It strikes me that I don’t. The first time Blake and I went out for a nice dinner, the dessert menu arrived and he waved it away. He explained that he’s not much of a sweets person. I was suddenly struck by how terrible it would be to live a life with a guy who only watches me scarf down cakes and pies and sundaes on my own.

“He’s open to anything,” I bluff. “He says he trusts me to pick whichever one I like the most.”

“Which is . . . ?” the waiter prompts.

I look to Raj to back me up on this, but he simply shrugs.

“Whatever you want,” he says.

This is the first time I’ve made a wedding decision with a guy by my side. True, he’s just a guy friend, not my fiancé, but still. The significance of the moment strikes me in a bittersweet way. Not for the first time, I feel a pang of sadness. If my life had played out differently, I’d have a real partner to plan this with. Maybe he would groan over the difference between the cardstock weights on invitations, or maybe he would insist on an old-fashioned church wedding that’s totally not my style, or maybe his mother would intervene and throw a fit if we didn’t invite all twenty members of her book club, plus their husbands. But regardless of how the process went, it’d be a joint undertaking. Making these decisions entirely on my own feels wrong.

“The chocolate, I guess,” I tell the waiter. “It was really good.”

It only occurs to me hours later, after Raj and I have left Reynard’s, that Blake specifically told me during that first dinner date that he doesn’t even like chocolate.

• Chapter 18 •

I realize that something is off on Saturday morning. Usually, on weekends when neither of us has anything pressing to do, we laze around in bed. If there’s one thing I have to give Blake credit for, it’s this: he is an excellent cuddler. His skin is warm, his arms wrap firmly around me in all the right places, and he nuzzles kisses onto the top of my head that make my entire body feel like it’s glowing with comfort. But this Saturday, when I drift awake, he’s tensely hunched over his phone. There’s a gulf of space between us. On instinct, I roll toward him.

“Morning,” I mumble, pressing my cheek against his thigh.

That’s when I realize he’s wearing chinos. I feel so naked. He absentmindedly rubs my back.

“Hi,” he says.

“Up already?” I ask, confused.

“Yeah, couldn’t sleep,” he says.

He turns fully toward me on the bed and smiles. “Hey, there’s something I’d like to do today.”

“What is it?” I ask, suddenly suspicious.

He gives me a coy grin. “It’s a surprise. I wanna take you somewhere.”