He’s looking at me with that stern face, those sad eyes, and I think I could say a lot of things. I could say, I was talking about myself; it was always a mistake for me to do weddings. This is an old habit. Sometimes I don’t always know when I’m doing it. I didn’t mean for it to come out in your program the way it did. You and Avery were a nice couple.

I can almost see it, how it would go. I’d tell his triple-take face and he’d know I was lying about half of it, but he’s too reserved or too uptight to press, and maybe I don’t seem all that reserved or uptight to him, but still. Still, I know how that goes. I know how easy it is to avoid saying anything important at all. I can already see, by the way he holds his jaw—his ears seem to sit higher with the tension—that he came to ask me this question once and once only, and he’ll give me one of those nods (this one not so approving) before he leaves. I’ll close up and go home. I’ll walk in the front door and I’ll tell Sibby, You will not believe what happened today—

No, that’s not right. I won’t tell Sibby, because Sibby barely acknowledges that I exist for anything other than half of rent and utilities anymore. Instead I’ll tell Reid one of those lies and he’ll leave and I’ll stare down at until my eyes blur, worrying about my unruly hands and my encroaching deadline and my missing inspiration. I’ll wait here until I’m reasonably sure Sibby’s gone to her room for the night and then I’ll go home, and I’ll still feel all the things I felt before Reid walked through that door, be-ing myself into a personal and professional crisis while I wait to find out whether this man is going to spread the word about what I’ve done.

So instead I unclasp my hands and pick up the program. I don’t think I could meet his eyes for this, so I keep focused on the letters, the ones only he was able to see. The pattern, the code. The mistake.

“How about I buy you a coffee and we can talk about it?”

We go to a slick espresso bar on the corner of Fifth and Berkeley. There’s one closer, only a block and a half from the shop, but it closes earlier and it’s also one of the places in the neighborhood where I regularly meet clients, so I’d decided that even though it would mean a longer awkward walk, there’d at least be less of a chance someone would overhear whatever conversation Reid and I are about to have.