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  She shakes her head and opens her mouth to disagree, but I place a finger on her lips to silence her.

  “Listen to me, Char,” I say, slowly removing my finger from her mouth and leaning forward to place a soft kiss on the tip of her nose, the one feature I know she obsesses over. “I know right now you don’t believe me when I tell you you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. I accept that. But I’m never going to stop saying it. And when you finally believe me, because one of these days you will, I’m still going to keep saying it.”

  She shakes her head. “Saying it doesn’t make it true.”

  “Disbelieving it doesn’t make it false,” I reply, relishing the frustration in her eyes. “I talked to a guy a couple years ago. I remember I was pretty stoned, but I was having the best time chatting with one of my sound techs who used to be a youth counselor. What a fucking career move, I remember telling him. And he told me, he said our default setting is truth. Humans have to work very hard to disbelieve something.”

  Charley laughs. “Well, you made me disbelieve in your love very easily.”

  I shake my head. “No, kitten. You were waiting for a reason to disbelieve. Just like you’re dying for someone to say something that proves I’m too good for you. But neither of those are true. I never stopped loving you and I’ve never been better than you.” I lean forward and plant a tender kiss on her forehead. “The fans have missed you almost as much as I have. Trust me.”

  She pouts for a moment then sighs. “How do you know they’ve missed me?”

  “I still get hate-mail three years later.”

  This makes her laugh a bit too loudly. “But you more than tripled your following since we broke up.”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t been in the top one hundred Instagram accounts in almost two years. I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” I reply, grabbing my board so we can head home. “This new movie was supposed to undo the negative backlash. Jordan was counting on it all going away.”

  “Fuck Jordan. I always hated him,” she replies.

  “Why do you say that? Did he do something to you?” I ask, my pulse pounding in my skull.

  She chuckles as I stop walking. “Geez, you look like you’d murder him if I asked you to. No, he hasn’t done anything to me. He just always seemed like a creep who wanted you all to himself.”

  I let out a deep sigh of relief and continue trudging through the sand. “Man, he hated you, too. He’s the only person I’ve ever known to truly hate you.”

  “Really? Why did he hate me?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I think he thought you were holding me back or something, because you weren’t famous. You didn’t ‘elevate my star power’ or some bullshit. I’m dumping him soon.”

  As soon as these words come out of my mouth, I regret them. Glancing at the paparazzo whose lens follows us up the sand dune, I wonder if he can hear me. No, he’s too far away. He can’t hear me over the sound of the waves crashing. Can he?

  “Hey, I have a lunch meeting with the producers the day after tomorrow, so I’ll be pretty busy. But I was kind of hoping you could stay the night in San Francisco with me tomorrow night.”

  It’s not a lie. I do have a lunch scheduled with the Avengers producers the day after tomorrow. But it’s not the whole truth. I also have a meeting rescheduled with Katie, since I wasn’t able to talk to her while I was at the wedding with Charley on Saturday.

  I know I’m still on shaky ground with Charley, and I will be until I tell her the truth about why I broke up with her. Unfortunately, I can’t tell her until I’m certain that Katie will back me up. I need to know Katie will corroborate my story that we were both violated that night ten years ago. I need to know she’s willing to use a DNA test to prove the nine-year-old boy she’s been raising alone is not mine. Only then will Charley know I’m not the one who took that video of her losing her virginity to me. Only then can I tell my kitten the truth.

  But right now, I need her near me.

  She chuckles as we stop at the top of the sand dune. “Are you trying to get me alone so you can have sex with me, Ben?”

  “Can you fucking blame me? Look at you,” I say, wrapping my free arm around her shoulder. “Take the selfie here, with the ocean in the background.”

  “The sun doesn’t set for at least another four hours,” she says. “Maybe we should come back then?”

  I shake my head. “That’s the scheming photographer I fell in love with,” I reply, starting down the other side of the sand dune toward Beach Avenue. “Want to come in the house or do you want to meet me on the sand dune at sunset.”

