Chapter 22

After I got home from Los Angeles, I avoided going to my parents’ house for dinner for two weeks in a row. The first week, I said I was too tired and wanted to stay home. The second week, I lied and said I had too much work to do. By the third, my mom pretty much came to my apartment and dragged me to dinner.

“You can’t sit in your apartment and wallow forever,” she said. “You got second place, sweetheart. That’s nothing to sneeze at.”

I hadn’t felt all that inclined to tell her I wasn’t wallowing because of my loss. That was a very tiny part of this shit situation I’d found myself in. Losing fair and square would be one thing: I’d lost before, and although it sucked, it was the nature of the game.

Losing because the guy who I’d fallen in love with had won by being a sneaky cheating asshole?

That was something else entirely.

I hadn’t told anyone what had happened down in LA, not even Anna. I preferred to believe it had never happened. If I brushed it under the rug, then it didn’t