Fan Favorite

by Adrienne Gunn

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Thirty-five year old Edie Pepper, a rosé loving, reality TV obsessed copywriter from Chicago, dreams of plucking her soulmate from the depths of Hinge (or Tinder or Bumble). Following yet another dumpster fire of a date, Edie is consoling herself with boxed wine and E! News when Ryan Seacrest drops a bomb: Edie's high school sweetheart has been cast as the lead in America's most beloved reality dating show, The Key, and wow, does he look different. Charlie Bennett, Edie's chubby cheeked, cosplay loving high school boyfriend has had a serious glow up, and is now a world traveling, extreme sports hunk.  
 
Desperate to reclaim her One True Love, Edie DMs the show's conniving producers, who are more than happy to shove Edie headfirst into the competition. But Charlie isn't quite who she remembers, and he’s as desperate to hide his past as Edie is to reveal it. Further complicating matters is Peter Kennedy, The Key's cranky showrunner, who, despite his best efforts, finds himself drawn to Edie's everywoman charm. 
 
Navigating increasingly absurd dates, Edie starts to rethink everything she thought she knew about love. Is the biggest risk she's ever taken about to culminate in disaster? Or is Edie about to secure the Happily Ever After she's always wanted?  

Find out this season on The Key.

Release date: June 24, 2025

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 320

Sample

Edie Pepper was starting over. Again.

“I never do this,” she mumbled through a mess of sloppy kisses. “Seriously, this is like so weird for me.”

“Yeah, sure, of course,” Dave said, tracing his tongue down her jaw. “Me too.”

“Did you have fun tonight?” Edie pulled away from Dave’s licking to evaluate him one more time. He was handsome in the way that white guys in polo shirts with crossbody laptop bags emblazoned with their consulting firm logos were handsome—that is to say, unremarkably, without even an artisanal beard to indicate an interest in urban beekeeping or Proust. Dave was clearly a Dave—someone who loved the Cubs, who drank IPAs as a cornerstone of his personality, who had his fraternity letters tattooed on his ankle (Spring Break ’02!), and who threatened to move to Canada after every episode of Pod Save America, which he listened to on his AirPods during thrice-weekly jogs along the lake.

Edie had been trying to marry a Dave for many years.

“So much fun,” he agreed.

“The great thing about breakups is they give you the opportunity to explore.” Edie smiled as sexily as she could with one eye blinking rapidly to keep in her contact lens. Happy hour had been brief—three glasses of rosé and Dave’s hand inching up her thigh while he educated her on the history of Chicago’s improv scene. But Edie hadn’t thought about Brian once! And now here she was in Dave’s apartment, still not thinking about him. “Like, now that I’m single again, I get to explore you.”

“Explore this, Evie,” Dave growled, placing her hand on his crotch.

“It’s Edie, but that’s cool—Starbucks never gets it right, either.” Edie moved her hand back to his hip. “My mom was forty-four when she had me, hence the old-timey name. I always wanted to be a Kelly.” Dave was busy palming her left boob, pushing and turning it like the lid of a jar that just wouldn’t catch. “Anyway, you learn so much from breakups. Like, for one thing, you can’t control other people,” Edie mused while Dave attempted to wedge her tit up and out of her shirt. She twisted her head horizontally to catch his eye. “You can only control yourself. Know what I mean?”

Suddenly Dave released her, and Edie toppled into a mountain bike that was propped against an exposed brick wall. He took a big step back.

“You know I’m a feminist, right?” he asked, hands in the air.

“Oh! Yeah! Of course,” Edie assured him, rubbing the side of her ass where the bike’s handlebar had skewered her butt cheek. “Me too. Obviously.”

“Cool, cool, cool. I mean, I thought you knew, ’cause I let you pay for the drinks. And the Uber.”

Edie waved her hand. “The bar was so close to your house, it was, like, nothing. Thanks again for setting it up. So many guys don’t want to make an effort.”

“No problem.” Dave grabbed the waistband of Edie’s jeans and pulled her to him again. “Time to sit on my face.”