  The most gorgeous fucking grin I’ve ever seen spreads across her face. “I’ll meet you at sunset.”

  She plants a loud kiss on my cheek then runs away, giggling as she disappears through the front door of her house. I stand in my driveway for a moment, remembering the sensation of her puckered lips on my cheek before I head inside. I fucking love that girl with everything I am. I really hope I don’t hurt her again.

  19

  The Worst

  Now

  I walk into The Dunk five minutes before closing with my laptop case in one hand and Allie hiding behind me. She doesn’t want Michelle to see how giddy she is since I broke the news to her about Ben and I getting back together. But she’s not making this any easier for me. She keeps jabbing her pointy pianist fingers in my back and giggling. By the time we reach my usual table near the counter, I’m doubled over with laughter.

  Michelle shakes her head. “What is so damn funny?” she asks, pulling her gaggle of keys out of the pocket of her waist-apron and heading toward the door to lock up.

  Allie sits in the chair across from me and immediately puts her face down on the table, folding her arms over the back of her head to drown out her uncontrollable laughter. “Tell her!”

  I shake my head as I take a moment to catch my breath. “I don’t know why she finds this so funny, but Ben and I are back together.”

  Allie lifts her head. “It’s not funny. It’s so beautiful!” she says before devolving into another laughing fit.

  Michelle looks at me over her shoulder as she locks the door. “I am so confused right now. Did she say it’s beautiful?”

  I set my laptop case down on the table and pop the two latches to open the lid. “Don’t pay attention to her. I think she’s having a mental breakdown,” I say lifting my MacBook out of the molded foam interior and setting the case aside before I take a seat.

  Allie sits up straight and shakes her head as she takes a deep breath. “I don’t care what you say, you can’t pretend you’re not happy about this. I can see it in your face.”

  I roll my eyes, but I feel totally naked. “You’re such a romantic.”

  Michelle cocks an eyebrow at me as she passes us on the way toward the back of the restaurant. “Romantic and naive. Have you two never heard of the Backfire Effect?”

  Allie and I look at each other and shake our heads. “I don’t know what that is,” Allie whispers.

  “What’s the Backfire Effect?” I yell toward the kitchen.

  Michelle emerges a few seconds later with a couple glasses of lemonade and a bottle of Pellegrino for herself, then takes a seat at the table next to us. “The Backfire Effect is when you encounter evidence that goes against something you believe in, and instead of questioning your beliefs, you double down on your original hypothesis. You tell yourself, ‘Well, obviously, that evidence is biased, fabricated, or faulty.’”

  Allie scrunches up her eyebrows. “Huh? I may be Asian, but I’m really not that smart. Can you explain what that has to do with Charley and Ben getting back together?”

  I stare at my computer screen as my laptop boots up, knowing I probably won’t like what Michelle is about to say.

  Michelle twists open her bottle of sparkling water and takes a sip before answering. “It just means that Charley believes Ben loves her, and any evidence to the contrary only confirms that rather than mak
ing her question it.”

  I slowly turn my head toward Michelle and glare at her. “Really? Why do you always have to think the worst of Ben? Is that how stupid you think I am?”

  “I’m not saying you’re stupid. I’m just saying you’re not taking the evidence that Ben is a jerk into account. You can’t even see what he’s doing to you. He’s back less than three weeks and you practically jump at the chance to get back with him. It’s almost masochistic.”

  “So now I’m like some kind of battered wife or something?”

  Michelle shakes her head. “I saw you checking his Instagram every ten minutes when you were here with Frank earlier. And you whitened your teeth and started contouring your nose again… It’s just like it was three years ago.”

  I lower my gaze as I recall how I kept a tab with Ben’s Instagram profile open on my phone and laptop browsers for weeks after he dumped me, just torturing myself by reading and rereading the comments on the breakup post and studying every picture he posted with Becca Kingsley. Then, I started watching YouTube makeup tutorials on how to contour my face, and signing up for accounts on dating apps solely to collect compliments on my appearance. I never actually went on any dates. Luckily, Michelle and Allie were there to talk some sense into me. They got me to stop obsessing over Ben so I could focus on starting my business.

