I get Leanne’s uncharacteristically Cliffordesque e-mail as I’m unlocking my mailbox and there, as if she summoned it, is a heavy cream envelope with calligraphy boasting my new address, the first piece of non-forwarded mail I’ve gotten here.

I tear it open while I’m waiting for the elevator.

It’s a thick piece of cardstock with a small, classy watercolor flower painted in the corner.

Save the Date for Dylan and Charles’s Wedding Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Well, it looks like I might get a chance to become the world’s least classy wedding guest—per my boss’s directive—sooner than I expected. The date I’m saving is apparently three months from now.

I stare at it incredulously. When Jordan and I were planning our wedding, it was absolutely impossible to find any venue in New York less than eighteen months out. Otherwise—and it pains me to think this now—we might have been married already.

Not to mention, I had actually priced out the Garden and, I mean, insert a cartoonish whistle here. Granted, Dylan and Charles are paying for it on two lawyers’ salaries and not those of a matchmaking copywriter and a holistic lifestyle coach. (And no, the irony of two people whose jobs were to make other people’s lives feel fulfilled, while their own were falling apart, doesn’t escape me.)

I’m too curious not to take out my phone and text Dylan right away.

Got your Save the Date. How did you manage to get a date so close?

He texts back almost right away. There was a cancellation!

I can practically hear his glee at whatever poor couple’s misfortune has led to a canceled wedding. Which is very unlike Dylan, but weddings do strange things to good people.

Can’t wait.

It’s a lie and it isn’t. I want to see my best friend marry the man of his dreams. But the thought of attending a wedding right now is still exhausting and I can’t see how that could really change in three months. I can’t even imagine having a plus-one to bring, unless . . .

My mind flashes to Bree for a moment. I picture her on my arm, beautiful and funny, making snarky references to the Undersea wedding scene while the string quartet starts up Pachelbel’s Canon.

But Bree most likely won’t even be in my life at that point. While, on the other hand, some people seem destined to haunt it for all eternity.

I’m at my own door now and glance over at the closed door down the hallway.

Maybe I should just ask Zoey to be my plus-one. The way things are going, she’ll probably already be there anyway as Charles’s maid of honor.

* * *