“Oh… wow… maybe…” Edie placed her hands on Dave’s chest, atop the navy gingham button-down that guys in Chicago reliably wore on first dates. She didn’t want to sit on a face. She wanted to get married. His mouth found her neck again and started sucking. Edie squirmed. There was just so much saliva—it was like being licked by a Saint Bernard.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

“Being a single woman in the internet age is so empowering,” she continued. “Like, yesterday, I didn’t know you, but today, here we are, making this connection.” His tongue slugged hot and wet in her ear and a wave roared against her eardrum. She rose onto her tiptoes to escape. Edie had been dating in her thirties for the past five years—tolerance for a potential husband’s flaws was just, well, part of it. “And I haven’t thought about Brian all night.”

Dave burped hot in her ear. “Who’s Brian?”

“Fate doesn’t bring people together by accident,” Edie continued firmly. “That’s like, the opposite of fate. Accident. Do you think this is fate?”

“What?” Dave asked, pulling her by the wrist toward his bedroom.

“Us.”

“‘Us’ what?” Dave dropped her hand, and they stood in the middle of the living room, staring at each other.

“You and me, ‘us’?” she said, confused.

“Oh shit,” Dave said, running a hand through his short brown hair. “Don’t get the wrong idea—I had a great time at happy hour, but like, this is no big thing. I’m not looking for anything serious.”

Edie’s face went incredulous. “But that’s not what your profile said at all.” She scanned the living room for her purse, finding it tossed on Dave’s game day recliner, the ChapStick and credit cards and ragged Rothy’s she used for commuting spilled across the faded velour. She fished around for her phone and tapped the screen until Dave’s Hinge profile came up. “Look, it says right here: ‘Looking for my partner in crime. Help me get off this app for good! Work hard, play hard.’”

“Okay, sure, but then look at the messages.” Dave took the phone from her and toggled to their exchange. “See, here you said, ‘Hey, Dave, how are you?’ And I said, ‘wsup.’ And you said, ‘Very important question: What’s the best Tom Hanks film?’ And I said, ‘saving private ryan.’ And then you said, ‘You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite Tom Hanks movie. I can tell you have a strong masculine spirit,’ and then I didn’t respond for three days. Then you said, ‘Hey, Dave! How’s it going? Wanna grab a drink sometime?’ and I said, ‘sure, but I have to warn you, I’m easy on the eyes and hard on the pussy,’ and you said, ‘ha ha ha, how’s Tuesday?’” Dave handed the phone back to her with a shrug.

“What?” Edie exclaimed. “I thought you were kidding! You weren’t kidding?”

Dave sighed and looked her up and down. “Aren’t you, like, thirty-eight?”

“I’m thirty-five!” she said, throwing her shoulders back to present herself at her best angle.

“Yeah.” Dave grimaced. “There’s no way to say this without looking like a dick. I’m looking for someone more like twenty-eight.”

Edie shoved Dave’s profile in his face. “You’re thirty-nine!”

Dave shrugged again. “Look, twenty-eight’s the sweet spot—not young enough to be ridiculous, not old enough to be neurotic.” When Edie looked like she might cry, Dave’s voice took on a soothing tone, and he started to rub her arm encouragingly. “I’m sorry, you’re great, but I’m about to turn forty, ya know? I gotta think about getting married. I don’t want to be one of those dads who’s too old to coach Little League ’cause his shoulder or knee is blown out or whatever. I can’t waste time on relationships that aren’t going anywhere.”

“But I want to get married!” Edie exclaimed. “I want all of this!” But as she gestured at Dave’s “all of this,” for a second Edie wasn’t so sure. Did she really want Dave Last-Name-Unknown’s framed Wrigley Field “art” on her living room wall? Was she even capable of smiling-smiling-smiling through dinner while Dave lectured her about the comedic superiority of The Good Place? Could she spend the rest of her life listening to Under the Table and Dreaming, or tolerate being finger-banged like it was a search for lost change? Or had Edie Pepper finally—finally—become too old, too tired, too brokenhearted to give a shit?

“Hey, look, you’re dope. You’re gonna meet someone great.” Dave smiled the smile of a really chill dude. “Sorry about the miscommunication. For real. And I’ll still go down on you. Or you could blow me. Honestly, it’s cool. I’m down for whatever.”

“You, Daayyvvve—” Edie said, drawing out each smarmy syllable of his dumb, stupid name while gathering her shit from around the apartment: coat on the couch, purse on the recliner, kitten heel under the table. She clambered beneath it on her hands and knees and reached for the shoe. “—do not deserve my orgasm.” She jabbed the shoe at him emphatically before accidentally banging her head on the table. “Fuck me!”