  Am I really behaving the same way? Only this time, it would be a reaction to getting back together with Ben rather than being rejected by him, which makes absolutely no sense.

  Ben has never told me I don’t wear enough makeup. He’s never made fun of my hairstyles, or my clothes, or the bump on my nose. Ben has always loved me as I am. I’m the one who can’t look at my reflection in a mirror without wondering what he sees in me.

  I let out a deep sigh. “Michelle, I appreciate you looking out for me,” I begin, and I can see her muscles in her neck tense as she physically braces herself for a big but, “But Ben is not the villain you think he is.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m staying out of this.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” she shoots back. “Protect you? Care about you?”

  “I love you, Michelle,” I say, turning my chair so I’m facing her. “But you’re wrong this time. This isn’t… I can’t explain it, it’s just… I trust him.”

  “I love you, too, but please tell me how you can trust him after what he did to you?” she pleads. “He humiliated you in a way that should not be forgivable. He decimated you. He doesn’t deserve you.”

  I close my eyes and lean my head back as I try to think of a valid response, but my mind is blank. Michelle is right. Ben destroyed my faith in humanity. How can I forgive him so easily?

  Allie shakes her head. “No,” she mutters, continuing to shake her head. “No, you can’t do this. Look at her, Michelle!” she says, pointing at me. “She was happy when she walked in here and now you have her questioning everything. And you don’t exactly have room to criticize. You’ve been texting with Holder, and he isn’t the pinnacle of upstanding citizens. He doesn’t even have a driver’s license.”

  Michelle gasps. “I told you that in confidence!”

  “Stop,” I whisper, but Allie is nowhere near finished.

  “You and I have watched her the last three years,” Allie continues. “We’ve cracked jokes to her face and worried about her in private, because we love her. But she finally grabs a scrap of happiness and the first thing you can do is tell her to stop being so naive?”

  Michelle shakes her head. “It’s easy for you to support this when you spend half your time in San Francisco going from one guy to the next. But over here, in reality, I’ve just finally started seeing her make progress since she started dating Tyler. Then, Mr. Perfect comes back and fucks it all up. Of course she can’t resist him. It doesn’t mean he’s not going to stab her in the back again!”

  “Stop!” I shout. “Stop talking about me like I’m not here. Please. Stop.”

  Michelle and Allie both pout a little as they lean back in their chairs. “I’m sorry,” Michelle mutters. “I don’t want to see you get hurt, but…but if you trust him, then… I guess I’ll support you.”

  Allie’s shoulders slump. “I’m sorry, you guys, but I think love should be snatched up wherever you can find it,” she says, shooting a resentful look in Michelle’s direction. “Even if it is a one-night stand, but especially if it’s something like what Ben and Charley have. That’s rare…rare and valuable.”

  I reach forward and grab her hand. “Thank you.”

  Michelle glances at this display of unification and sighs.

  I reach toward her and grab her hand, as well. “And thank you…for looking out for me. I’m being smart. I swear. But I need to know… If this does blow up in my face, will you still be there for me?”

  Michelle is silent for a moment before the corners of her mouth turn up in a tiny smile. “Of course I will. Just…make sure you wear protection. We don’t need any little Benjamins further complicating things, okay?”

  My eyes widen as I realize I’m going to spend the night with Ben tomorrow and I’m not on the pill anymore. “What are the most effective condoms? I’ve only ever been with Ben, and I was always on the pill, so I’ve never actually used one.”

  Michelle shrugs. “Honey, I love dick, but I didn’t major in it. You know I’ve only been with two guys. You need to talk to Allie about that shit.”

  “Fuck’s sake,” Allie replies, rolling her eyes. “You guys are a bunch of amateurs.”

