Page 127 of Single Mom's Guide to Love

“It sounded urgent.”

“It is,” I say as Vivian walks in. Her hair is big and blonde, and I don’t know if she’s trying to prove a point by coming out here in a workout set that shows off how much bigger her boobs are than mine, but the point is made.

Too bad that’s the only point she’s winning today. Because I’m about to end this bitch. “Vivian. Glad you could join us.”

“It’s no problem, Maeve. I can’timaginewhat you’ve been going through,” Vivian says with mock sincerity. “Just a shame.”

The two of us have a mini stare down and it’s at this moment that if I didn’t know she did it, I would now.

But my ex? He’s clearly clueless.

“What happened? Is everything okay?”

“It is now,” I assure Josh. “Some unflattering pictures of me leaked onto the internet. Caused quite a stir. Took days to sort out. I’m surprised Vivian didn’t show you or tell you about it?”

“Well…I knew you had to be embarrassed,” Vivian says.

“See, I want to believe you,” I say as I take the envelope out of my purse. “But I don’t.”

“Why would you say that? I’m a good person, despite what you think about me.”

Neither Logan nor I can contain our laughter. “Oh, Vivian. You’re a proper fool.”

She gasps at Logan’s statement. “How dare you say that!”

“Watch it, Matthews,” Josh says, taking Vivian’s hand. “That’s my wife you’re talking to.”

“Exactly, and it’smy wifethat was fucked with. And I don’t stand for things like this.” I hand Josh the first set of pictures. “These are just some of the pictures that were leaked to the media.”

Josh protests at first, but eventually takes them. I should be embarrassed that half of them are of me, half naked, dancing on the bar that Josh used to work at because I thought I was inCoyote Ugly. Some are from that drunken Cancun trip. It took me days of looking at them to figure out where they came from. How did these surface after years? They were never on social media. It didn’t make sense.

Until one night it hit me—they were on my old laptop.

A laptop I gave Josh.

One I’m betting he still has and Vivian found.

“These are from the old bar,” he says, flipping through the printouts. “I haven’t seen these photos in years.”

“I honestly forgot they existed,” I say. “But when we were going through the photos that were leaked, we couldn’t help but notice that a majority of them were ones I remember taking from the old days.”

“Wow…” Josh says like he’s longingly looking through good memories. “I don’t even know where these came from…”

“I do.”

My voice is confident as Josh looks at me, confused—and Vivian looks anywhere but at me.

“Where?”

“My old laptop. The one I gave you. Do you by chance still have it?”

It takes Josh a second to register what I’m saying. “Yeah. I think? It’s buried in my closet somewhere.”

I turn my eyes to Vivian. “Where is it, Vivian?”

She lets out a scoff. “How would I know?”

I figured she was going to play dumb. “We can make this easy, or we can make this hard. Either way, you’re going to leave this conversation exposed for the shit you did. You just get to choose how we get there.”

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