“Literally just offered to.” He winked.

“Aargh!” Edie screamed as the heel of her pink Jessica Simpson pump—the one that had been worn so many times a nail stuck out of the stiletto—struck Dave Last-Name-Unknown right in the middle of his forehead.

Bullseye.

Edie got into an Uber bound for the too-big, too-expensive apartment in Roscoe Village she was supposed to be sharing with her ex-boyfriend, Brian, and his two-year-old son, Cayden (every other weekend, alternating holidays, and for six weeks in summer), desperately brooding over this latest dating debacle. Fucking Dave Last-Name-Unknown! Why were men like this? Sure, yes, Edie scrolled past articles about patriarchy and misogyny and emotional labor and the mental load on social media every single day, but sociological research didn’t interest her like the smiling photos of couples and babies and couples and dogs and couples at birthday parties and on New Year’s Eve. She refused to believe that a loving, fulfilling relationship between a man and a woman was impossible. What about George and Amal? Tom and Rita? Barack and Michelle? Harry and Meghan! But keeping hope alive amid all this die-alone energy was getting harder and harder. Edie was at the end of the line, and there were only two options: psychotic optimism or total spinsterhood.

“Hey, girl, hey,” Daryl R. said from the front seat of the Kia as they pulled away from the curb and headed north. He popped his chin at her. “Where you goin’ lookin’ so fine?”

“Sir,” Edie said with her talk-to-the-manager-hand in the air. “No, thank you. I’ve had enough for one night.”

Edie put in her earbuds and sighed as she collapsed against the back seat. Perhaps being a spinster wouldn’t be so terrible. Wasn’t it true that no one added stupid shows like MythBusters to her Netflix watchlist, forever tainting her algorithm? And couldn’t she come home after work and throw her bra on the living room floor and watch all her reality shows with one or two or three glasses of wine without anyone criticizing her choices? And couldn’t Edie order plain cheese pizza and not defend it to anyone or have to compromise and order half mushrooms or onions or olives that never stayed on their half and always contaminated her side? And didn’t she sleep until seven thirty on weekdays while all her coworkers got up at like five a.m. to deal with their children and commutes from the suburbs? And couldn’t she do absolutely whatever she wanted in her very own bathroom, including, but not limited to, staring at her pores in a magnifying mirror or periodically shaving her asshole? And with nothing tying her down like a husband or children, couldn’t she drop everything at a moment’s notice and go on an adventure? Sure, she’d never done that, but the point was, she could do that. Maybe she’d spend Christmas riding elephants in Thailand. The world was her oyster.

Edie poked at her phone until the soothing voice of Oprah filled her ears. “I’m Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time. Taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.”

But who wants to go to Thailand alone?

Edie opened Bumble and started swiping. What was wrong with her? Bad dates, bad boyfriends, bad choice after bad choice—until here she was, buzzed in the back of an Uber at 9:13 p.m. on a Tuesday, reckoning with the fact that if something didn’t change soon, she was absolutely going to die alone, most likely crushed to death by her bookshelf while reaching for a tattered copy of Little Women. She’d be found weeks later, nibbled to the bone by cats. Because surely by then she’d have multiple cats. Left, left, right, left, right, right, left she swiped. Guys who “just wanted to fuck.” Guys in “consensual non-monogamous” relationships. Guys looking for someone “spontaneous” to travel and run with, #fitlife #vegan. Guys in cars. Guys lounging against cars. Guys holding fish. Guys holding a woman’s hand, the rest of her body amputated out of the photo. Guys pulling down the waistband of their jeans to present the top of their pubes. It was exhausting. But she was thirty-five years old, and as Dave had just reminded her, there was literally no time to waste. Suddenly Edie wondered if a thirty-five-year-old woman who’d had the kind of one-night stands she’d had—where a man spooged in her hair with complete disregard for her wash cycle, or who’d penetrated her anally with his thumb after buying her a single Coors Light at a street festival—could even wear a white dress down the aisle. Everything was starting to feel too late too late too late, and the more Edie felt her dreams slipping away, the more frantic she became.

She needed more wine.

“Learn from every mistake,” Oprah said as Edie trudged up the steps to her apartment, “because every experience, particularly your mistakes, are there to teach you and force you into being more of who you are.”

