelorette party, on her way home from Boca Beach, Joey called her best friend. Siya answered on the first ring. “Abrams, what the hell?”

The shout rattled Joey’s head. “Indoor voice, por favor.”

“I can’t use my indoor voice when you’ve been keeping bombshells from me.”

“I know.” Joey cringed. “I’m sorry.”

“Does Grant know?”

Joey’s stomach turned over itself, because of the special bachelorette cupcakes that had been waiting in her hotel room when she’d returned there alone, that she’d devoured one after another. Because of everything. “Grant knows. But it’s not like that.”