Lachelle’s eyes widen comically. “I hope you only met him in public,” she says, clearly remembering the day I’d been headed to the Promenade. “That’d be terrible, having you get murdered by an investment banker on my conscience. A friend of mine went out with one who wanted her to dress up like that blue woman from the comic book movies. He was going to pay for her to get painted all over, scales and shit.”

“He’s not an investment banker. He’s a quant.”

“I don’t know what that is, but he’s probably still got something wrong with him.” She takes a drink of her martini. She’s wearing a gauzy black cape and a pair of beaded hoop earrings. I suddenly feel as if I’m on a field trip and she’s the chaperone.

“He doesn’t. He’s a nice guy. A really nice guy.”

A nice guy with a great face and terrific shoulders and a completely frank way of dealing with menstrual cramps. A nice guy whose feelings I hurt.

A nice guy who hurt mine.

“Oh?” I can see that question mark expand—a big, metallic party balloon, hanging right over our heads.

I take another sip of my cocktail. I’m buzzy in my joints, something that only ever happens when I have liquor. I set it down and push it away. I know when I’ve had enough, and the last thing I need is to go home to drunk moping. Still, I can feel the way it’s loosened my tongue, my inhibitions.

“We had a fight.”

Lachelle stares at me. “What do you mean, you had a fight?”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Cecelia says, swooping in and taking one of the fake-bacon-wrapped water chestnuts from the plate in front of Lachelle.

She groans in satisfaction. “I keep forgetting to eat,” she says.

“Meg was telling me about this fight she had with a guy she’s dating.”

Cecelia’s stare somehow makes me feel more embarrassed, enough that I don’t even bother correcting Lachelle again. I mean, okay, I haven’t dated much since I started the planner business, but Cecelia’s looking at me as though I’ve torn off my nun’s habit.

But then she says, in almost exactly the same tone as Lachelle, “You had a fight?”

I nod miserably, silently running through its worst moments all over again. That awful thing I’d said to Reid, that look in his eyes. That terrible splash of liquid on his skin. The only letters that have come easy to me this week are s, o, r, y. I sincerely hope my clients aren’t on the lookout for hidden apologies that have nothing to do with them.