Smiling, she says, “Yeah. You were. You were perfect. Everyone envied her.”

“Well,” I say, turning back to the television, “obviously I wasn’t perfect or she wouldn’t have stopped needing me.”

Margot goes still before she reaches for the remote control on my lap and mutes the show. “ ‘Needing’ you?” Her voice is sharp. “She shouldn’t ever have needed you. Wanted you, sure. Enjoyed being with you, sure. Desired you—gross—sure.”

Groaning, I make a grab for the remote but she holds it out of my reach.

“You know what I mean,” I say.

“I don’t think I do. Mia lost every one of her dreams in a single, horrible afternoon. It changed her, and that affected your relationship. That doesn’t mean that you fucked up somehow.”

“At the end of the day,” I say, sliding my plate onto the coffee table, “what we had wasn’t strong enough to weather what she was going through. End of story.”

Margot gives me a one-shouldered shrug. “True.”

I growl at this, wishing she had argued with me. This is why I hate talking about Mia. It just sucked. The whole thing sucked, there was no rhyme or reason to any of it—her accident, her distance, my heartbreak, our breakup—so it still feels like a raw wound. I hate uncovering it. But it was just a breakup. They happen every day.

“Luke, you were nineteen!” Margot says, raising her voice. “Sure, you said some shitty things to her because you were hurt, and she was terrible at talking about her feelings, but you guys grew apart.”

“I know. I just never saw it coming,” I tell her, leaning across her lap to reach for the remote.

“Do we ever see the big things coming, though? A predictable life never changed anyone.”

I turn on the sound, and turn up the volume to let her know we’re done talking, about Mia, about London, about me.

Chapter SEVEN

London

I DROP MY KEYS in the bowl by the door, kicking off my shoes. They thump loudly onto the wood floor in the otherwise-silent loft. Lola and Oliver are either at his place or asleep, but for once I’d really love someone else to be here to distract me from my foul mood.

I don’t exactly feel like playing Titanfall.

I feel sort of queasy after what happened tonight with Luke and his friends. I’m not exactly upset by his behavior the way I was when I found Justin banging someone in his bed. And I’m not disappointed to see—yet again—that Luke is exactly the guy I thought he was.

But damn, I realize I wanted to be wrong about him. That feeling—the highly unwelcome desire for him to have been relationship material—makes my stomach feel twisty and gross.

I inhale a couple of bowls of Lucky Charms and crawl into bed, sleeping like a stone and silencing my alarm when it tells me it’s time to hit the surf.

Instead, I wake up much later—at ten, in fact—to laughter trailing down the hall from the living room, and the deep, overlapping sounds of male voices. Without bothering to put on actual clothes, I shuffle out in my Doctor Who pajamas to greet Lola, Oliver, Ansel, and Finn with a mumbled, “Hey, guys.”

They return my greeting as I move robotically to the kitchen. Bless her heart: Lola has made coffee. I pour myself a cup and then join them, curling up on the end of the couch beside Ansel.

“Where are the other two?” I say, meaning Harlow and Mia.

“They’re meeting us at Maryjane’s in a few,” Finn says, and I look around the room, wondering if it’s just me or if everyone else has gone oddly still.

I also register with faint curiosity that it’s midweek, they all happen to be off work, and no one has asked me to come along.

As if realizing this, too, Lola jerks into motion, standing and walking into the kitchen to refill her coffee. “No surfing today?”

At her question, I remember with a lurch why I didn’t feel like getting up—Luke and his unfortunate friends—and shake my head. “Too wiped.”

She nods, returning to us with her mug and settling back down on the floor next to Oliver.

I sip my coffee, swallow, and ask, “What are Harlow and Mia up to?”

It seems like a completely normal question. After all, when he’s in town, Finn lives with Harlow in La Jolla, and Ansel and Mia just bought a house in Del Mar. Still, I’m met with silence.

Like, weird silence. And once again, the group’s dynamic seems to elude me.

“They had to pick up some stuff,” Oliver says, glancing quickly to Lola. “How’s working at Bliss going? Do you like it there?”

Shrugging, I tell him, “It’s pretty busy. Good tips, nice bar. I like the other bartenders. Probably not too surprising that the crowd is a bit sleazier than at Fred’s, but you know downtown . . .” I trail off, smiling at him over the top of my coffee cup.

“Luke can protect you,” Ansel chirps brightly.

I swear I almost hear the screeching of brakes rip through the room.

“Luke?” I ask.

Ansel’s smile slowly straightens as the awkwardness settles; it happens in perfect tandem with the dropping of my stomach.

His cheeks are a deep pink as he glances helplessly to Lola, then back at me. “I’m sorry. I thought you and Luke were . . .”

And suddenly, I get it. I get why Mia isn’t here. I get why they didn’t invite me to breakfast.

“We’re not,” I say quietly, letting my head fall against the back of the couch. God, this is mortifying. “We hung out a few times before I realized he and Mia . . . I mean, that’s not the only reason why we aren’t a thing; we wouldn’t be anyway.”

Panic rises in me like steam filling a room. I don’t mind the outsider feeling I’ve had occasionally with Lola’s friends—they’re all so well-intentioned and inclusive that I never feel like a seventh wheel—but I definitely, definitely do not want to fuck up with them.

Straightening again, I turn my eyes to Lola. “I was going to talk to you—”

“It’s okay,” she says quickly, speaking over me.

“—but it wasn’t serious, I swear. We aren’t together.”

Lola’s calm eyes hold mine. “It’s okay, London.”

But it’s like I can’t stop talking. “I honestly didn’t know he was Mia’s ex, and then I called her—” I look to Ansel, explaining now: “I felt really weird about it, but she seemed totally okay . . .”

Throughout all of this, Ansel shakes his head quickly, murmuring, “No, no, no,” and reassuring me, “She’s fine.”

“She is, I swear,” Lola urges, moving over to me to sit on the floor by my legs. “Honey, Mia is fine.”

But in the remaining tension, the mental calculation isn’t that difficult to make: “Harlow’s not fine, though, is she?”

The awkward silence returns, heavier this time, and I glance over at Finn.

He gives a casual wave of his hand. “She’ll get over it.”

And fuck, I do not want to be the reason a girlfriend of mine has something to get over. But at the same time, it rankles me a little that she’s white-knighting it for Mia, when, by all accounts—including her own—Mia doesn’t need it.

Maybe Lola sees this reaction cross my face, because she puts a hand on my knee. “London. It’s just what Harlow does. React first, think later.”