Edie paused and stared at her front door. This apartment had been a real fucking mistake. “If you’re still breathing, you have a second chance,” encouraged Oprah. Edie sighed and unlocked the door, opening it directly into a tower of unpacked moving boxes. She slid inside through a crack. The apartment was like a storage facility, crammed with boxes and bags and unplaced furniture, all of which Edie had fastidiously ignored since the movers dropped them off a month ago. Edie threw her purse on the floor and stripped off her date-night clothes, leaving them in a puddle. She plucked a T-shirt with BRUNCH SO HARD printed across the chest from the couch, put it on, and made her way to the kitchen.

“Hey, Nacho,” she said to her cat Nacho Bell Grande, who was meowing and circling. She dumped food into his bowl and all over the floor.

Edie returned to the living room with her favorite CLASS OF ’03 mug filled to the brim with boxed rosé. She made her way to the brand-new couch that she and Brian had ordered at IKEA on a blissful day in spring when they were drunk on the thirtysomething’s aphrodisiac—Swedish meatballs and plans for the future. He’d held her hand and discussed plates and bowls like they mattered. He’d pinched her butt with a pair of salad tongs. And when they’d reached the display of sleek Swedish bathrooms, he’d unbuckled his belt and pretended to use the fake toilet, which was dumb—so dumb!—but had made her laugh anyway because Brian had this way of making dad jokes seem sweet and original. And when she pulled him away, laughing, he took her in his arms, right there in the middle of the aisle, with all the people rushing to make their own fresh starts swirling around them, and he’d buried his face in her hair and whispered he loved her.

But who wanted to think about that now? Edie threw herself onto the couch and turned on E!. Was it too much to want to love and be loved in return? To have someone to go to dinner with? Someone who’d have to text her back because vows? She gulped some wine and ruminated over what miracle of science had produced Kim, Khloé, and Kylie’s respective asses as they appeared on-screen. Sure, of course Edie wanted an impossibly tiny waist. Of course she wanted to look like she’d shoved balloons down her bra and up her shorts, even if it did seem to make simple locomotion a challenge. But how could she be expected to diet or exercise or get plastic surgery when she had a broken heart?

Edie opened her phone and stared at the last message Brian had sent her: I think Rachel and I are getting back together :/

Edie’s entire life decided by some rudimentary sad face emoji. Like clockwork, the rush of memories flooded Edie’s brain, hot and shameful. There she was at her office, six weeks ago, the fabric of her desk chair itchy under her thighs because it was a Thursday and she’d dressed up for the team meeting. The overwhelming floral scent of Barb’s perfume when Edie burst into the bathroom. The sweat that had engulfed her entire body as she stared at her phone, at that little colon and slash, wondering what the fuck was happening. We are moving in together. We’ve just signed the lease. The ensuing phone call, which he’d waited until the very last ring to pick up, Edie whisper-yelling in the tiny stall. He was sorry, but this was what was best for Cayden. It just happened. Brian had loved his time with Edie. Edie was great. But, you know, Brian had a family.

Now Edie felt the tears coming in hot, so she turned her attention back to the TV, and that’s when, out of nowhere, the answer to all her questions—to where her life was truly headed—appeared.

Because right there on Edie’s TV was her One True Love.

But then the connection dropped, the television went black, and Edie was left rubbing her eyes, wondering if she’d passed out and entered some peculiar dream. But then the screen flickered and he appeared again, inexplicably wearing a FREE TIBET T-shirt. He was standing next to, of all people, Ryan Seacrest. Edie sat up quickly, and the coffee mug of rosé she’d been balancing on her stomach plunged to the floor.

“Hey, guys, I’m Ryan Seacrest and this is E! News Now. The hunt for love is on as twenty of America’s most eligible bachelorettes descend upon Los Angeles to meet Bennett Charles—”

Edie felt dizzy as she crawled toward the TV. Starring in a glossy montage of extreme sports and white-savior philanthropy was her high school boyfriend. It seemed strange that Ryan kept calling him Bennett Charles when his name was Charlie Bennett. And he was nothing like she remembered—her Charlie was shy and nervous and chewed his nails and read fantasy novels and wore weird clothes and was sort of chunky and splotchy all over. But this—this was an unbelievably grown-up, Us Weekly cover version of Charlie. There he was on Edie’s TV, skiing off the top of a mountain, hanging from a rock face by one hand, kayaking down a waterfall, photographing children in Nepal with prayer flags flapping against temple walls, playing an acoustic guitar for tribespeople in Africa, and, with his eyes closed and a beatific expression on his gorgeous face, taking an outdoor shower?

