Page 119 of The Breakup Artists

Mom shakes her head. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

Which is an anxiety-inducing answer and now makes leaving it alone impossible. “No, I don’t. What I do know is that you two have been weird for weeks.”

They’re both silent.

“Great. Silence. Not hypocritical at all.”

“Valentine Sharma,” Dad snaps, and I know I’ve pushed it too far. “You’ve just lost the privileges to your phone.”

I can feel myself spiraling, anger and upset mixing in such a way that I’m not fully in control. I look at Mom. Bentley’s comment about couples therapy and an affair blares in my thoughts. “Punish me however you want, but I’m right. Be upset about my lying, but also be upset about the example you set.”

Both their eyes widen in matching expressions of shock. And the quiet that follows is so tense that it’s hard to breathe. We sit there for so long that I’m certain my punishment will last until the end of summer.

I shift in the armchair.

“I’m pregnant,” Mom says, and I freeze.

Then all at once I’m moving, walking toward her even though I don’t remember getting up. “What?!?But you’re...That’s not possible.” I press my hands into my temples, physically incapable of computing. I’m eighteen. She’s forty-six, and besides which, her fertility issues were so severe in her twenties that after she had me, the doctor said she’d never get pregnant again. They went to specialists in Boston, invested three years and most of their savings in treatments, all for nothing.

Mom opens her mouth, but I cut her off, flying onto the couch next to her. “This is a miracle—”

“Valentine, wait,” she says, and her tone stops my hand on its way to her belly. “We don’t know yet if everything is... We didn’t want to tell you until we were sure.”

My heart punches my ribs. “Sure of what?”

It’s Dad who answers. “The doctors aren’t convinced there won’t be complications,” he explains, and I can tell he’s choosing his words carefully. “We’ve had some testing done, and we’re waiting on results.”

I pull back, looking at them and recognizing the fear of loss. “I don’t understand.” But I do understand. After Des passed, I asked Mom why she never had another child. That’s when she told me about the endless hormones and the two miscarriages.

Mom presses her lips together. “We’ll know more next week.”

And while that’s not really an answer, I recognize that she can’t bring herself to say more. That the weirdness between my parents wasn’t an impending divorce but fear of being too hopeful—a pregnancy she didn’t expect, one she doesn’t know if her body will allow.

“Now,” Dad says, taking a breath and confiscating my phone from the coffee table, “breakfast?”

While I have a million questions, I know he’s changing the subject for her. That she literally can’t talk about this anymore.

“Yeah, okay,” I say, my voice small.

Dad goes to the kitchen, and Mom heads upstairs with her tea. But I sit there on the couch, dumbfounded and unsure, feeling guilty I went on the offensive and hurt they didn’t tell me sooner. I fall back into the cushions, pressing my palms over my eyes.

Please, please let my mom and the baby be okay.

58

august

Two days since my blowup with Ella. I stare at my phone, opening and closing my messages. There’s nothing to say that she’d listen to. Still, I open my texts and consider another apology. I even type it out and hover over the send button. But before I make a decision, a message from Daisy flashes across my screen.

I’m about to swipe it away when I see the preview that reads:Ummm... so your name is AUGUST?!?with a link. I sit up so fast that Swee meows. I can’t press the link quickly enough. And when the page loads, the title of the magazine article shoots so much adrenaline through me that my vision blurs.

the breakup artists:

playing games with the rich and famous

The surprise of Prem Sharma’s infamous Bright Records Summer Bash this year wasn’t the guest list or even the drunk list but his own daughter, Valentine Sharma, and her friend August Mariani, who have the most gossip-worthy business we’ve ever heard of—Summer Love Inc.—an anonymous site where concerned friends and parents fill out a questionnaire about their loved one’s problematic relationship in hopes of hiring these two to facilitate a breakup. Yes, you heard that right—they’re relationship assassins. And to make things even more exciting, they currently have their sights set on the daughter of James Becker, the owner of Boston’s largest hedge fund, or they did before they were publicly outed. We’ve caught the resulting blowup on film.

I send a panicked text to Tiny before I remember her one-line email that said her dad took her phone. So I switch to email, forwarding the article.