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The most boring week of Charlie’s life did not help him forget Jean, contrary to Mugsy’s assurances. That was the problem with falling for someone so distinctive. You couldn’t pretend you’d ever meet a person like that again. She was the good kind of different—unlike him.

His parents made a fuss when he first arrived, telling him how happy they were he’d finally come home, even though he was late and “looked a little pale.” Love with a side of judgment (and chewable multivitamins) was the standard script at the Pike household.

After that, Charlie did his best to fly under the radar, standing where they told him and blinking blindly into the flash for a new family portrait.

He promised to try on the clothes hanging in garment bags in his closet and nodded at the party-planning details blasting him like a rogue sprinkler.

It felt like being one of those cardboard cutouts they prop up in movie theater lobbies: resembles a real person from the front, but it’s flat and empty inside.

A stiff wind could have knocked Charlie over, and he wasn’t sure he’d get up again.

Lying on the ground seemed like a reasonable response to his current predicament.

More reasonable than pretending to care whether pigs in a blanket “set the right tone.” The only tone Charlie could hear was a constant whine.

Why didn’t she want me?

That was what it boiled down to, when everything was said and done.

If she’d felt for Charlie a fraction of what he felt for her, Jean wouldn’t have traded information about him for money.

And yet how could he blame her for not loving him?

That wasn’t something you could force on another person, because what was love worth if not freely chosen?

Maybe if he’d been brave enough to level with her, she would have made a different call. He tried to picture himself saying, “Jean, here’s the situation. Can you take me as I am?”

Unless she hadn’t felt anything for him at all. But that possibility was too upsetting to look at head-on.

Not for the first time, he thought of texting Jean, even knowing how pathetic that would seem. Remember me? I can’t forget you .

Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately, for his dignity—Mugsy had confiscated his phone for a forty-eight-hour post-breakup digital detox, a concept Charlie suspected she’d invented on the spot. By the time he got it back, all traces of Jean were gone.

Charlie stared morosely at his phone, lying beside him on the bed like a useless hunk of junk. Mugsy might as well have kept it, for all the good it was doing him now.

The screen lit up, firing his nervous system with a burst of electricity. He nearly sent the phone skidding across the floor as he scrambled to pick it up.

An email!

If a person couldn’t text you because someone else had rudely blocked their number without your permission, she might try to get in touch the old-fashioned way.

But no. It was from one of the professors he’d worked with in Australia. Under other circumstances, Charlie would have been thrilled to hear from a leading researcher in his field, but Dr. Dillingham had the disadvantage of not being Jean.

The message was brief.

A friend of yours was looking for you, Charles. I said I would pass along the information. And now I have .

He emailed like he talked: staccato bursts of information that circled back on themselves unexpectedly. It took Charlie a few reads to make sense of it, and even then there were lingering questions. What friend had emailed? When?

Although he tried not to sound too frantic in his reply, the urgency must have come through because Dr. D answered right away—an unheard-of reaction for a man who forgot there was such a thing as voicemail for months at a time.

As quickly as his spirits had soared, they came crashing back to earth when Charlie realized it was a form message, letting the world know the recipient was currently out of office.

Charlie didn’t have time to play phone tag with Dr. Dillingham’s graduate assistant.

What if it was Jean trying to contact him?

She could be in trouble and need his help.

Or just want to talk, for whatever reason.

If only he’d memorized her number. Or found out where she lived.

If Charlie hadn’t been afraid to leave his cottage, they could have hung out at her place—

The resort! Why didn’t he think of that sooner? Charlie’s hands trembled as he looked up the number. He let part of himself—maybe a pinkie’s worth—hope that Jean would be the one to answer.

The familiar greeting hit him like a stomach cramp. They really did make dreams come true, at least until they turned into a nightmare. That probably wasn’t the kind of customer-service testimonial they could put in their brochures.

He shook himself, swallowing the disappointment of not hearing Jean’s voice. Time to focus on the task at hand.

“Yes, Polly—”

“Pauline,” she interrupted. “But I guess you can call me Polly. The customer is always right.”

“Right,” he echoed, uncertainly.

“I know. That’s what I said.”

Charlie stopped himself from saying right again. Clearing his throat, he tried to explain that he was looking for an employee named Jean for reasons that were not at all nefarious or creepy. Probably he shouldn’t have mentioned that part.

Pauline stopped humming long enough to say, “Nah. I don’t know any Jean.”

“Are you sure?” Charlie gave up trying to sound normal. He’d come so close to making contact. “Dark hair, smart as a whip, incredibly artistic?”

There was a lot more he could have said, but Pauline’s laughter cut off his Ode to Jean.

“Just messing with you. Jean’s my girl.”

“Really?” Charlie hugged the phone to his chest, until it occurred to him that Pauline might be able to hear his heart pounding. “Could I talk to her?”

“No can do,” Pauline replied.

There was a long silence.

“Why?” Charlie finally asked, when no further explanation appeared to be forthcoming.

“I’m not supposed to say.” She barely paused. “But between you and me, she doesn’t work here anymore.”

He sat up in bed. “She doesn’t?”

“We’re heading into the slow season. They always cut back staff. And then that whole business with you-know-who.”

Charlie had a sinking feeling he did know. “What happened?” he asked, already wincing.

“Oh man, you didn’t hear about it? We had one huge celebrity staying with us. The Silent Storm, baby. Adriana Asebedo’s ex,” she added, when he failed to react.

“I don’t know that I’d call him a celebrity—”

“Ha! Shows what you know. Anyway, that’s why the boss was pissed. Jean never introduced him to Hot Stuff. He probably wanted to ask for some pointers.” She laughed again, loud enough to cover Charlie’s stricken silence.

“Your boss was mad? At Jean?”

“Big-time. Told her to pack her things and not come back. Major stink.”

His hand tightened around the phone. Jean had lost her job—because of him?

“Oops, gotta go,” Pauline sang. “Sorry I couldn’t tell you anything. What did you say your name was? In case I run into her.”

With a mumbled “thanks” he ended the call, pretending he hadn’t heard her question.

Charlie tossed the phone aside so he could rub his face with both hands. What had he done? He should have put his foot down with Mugsy as soon as she showed up at the resort, instead of being a pushover.

So what if she sold me out to the tabloids? he could have said. I still prefer her to every other girl I’ve ever met.

No one was perfect—least of all Charlie. He’d been lying in bed feeling sorry for himself, when Jean was the one who’d suffered.

Part of him had been clinging to the idea that she was still there at Dolphin Bay, where he could imagine her going about her day. Only now the final tie between them had snapped.

The one thing he felt certain about was that Jean would never forgive him.

And he would never forget her.