Edie, rising to her knees, was suddenly self-conscious. She adjusted the elastic of her giant underpants, which despite their ample coverage had ridden into her butt crack.

“—activist, adventurer, entrepreneur, amateur photographer, musician, wow, this guy does it all!” Ryan continued. “Bennett, after scandal rocked The Key’s incoming suitor, Wyatt Cash, it looked like this season might be canceled. But then your popular Instagram @Sherpa4U came out of nowhere and landed you the job! Are you ready to find love on this epic ten-week journey?”

Wait, WHAT?

Edie’s eyes went huge, and she put her hand over her mouth.

Charlie Bennett aw-shucks smiled, just a humble everyman with an active CrossFit membership. “Listen, Ryan, I’ve rappelled into active volcanoes, summited the world’s tallest peaks, even ridden a yak across the Nepalese tundra to deliver life-saving medicine to victims of the Tibetan diaspora. And still, nothing’s prepared me for this! Being on The Key is by far the scariest thing I’ve ever done, but I know”—he looked directly into the camera, and Edie felt her stomach flip—“I’m going to find my soulmate on this adventure. And that I’ll give her the Key to My Heart. Forever.”

Their eyes met. He smiled, revealing that one crooked tooth she’d always adored, and suddenly Edie understood that their connection transcended space and time and knew, with absolute certainty, that Charlie Bennett was, and had always been, her One True Love.

“Holy shit.” She sat down hard in the puddle of rosé. “Fuck.”

Edie paced the living room with zero chill, wildly scrolling every article the internet would give her about the new season of The Key.

WILL THE KEY’S BENNETT CHARLES FIND THE ONE?

The People.com headline screamed over a photo of a sexily smirking Charlie Bennett offering the camera a golden key from the palm of his hand. Edie texted her best friend Lauren ALERT ALERT with a link to the article, suddenly stone-cold sober and losing her mind over how in the hell Charlie Bennett—Charlie Bennett!—could be the star of the biggest reality show in America.

It was just so bizarre. Of course, Edie knew all about The Key and the Wyatt Cash scandal. She’d been watching The Key for what, a decade? The Key was America’s most beloved dating show, the only one that really, truly believed in love. One lucky suitor romancing a group of incredibly gorgeous potential love interests in a palatial California mansion. Romantic dates, first kisses straight out of a fairy tale, tear-filled eliminations, incredible around-the-world travel locations, all leading up to one epic proposal. And the suitors were always—always!—chosen from the previous season’s cast. Charlie Bennett had never been on The Key, of that she was certain. Wait—Seacrest had said something about Instagram.

Edie opened the app, her heart beating fast. First of all, Bennett Charles’s account was verified, which was only for celebrities, which made no sense, because if Charlie Bennett was a celebrity, why was Edie just hearing about it now? 400,000+ followers! Edie suddenly felt lightheaded and grasped for the couch, which of course she missed, landing, once again, in the rosé.

“Shit!” she yelped.

Nacho Bell Grande yowled and fled for the kitchen.

Edie scrolled and scrolled through @Sherpa4U’s fantasy-inducing grid, trying to piece together a narrative that would explain how over the past seventeen years, her sweet, nerdy Charlie Bennett had transformed into this snowboarding, paragliding, Key-suitor hunk with the bio “Live the adventure, share the love.” But his Instagram was only five years old and bore no trace of the Charlie Bennett she once knew. Like Athena bursting fully formed from Zeus’s skull, one day Bennett Charles just appeared, topless and grinning, on Instagram. And, damn, he was topless a lot. In between feats of extreme sport, vistas worthy of travel magazines, food porn, and shots posing with Vitaminwater near rock formations (#ad #sponsored) was a half-nude Bennett Charles, a lotus tattoo on his forearm on full display and drool-worthy abs glistening in the sunlight.

Edie swallowed hard. Typically, she found a display of body-ody-ody sort of silly and self-indulgent, but suddenly all she wanted to do for the rest of her life was glissando her fingertips down Charlie Bennett’s torso. After a particularly jarring photo of Charlie standing on a mountain top in hiking boots and a lime-green Borat-style mankini—chest and abs and hips and goddamn those divots on the sides of his ass—Edie, dumbfounded by Charlie’s inconceivable glow-up, foolishly opened her own grid, as if there she would find answers.

