Page 72 of The Reunion

On my front porch, I find a pint of coconut almond chocolate chip gelato tucked into a petite cooler. The note on top is in Bre’s handwriting:I hope this is melted by the time you get home. If not, please enjoy while bingeing Flower Wars, okay? Call me if you need me to come over. xB

I strip off the day as soon as I’m inside, trading my T-shirt dress for silk pajamas, my makeup for moisturizer. My mascara is a mess; my eyes are as empty as Ransom’s looked in that final glance he gave me. That look haunts me, the blankness of it. I don’t feel powerful, leaving like I did. I just miss him—I miss us. I miss the us of yesterday.

Thanks for the gelato, I text Bre on my way back downstairs.

Sorry you found it so soon,she writes back immediately, punctuated by the droopiest sad emoji there is.Want to talk about it?

Gonna take your advice and drown my thoughts in gelato and Flower Wars, I write.But I could totally use some company if you want to come over.

On my way!

Bre arrives in record time, an extra pint of gelato in hand, pistachio this time. “Just in case,” she says, grinning. “And for some extra good news, Bryan called off the crack-of-dawn shoot he threatened earlier, so you’re off the hook until eight tomorrow morning.”

“Thatisvery good news,” I say. “And wow, that looks amazing.”

I rummage around in my kitchen, find a pair of old-fashioned sundae dishes Vienna let me take from the set ofLove // Indigo, and give us each a healthy sampling of both flavors.

She perches on one of my kitchen island’s barstools, takes a bite of pistachio. Her messy topknot tilts precariously as she leans her head back in delight.

“You’re going todie, Liv, this gelato is so good!” She pulls out her phone and snaps a photo of it, presumably to post on Snapaday.

I tuck the half-empty pints into my freezer, then join her at the island. I try a bite of the coconut almond chocolate chip, let it melt on my tongue: it’s velvety and creamy, not overly sweet. Slightly nutty, with flecks of chocolate so dark they could possibly rebrand it as health food.

It’s perfect.

“This is exactly the night I needed,” I say, and like the best friend she is, she lets me revel in the moment.

I don’t want to dwell on today. For just a little while, I want to be Happy Liv with her happy gelato, in some sort of alternate universe where everyone’s trustworthy and no one gets hurt.

“Liv,” Bre says a moment later, eyes wide, pulling me straight back down to reality. “Did you see this? This is the girl Ford’s dating, right?”

She turns her phone so I can see—it’s open to a Snapaday post on@YouHeardItHereFirstfeaturing Juliette Wells, on set in Iceland, looking extremely cozy with Jonathan Cast. His arm slung low around her, hand on her hip, her head resting on his shoulder. The time stamp is from an hour ago.

My stomach flips, secondhand heartbreak kicking in on Ford’s behalf—I feel it like it’s my own. The aftertaste of gelato is bittersweet on my tongue.

“That’s definitely her,” I say. “Not sure if she and Ford will still be dating after this, though.”

There’s no good reason for a photo like that to exist. It would be one thing if Juliette were shooting a scene, making eyes at a costar—but Jonathan Cast is her director. They’re clearly between takes, and fromthe angle of the shot, they don’t seem to realize anyone’s caught them in the moment.

Still, I know all too well how snapshots don’t always tell the full story.

I slip my own phone out, shoot a text Ford’s way.Just saw the Juliette photos—here if you need to vent.

A few minutes later, when Bre and I are finally settled into opposite corners of the couch for ourFlower Warsmarathon, Ford’s face fills my phone screen: I’d forgotten how he’s one of those rare people who actually prefers phone calls—he’s never had the patience for texting.

“Are you okay?” I say as soon as I answer.

“Hey, Livvie. No, not really.” He sounds exhausted, defeated. “Juliette’s got something going with Cast now.”

“You know this for sure, not just from some random photos?”

And here I thought my own love life was the only thing breaking—and being broken by—the internet.

He sighs. “I just talked to her,” he confirms. “Funny how she finally found the time to call. We had a hard time connecting from the minute her flight landed, so I guess that should have been a red flag. You’d think she could have squeezed a call in here or there, even a text—she didn’t even comment when I was ‘caught’ having a fake date on the beach as a last-ditch effort to get her attention.” He laughs, but it’s sad and hollow. “I kind of suspected we might be drifting apart, but I didn’t know she was hooking up withJonathan Castinstead. I mean, who’d pick me when an award-winning writer/director is the other option?”

Not to mention Jonathan Cast has topped the list of “40 Under 40: Hollywood Hotties Behind the Camera” for the past six years straight, but I’m not about to say so.

“I’m so sorry, Ford. It’s her loss, okay?”

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