Page 15 of No One Was Supposed to Die at This Wedding

The party broke up quickly after that.

Emma and Fred left in their car, wanting to split before the paps started circling like vultures. When it became obvious there wasn’t going to be any more free food or drinks, Harper, Oliver, and I tripped back down the beach and got dinner at the Waterfront, where we tried to talk about other things than what we’d just witnessed.

We had a pleasant dinner, and then went home to bed.

Not all three of us. Harper has her own room.

We share a lot but notthat.

Just in case you were worried.

“What do you think all of that was about?” Harper asks the next day in the car. We’re on the 405 headed to Long Beach, where we’re going to catch the ferry to Catalina Island.

Oliver’s driving and I’m in the passenger seat. Harper’s in the back, sitting in the middle so it’s easier for us to talk. She and I would rather sit in the back with Oliver driving, but he draws the line at that. “I’m your boyfriend, not your chauffeur,” etc.

Fine.

“Fred and Tyler?” I ask. Because sometimes I can read minds, too.

Okay, it was probably obvious who she was talking about.

“That wasextra, as the kids say.”

I laugh. “How doyouknow what the kids say?”

“I’m on TikTok enough.”

“Ugh.” I shudder.

TikTok is the worst.

And no, I’m not saying that because none of my books have blown up on there.

Notexclusively.

“What do you think, Oli?”

He curses under his breath as a driver in an oversized Escalade cuts him off. “I think I shouldn’t be driving in this traffic.”

Oliver wanted to leave at “the crack of awful,” as Harper called it, under the false impression that getting up before the sun would allow us to avoid the fate we’re in right now. But LA traffic is eternal. The only way to avoid it is to stay at home.

“I did offer to get us a car,” I say.

“You did.”

I let that lie there. I’ve learned a thing or two in this second go-around.

Things like sayingI told you soaren’t conducive to happiness.

“So, what about Fred and Tyler?” I ask him. “Any theories?”

“I just write books for a living.”

“Brilliant books.”

“Books no one reads,” he says matter-of-factly.

I pick up his hand and kiss it because what can I say? His last book sold, as he likes to put it, twelve copies, even though it was his best book by far. But the book business isn’t a meritocracy.

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