“Aren’t you, like, three days out from opening night? I thought you’d be booked solid.”

Summer glows in the seat across from me at Vino, wearing her favorite summer halter top. She looks damn good, even though I can tell she did her makeup in a hurry. In her defense, I only called her forty minutes ago and begged pathetically for a girls’ night out. Or a girls’ two hours out. Whatever she could spare.

The wine is delicious, sweet and sparkling, and I try to throw myself into it without success. “I kicked ass at rehearsal today. Bargained for an early morning tomorrow instead of a late night tonight. How’s January and Day?”

“Oh, she’s been asleep since eight and he’s tucked on the couch with a beer, so I’d say they’re living their best life. What about you? Did you miss me? That chicken pot pie bake was amazing, by the way.”

“Yes. I only wish my life was as successful as the chicken pot pie bake.”

Summer raises her eyebrow. “I’d say you’re being dramatic, but you’re always a little dramatic, and this actually seems...serious.”

God, this is mortifying. I twist the stem of my wine glass in my fingers. Should I really have asked Summer here? She’s Wes’s sister. This is exactly why I never should have touched him in the first place.

She might be Wes’s sister, but she’s my best friend, so screw it.

“The show is going really, really well. Rowan thinks there’s enough buzz about opening night that we might get a few new investors in attendance. Maybe a Broadway run in the spring.”

“That’s so exciting, Whit.” Summer beams at me, but the smile slips off her face as quickly as it rose. “But you look like you found a bug in your wine glass.”

“Yes, well—” I can’t bring myself to say he dumped me or even I dumped him because what really did happen? A stupid fight? There was no misunderstanding, that’s for sure. We both said things we meant. I only wish now that I hadn’t said them. Some of them anyway. “My personal life has become a barren, soulless wasteland.”

Summer blinks at me. Processing. Processing. Then it hits. “Oh, my God. You and Wes?”

I nod mournfully, which fucking sucks, because we’re at Vino and there should be no mourning in this place, unless you really like mourning in wine bars. Not between me and Summer, is what I mean.

I stare down into my wine glass, wishing there really was a bug in there so I’d have a reason to watch the bubbles rise from the bottom like an idiot. An erratic idiot, if Wes is correct, which, maybe he is. I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t want to look at Summer. Perfect, honorable Summer. I can’t bear the disappointment in her eyes.

“Whit, I’m so sorry.” Her tone makes me raise my eyes from the bottom of my glass. There’s no hint of disapproval. It’s pure sympathy. “Listen, I—” She purses her lips, making her mind up about something. “I don’t blame you. At all.”

“You don’t? It would be reasonable to blame me, you know. Wes does. He blames it on—” I roll my eyes toward the ceiling to keep the tears from spilling out. “I don’t want to relive the whole thing, but he took issue with some of the more...eccentric aspects of my personality.”

Summer’s mouth curves in a smile. “Like the way you always like to change plans at the last minute?”

“You could say that.”

“Yeah.” She shakes her head, her expression settling into a contemplative set. “Day mentioned something like that to me.”

“That bastard. He was complaining about me behind my back?”

“No, no, no. Dayton mentioned it on his own. That Wes has had...you know, some issues since he got out of the Army. Even before, I guess. Since...the thing with the Humvee.”

“Issues that would make him behave like a controlling asshole?”

“Not that it’s an excuse—I’m not saying that it’s an excuse—but yeah. That kind of thing.” Summer sighs. “Day’s worried about him. He keeps trying to—” She closes her fists around the air. “If he can keep everything under control, nothing like that might happen again. I guess it...boiled over.”

“Good for him.” It comes out tinged with acid. “He’s getting exactly what he wants. A life he can control completely. It’s too bad I wasn’t like that.”

“No, it’s not. You’re exactly the person you’re supposed to be.” Summer sips her wine. “Honestly, I loved you guys together.”

I exhale hard. I’m not crying. Not now. Not at Vino. Not with Summer. “Honestly, I did too. That habit he had of making dinner at the same time every day? I don’t know if that was him or whatever this fucked-up nonsense is—”

Summer waves a hand in the air. “Oh, he was always organized. The Army brought out more of that in him. And then...maybe too much.”

The center of my chest is a black hole, all the pain of the world sucked into the center. I sniff. “That’s no way to live.”

“Sometimes people take it to the opposite extreme.”

“Summer Sullivan.” I put a hand to my chest and throw my widest, most appalled eyes at her. “Are you taking his side in this catastrophe of lost love?”

“I’d never take someone’s side over yours.” She takes another delicate, measured sip of her wine and rolls it around her tongue for a moment before she swallows. “All I’m saying is—”

“Don’t.”

“All right.”

She falls silent, watching the comings and goings of Vino as they swirl around our table.

“I hate when you do that.”

“Do what?” Summer is the picture of innocence.

“Listen to me when I’m wrong.”

She takes a calm, cleansing breath. “You sounded pretty agonized when you called. And not just normal stress, either. Not just show stress. Not audition stress.”

“I never should have agreed to live with you.”

“First”—Summer grins—“you asked me to live with you, at the beginning of all this. And second, you know you were a wreck, and that’s why you called me here. And I came. That should count for something.”

“It does.”

“You can overcome this, if your heart is broken the wrong way.”

It’s something Summer’s said to me before—a broken heart the wrong way. There are some broken hearts you have to suffer through, because it’s ultimately the right thing, or something you have to accept.

I have the horrible, sinking feeling that this is both.

“I don’t know, Sunny. It all feels wrong. Everything.”

“Give it a few days,” she says, too wise for the blonde-haired small-town girl she used to be. “Do your show. Then decide. There’s always time to fix things.”

I nod with her, and we solemnly “cheers” our wine glasses. Then we move on to other things.

But the truth beats hard in my chest: there’s not always time. I can hear it, even now, ticking away.