All the Lies - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,19

I are planning on going to Laguna Beach this weekend. We got a suite right on the beach. It's not going to be particularly warm. It's not Hawaii, of course, or the Caribbean, but you know, we’ll try to have fun.”

Emma’s eyes dart to Alex.

She shakes her head, but just a little bit. I wait for her to finally cave and forgive him, but she surprises me.

“No,” she says.

The word comes out strong and categorical.

Assertive.

“What?” Alex asks.

A plastic smile appears on his face, the kind that we all use when we want to get someone to stop saying things that we don't agree with.

“No, I'm not going to Laguna Beach this weekend and no, Liam, Alex is not my fiancé.”

“Honey, let's just not do this right here.”

“Okay,” she says, crossing her arms. “Let's not. The only problem is that this is our engagement party. This is my parents’ home and you're here. Why are you here?”

“You know perfectly well,” he says under his breath. “My family and their friends flew in from New York and everywhere else. I couldn’t just not come.”

“You could have not been fucking your boss and then we wouldn't be in this mess.”

I take a step back and my mouth opens a little bit. I have never seen a scene like this unfold in front of my eyes.

Of course, we have seen plenty of this on television and movies, but to actually witness the unraveling of an engagement, that's quite something.

“Look what we are doing,” Alex says. “You're making my friend uncomfortable.”

I raise my hands up in the air and say, “No.”

“Listen,” Emma says, quieting her voice. “I told you that this wedding is off. Yet you can't seem to get that through your head. I know that it is one thing for my mom to say stuff like that, but you are the one that hurt me. You are the one that I caught cheating. It's over. You clearly never cared about me and you clearly don't now. Why are you here putting on this charade?”

12

Emma

I don't know why I am here.

I don't know why I'm talking to him.

I feel like Liam and I shared a moment and I thought that I might have found a friend. Maybe not a friend, but at least a friendly face. But looking at him now, I know he’s on Alex’s side.

I don’t care. I deserve better than this asshole and I know that even if no one else does.

Alex keeps trying to talk to me, but I just walk away. I've repeated myself enough and it's still not getting through to him.

Alex follows me until I disappear in the bathroom.

Frustrated, annoyed, and trapped in my own parents’ home, I open my phone and stare at the messages. I scroll through a million useless tweets and pretty images on Instagram.

A few videos pop up, but I quickly turn those off. I don't have the energy to watch or engage on any level beyond the very basic.

I'm not sure what leads me to his social media besides my own frustration at my predicament, but I search for D. B. Carter's name in the search bar on Facebook. He has over 100,000 followers, which is quite a lot for a fantasy author without a television show or who isn't JRR Martin or Tolkien.

I scroll through the main posts on his page trying to glean any personal information, but there are just posts about his new releases and promotions. There's a free book and there is another book on sale for $.99. Along with that, he also has a brand-new release that just came out last week.

I turn my attention to Amazon and decide to count up all the books he has written. I get to seventy-eight before I lose track when my sister knocks on the door.

Brooke is two years younger than I am and she is as girlie as Lindsey. Brooke is something of a mystery to both Lindsey and me. She's a big girl, like I am, but unlike me she actually seems to have mastered this whole-body acceptance thing and loves herself for who she is.

She likes fashion, makeup, and dressing up. She has an Instagram with about 50,000 followers and she posts new pictures every day with an outfit of the day. She's not a huge influencer, but whatever she promotes, people buy and a lot of brands know that.

“Listen, can you please stop moping about your engagement? Come out here and look at this bikini picture