Suddenly the selfie she’d taken yesterday with the caption “‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.’—Winston Churchill” seemed not only maudlin and desperate, but also unbelievably pedestrian. There were also a lot of pics of Nacho that she’d thought were totally cute, but now looked more cat-lady tragic. Last week she’d posted a photo of her Moleskine planner and a cup of coffee that she’d Clarendon-filtered for the gods. She’d thought it looked like something out of Reese Witherspoon’s feed. But now Edie was horrified to realize that she was not, in fact, Reese Witherspoon; she was just a regular person with nothing better to share than this picture of a coffee and her planner artfully lit on the kitchen table. It had seventeen likes. And then, of course, there were the pictures of Brian and Cayden that she’d wanted to delete and should’ve deleted, but that were too painful to delete—like erasing them entirely would mean erasing those five months of her life, like they had never happened at all. Those pictures were proof that she wasn’t crazy for believing him when he’d said he loved her.

Edie pulled her shirt over her face in shame.

A brief investigation into The Key’s cast further underscored Edie’s general failings. Not enough gorgeous friends. Not enough bleached-blond hair. Not enough glam portraits of herself smiling, laughing, pouting. Not enough smirking selfies, travelogues, or exercise photos that showed off her hot bod in matching sports bras and leggings. Edie clambered over the moving boxes and ran to the foyer for a good, hard look at herself in her full-length mirror.

Her dark blond hair shot every which way, and suddenly, her T-shirt’s BRUNCH SO HARD slogan seemed like a really stupid thing to wear on one’s chest. Upon inspection, her underwear was unbelievably large and of the blood moon variety, even though she’d finished her period last week. She’d worn it because, typically, the mental image of a man tearing it off was a good deterrent against casual sex. Now this seemed less like a sensible plan (which clearly she was prepared to abandon) and more like another reason, among a myriad of reasons, why Edie Pepper was still single.

Edie turned sideways and lifted her shirt to inspect her belly, sucking it in and sticking it out. Not great. And why were her tits suddenly falling into her armpits?! She looked over her shoulder to examine her wine-covered ass, picking up her cheeks one by one and then dropping them. She stood on her tiptoes to see if that perked them up. It did not. Gah! Back rolls! Over the past few years, Edie had noticed herself developing an adult woman breeding body, but she didn’t think of herself as fat, more like… Midwestern healthy. Hearty enough to survive a long, cold winter. But it occurred to her now that all her friends skipped the breadbasket and the women at her office ate lonely forkfuls of field greens at their desks, maybe with a touch of tuna, and went to places called “barre” and “SoulCycle” after work. Most of them were already married.

Edie leaned closer to the mirror. Her nose wasn’t too big, so there was that. Her eyes were gray and that was… fine? At any rate, it was her smile that she’d always thought captured her inner whimsy. Edie tossed her hair back and smiled her most beautiful smile, and a shock of previously undetected wrinkles exploded across her face. She stumbled back, dazed and wondering, Should I be using a cream for that? She grabbed a pair of tweezers from her purse and started yanking at her eyebrows wildly. For the love of God, what was growing out of her chin? Edie angled her head around for a better look and eventually plucked a black whisker, at least half an inch long, from her jaw. She laid down on the floor and sent Lauren another text: WHERE ARE YOU, THIS IS A CRISIS, I NEED YOU.

It took Edie a moment to decide what to do next, but finally she got up and scoured the entire apartment for a box labeled “Old Shit.” She found it in the bathroom and dug around until she found her senior yearbook under a binder of Sweet Valley High fan fiction she’d written when she was twelve. She was definitely going to need more wine, so she paused in the kitchen to dump a glug of rosé into her mug before settling back on the couch with the yearbook. Edie closed her eyes for a moment, trying to picture Charlie Bennett, but all she could see now was Bennett Charles. The wine and cognitive dissonance were too much—she felt like she was going crazy, like she couldn’t trust her own memories or what was real. Edie took a deep breath and opened the yearbook to the Bs, and there he was, CHARLES BENNETT, sandwiched between Carly Bateman and Daniel Benson. . . .