“Ugh. I can’t believe he sent those,” I groan.

Sophie laughs and briefly zooms in on the disastrous photo before swiping toward the next one. The final few shots show off my ring. I can’t help but notice a slight glisten of fluid smudged alongside the back of my hand. I must have wiped at my mouth. Of course, there are traces of vomit in these photos—that’s just my luck. Or maybe it’s karma.

“I’m going to post some of these on Facebook to share the good news,” Blake texts.

Shit.

“Wait!” I write back.

We’re about to move into dangerously murky waters. Once Blake announces our engagement, it’s all but guaranteed that his friends and family are going to look me up online. I can pretend all I want that the old engagement announcement was Jess’s, but there are too many other red flags: the slew of wedding blogs that covered my engagement; the Elle story referencing my fiancé; the hundred thousand Brooklyn Jewels followers who already think I’m engaged, and who won’t react smoothly to a new engagement announcement. Simply put, the more public Blake and I get, the more difficult it will be to hide the truth from him.

“I thought you’d be all over posting them, huh? Miss Instagram Photographer,” he teases.

“What does he want?” Sophie asks.

“Wait for me to get there?” I text.

“Sure. When?” he replies.

My stomach sinks.

“I could come over now?”

“Cool, see you soon.”

I run my hands through my hair and groan. “I’m off to Blake’s to post our engagement announcement, I guess. I’ll see you later, if I survive.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Sophie admonishes.

“The girl got engaged to a near stranger while vomiting off the side of a yacht,” Liv says, cracking up. “What else would you expect?”

“Not funny!” I exclaim, gathering my purse and heading out the door. “Not funny at all.”

It takes almost an hour on the Q train to get from Park Slope to the Upper East Side, and I spend every minute running through plays in my head. Is there any wording I could suggest to Blake for him use in his announcement that would deflect suspicion? Is there any cover story plausible enough to explain away the truth? There’s no caption I could use that looks appropriately excited for Blake’s friends and family, while remaining business-as-usual to my own followers; no matter what I say, it’ll look off to somebody. I Google myself, just to see what pops up in the top results. At first, I exhale: there’s a link to Brooklyn Jewels’s site, then my Instagram, then my LinkedIn. But sure enough, farther down the first page, there’s a link to that Elle story. Could I reach out to the editor and have it pulled down? No, she wouldn’t do that.