Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(89)

And Adrian…he’d move on. He’d be fine in another relationship, one that was more manageable and predictable. I hoped he got that. I really did. I loved him enough to want him to be happy.

Aaaaand I was also petty enough to hope their sex wasn’t as good as ours—but I digress.

Brent came up from the shoreline looking at his phone. “Hey, did you know #WheresVanessaPrice is trending on Twitter?”

I snorted. “Doesn’t surprise me. I made a dramatic exit. And good. It means the videos will get more views when they finally get posted.”

He gave me a sorry look. “You know, if you want, I could come with you somewhere after the wedding. We could go on an adventure. Maybe someplace exotic that has those really aggressive monkeys that snatch your food and shit everywhere?”

I laughed dryly.

“I’m serious, Vanessa. This funk you’re in is gross. You need something to look forward to.”

I shook my head. “Nope. I’m gearing up to be the hermit who lives on Drake’s island. The crazy braless American who day drinks and kidnaps all the baby goats.”

Laird made a face. “I think we already have one of those.” He hoisted his camera. “Ready?”

Brent sat on a barstool and went back to looking at his phone.

I nodded. “Ready.”

I put my fake smile on first. Then I turned to face the camera. “Hi, all! Well, I made it! I’m at the wedding. You guys would not believe this guest list. The Weeknd showed up on a Jet Ski this morning and Anthony Hopkins is over there.” I leaned in. “I’m gonna see if I can get him to do the fava bean line from The Silence of the Lambs later. It’s been an amazing couple of—”

“Vanessa! Oh my God! Chrissy Teigen just mentioned you on Twitter!”

I paused in my monologue to look at Brent. “Really? For what?”

Getting mentioned by a celebrity wasn’t exactly unheard of for me, but I didn’t know her.

Brent was staring at his phone and he didn’t answer.

“Well? What did she say?”

“Oh my God. Oh my God oh my God oh my God.”

He jumped off his stool and shoved his phone into my hand. “LOOK!”

I read the tweet.

Can someone please put this poor man out of his misery and tell him where to find Vanessa Price?



She’d used the Where’s Vanessa Price hashtag and retweeted an article titled “This Man Is Searching the Globe for His Lost Love and You Won’t Believe Why!”

My soul. Left. My body.

I clicked on the article and held my breath, hoping to God it wasn’t Monett Missouri Guy.

It wasn’t.

Adrian Copeland is on a worldwide quest to find the woman who got away—and chances are you know who she is.

For weeks famous YouTuber Vanessa Price had been teasing her viewers with stories of a handsome, mysterious love interest. We now know this man is a prestigious St. Paul attorney who won’t stop until he finds her.

Price is known for her passionate pursuit for a cure to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS, the disease that inspired the Ice Bucket Challenge of 2014.

Price lost her sister to the illness and in a recent final farewell video, Price revealed she may have the early-onset symptoms of the disease. She announced that she was shutting down her popular channel, Social Butterfly, and in a heart-wrenching goodbye, alluded that her potential diagnosis was too much for her beau, Adrian, and that she was leaving him.

According to Copeland, they had a disagreement about her choosing to not seek treatment and the couple broke up.

“I made a horrible mistake, and I lost the love of my life,” Copeland said in a viral video he made three weeks ago, pleading for information on her whereabouts.

Copeland, who is in the process of adopting Price’s infant niece, said he struggled with a lifelong fear of flying and had to spend a month in intensive therapy to overcome his phobia and deal with the feelings about Price’s potential diagnosis. He’s since followed leads all over the globe, baby in tow, in his attempt to locate Price, who has gone underground. We can’t say if she knows he’s looking, but Copeland has made one thing very clear:

“I’ll never stop looking. And when I find her, I’m spending the rest of her life letting her know how much I love her.”



“Oh my God…” I breathed.

“How the fuck did you not know about this until just now?” Brent said to the side of my face.

I looked at him wide-eyed. “I’m on a social media hiatus, and when I’m not, I get like two million notifications a day! It’s like a flock of seagulls squawking at me constantly over half a dozen different social media networks! I ignore it!! Why didn’t he call you to look for me? You knew where I was!”

“I blocked him in solidarity! He’s been dead to me since New Year’s!”

“Didn’t Dad call you?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t answer! Who answers when Dad calls???”

Grace. Adrian was adopting Grace.

I did a laugh-cry as I felt around my dress for nonexistent pockets, searching frantically for a phone that I hadn’t even charged in a week. “My phone. I need my phone!”

Brent gestured dramatically to my hand. “You’re holding mine! Use mine!”