  As Allie goes on a twenty-minute diatribe about the best condoms and their pros and cons, my phone starts vibrating nonstop. A painful jolt of panic explodes in every nerve in my body as my mind flashes back to the day Ben broke up with me. Sliding my phone out of my pocket, my heart pounds in my chest as I realize my phone is blowing up with Instagram notifications. But my panic subsides when I read them and realize Ben posted the sunset picture we took a little while ago.

  I tap the notification and I’m taken to the selfie we took on top of the sand dune. The peach sun is setting behind us as he plants a kiss on my cheek. It looks a hell of a lot more spontaneous than it actually was.

  @officialbenhayes Guess who’s back home with his favorite girl? #instalove

  JULY 10

  I know he added the instalove hashtag because he’s implying that he loves me, but all I see when I look at it is the breakup post. I know Ben said his relationship with Becca Kingsley was a publicity stunt. I know the anonymous YouTuber corroborated this. But what if that anonymous YouTuber wasn’t Becca’s former assistant. What if it was Ben or someone working for him?

  I have to watch the video.

  No. I can’t do this to myself. I can’t keep obsessing about this.

  Tapping on my profile, I’m shocked to see I went from sixteen followers to 1,394 followers in just a couple minutes. I quickly close my Instagram app and tune back in to Allie’s condom advice. But as she goes on and on about Okamoto Crown Skinless condoms, my mind wanders back to my conversation with Ben.

  He asked me to stay the night with him in San Francisco, but he made sure to let me know he’s going to be busy the next day. Almost as if he’s trying to make sure I’ll leave first thing in the morning so he won’t have to spend the day with me.

  Reluctantly, I open my YouTube app and search for the video about Ben and Becca. But before I can scroll through the results, a camera flash to my right gets my attention. Allie, Michelle, and I turn toward the restaurant’s windows and our jaws drop at the sight of the chubby paparazzo with the ponytail taking a burst of photos of us through the glass.

  “What a fucking hack. You can’t use flash through glass!” I shout at him, and Michelle and Allie burst into laughter.

  The guy flips me a fat middle finger and I join in the hysterics. I may be skidding toward heartbreak, but I’m going to do it with a smile on my face, riding in a sexy black sports car with Mr. Perfect behind the wheel.

  20 />
  Addicted

  Now

  Despite being the middle of summer, the weather in San Francisco today is a perfectly mild sixty-nine degrees with a few clouds rolling in from the Pacific Ocean and a light sea breeze lifting the few wispy hairs that haven’t yet been plastered to my face by the high humidity. Frank appears to be in good spirits today, cracking jokes about death and cancer on the drive here. I wouldn’t dare say it aloud, but he’s trying too hard to seem relaxed. I know he wants to appear brave and resolute in front of Ben, but I really wish he would just drop the act for a minute and say, “You know what? I’m scared.”

  But if joking about death is what will help Frank get through his last days, I’ll listen and laugh at every single tasteless joke. That’s the least you can do when someone you love is dying.

  Ponti pulls the black SUV in front of the curb at Zen Hospice on Page Street. It looks like the typical multi-million-dollar gorgeous white row-house you’d find in San Francisco, with large bay windows and ornate Victorian woodwork. But inside, the house has been converted to a six-bed twenty-four-hour residential care facility for the terminally ill. This is where people go to die in zen comfort.

  At least, the staff at Zen Hospice appear to take privacy seriously. Not a single photographer awaits us outside.

  Ponti carries Frank’s oxygen tank while Ben helps his father up the steps toward the green double doors with the stained-glass inlay. If not for the carefully manicured bonsai tree growing in front of the downstairs bay window, this place would feel more creepy Gothic than peaceful zen.

  We ring the doorbell and we are immediately greeted by Dr. BJ Miller, a friendly doctor who appears to be in his mid- to late-forties. He’s not wearing a white doctor’s coat — thank God — just slacks and a brown cardigan over a blue and white striped button-up. There is no denying the man is handsome, but the kindness in his eyes makes him gorgeous.