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Fuck.

“I like you,” I said simply.

Michelle blinked.

Well, that was awkward. What the hell did I say that for?

But her lips did that little twitching thing again, and relief flooded through me.

“Can we start again?” I asked.

“Please,” she said.

And just like that, I could breathe again. “Maybe you could tell me what kind of food blog involves taking photos of cars in ditches?” I asked.

Michelle laughed, sending something warm and loose through me. For the rest of the break, Michelle told me all about her blog. How she’d started it years ago as more of a personal recording device, and how she’d carried it on over the years. She told me about how it had grown in popularity and that she was even making money from it.

“Nothing to write home about,” she assured me. “In fact, I really need to double down and figure out how to get it earning big. Some bloggers are hitting six figures.”

“Six figures! For writing on the internet?”

“Writing’s the smallest part of it,” she said.

She described all the moving parts of how a blog operated, even allowing me to pull out my phone and visit Bella Eats while we sat there. Over my shoulder, she pointed me to her most popular posts.

They were, like she’d hinted at, the ones where she’d experienced misfortune. Where she opened up about her life, and not in a warm and funny way but a raw and real way, laying herself bare for her audience. It was brave, but also… it felt like it would be deeply painful to be exposed to this degree.

When she went to the restroom before the band came back on, I read through the most popular post called I GUESS I’M A WIDOW NOW.She’d opened up about her husband’s death in the most poignant way. To hell if I didn’t feel my damn heart tighten up reading her words. She was a good writer. A great writer, and the way she talked about her grief so poignantly, without being cloying, was a skill I knew I’d never have, as slick as I could be with my own words when making deals and negotiating giant public projects.

But reading through the comments, several of which had specific questions pertaining to the details of the fire, and some asking deeply personal medical questions, stoked something close to anger in me, like a spark from a flame of protectiveness I didn’t have any right to feel.

Then I noted the number of shares on the post. There were hundreds of them. Did she want all these people OMG’ing her? Reposting her content with teary-eyed emojis?

I flipped through to the next post under the “Most popular” column. It was calledCAN WE BE FRAYNE’S?

Emma’s going to be okay,it started.

As I read, my jaw clenched as hard as my chest.

In the post, Michelle said she’d had to face her worst fears when she learned Emma could have the same condition as her father. It was so rare the medical community didn’t even know if it could be inherited.

Technically, as you all know,she wrote,my husband died in a fire, rescuing people trapped in a burning building, in his job as a NYFD firefighter. But Joe’s condition had already been pronounced terminal, and we’d been preparing for his death a few months before it happened.

The post was meant to be positive—she kept reiterating that Emma was going to be okay.

If she’d had it, her prognosis would still be good, thank everything above. Joe hadn’t caught his illness until he was an adult, and people with Frayne’s who catch it young typically lead very normal lives.

But the same thing happened on this post as with the last. Emojis. Probing questions. Requests for more photos of Emma.

“So, any new favorite recipes?” Michelle asked. Her expression was upbeat, but I could sense a wariness underneath it too. How long had she been standing there?

I smiled. “So far all the recipe posts appear to have taken a second seat to these life stories.”

Something flashed in Michelle’s eyes, but she shrugged, a brief smile passing her lips and faltering again, as if she were trying and failing to make it stick.

“There aren’t actually that many of them, but either my recipes suck, or people like a side of tragedy with their carbonara.”

It was supposed to be a joke I knew, but I wasn’t laughing. I wanted to throw her damn blog in the trash. If there was a way to do that with something on the internet.