Page 102 of Famous for a Living

I smile. It’s a little forced. “But . . .” I’ll just have to nudge this along.

“But then she drove her car into two other people at the Honeypot and went to jail.”

There’s silence.

Even the other couple, who were so obliviously all over each other the moment prior, stop. Pull back from each other.

“What happened to the two other people?”

“One had minor scrapes. The other ended up in ICU.”

The guy looks over at Zaiah as the girl rises. Glares as he follows, the moment lost.

“Oh my gosh.” I squeeze my arms across my chest tighter. “That’s awful. Did . . .” I hesitate to ask but want to know. “Did they make it?”

“We held our breath for forty-two days, but yes. Mark made it.” He said this with a heavy calm, like he looked at his face in the mirror every single day and relived the memory.

Mark.

My heart sinks. “How did that happen?”

“Mark was out front at one of those little bistro tables when she hit the curb and drove right over them. Just going twenty-eight miles an hour.”

I suck in a breath, the horror of it all too easily pictured in my mind.

“She was on her phone when she went through the stop sign and veered off the road.”

“Oh no.”

The words fall with a thud as everything connects.

The way he looks at me every time I use my phone. At every picture taken. Even the pictures for the sake of the park.

It all comes down to this.

The root of it all.

“Poor Mark.”

So this was what happened to him. Sweet, energetic Mark who even tonight rolled around in a wheelchair equipped with what looked like off-roading mountain bike tires, looking like he hadn’t a care in the world. “He seems to have handled it all so well. I can’t imagine.”

“Mark is a better man than me. A better man than us all. His”—there’s significance in his pause—“willingness to forgive is astounding.”

I frown. Something in his voice, in the way he averts his gaze, says that he is laying claim to some of that guilt.

Over this.

“You weren’t the one driving.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “But I knew she had a problem for a couple of years. I never said anything.”

He says it just like he would say she was addicted to drugs. As though he was supposed to call in an intervention. For what? Spending too much time on her phone?

“C’mon now, Zaiah. These aren’t drugs we’re talking about here.”

“It’s not?” He raises a brow. “You really don’t think the dopamine hit your brain gets every time you get that like or comment or emoji is a problem? I’ve read all the articles about it. Hannah’s lawyer defended her from that angle. Psychologically addicted, he said. Showed brain scans to the jury of social media addicts and drug users side by side. Explained in detail about how social media had changed the region of her brain that controlled emotions, attention, and decision making. Tell me this isn’t about a drug-dependent person. Tell me I shouldn’t have tried to help her.”

My chest tightens as I hear these words. I’ve heard sprinkles of the same arguments over the years. Experienced them myself.