Sibby looks up from the sketches, her eyes bright and her grin matching mine. “Yes,” she says. “That’s exactly it. Whimsical! Isn’t this whimsical, Eli?”

“Yes?” Elijah says from beside her, looking back and forth between us. I’m reasonably sure he doesn’t really know why anything he’s looking at qualifies as “whimsical,” but he looks happy nonetheless, as he has through every one of the preparations having to do with his wedding to Sibby.

Over the last year and a half or so, as Sibby and I have worked on the new version of our friendship we found ourselves in after that day she came back to the apartment, part of the work we’ve had to do—in addition to the long, sometimes painful conversations, in addition to establishing new routines and new traditions—is to learn about the parts of each other’s lives we missed during the time we weren’t close. For me, that’s included getting to know Elijah better, and the best part about that is how much I like him, and in a way that’s more than “at least he picks up after himself” or “at least he doesn’t eat any of your food out of the fridge without asking.” He’s soft-spoken, content to let Sibby shine, but he’s got a sly sense of humor and good taste in music, and whenever I go over to their place to watch The Bachelorette, he makes the popcorn.

“Now on the program,” I say, moving that to the center, “I think with the metallic accents you’ve chosen for the illustrations, you should keep the information to a minimum. Your names, your parents’ names, the—”

“Your name here, right?” Sibby says, cutting me off. She taps her finger beneath the lettering that spells out Wedding Party.

“Right,” I say, looking up at her and smiling. She moves her hand from the program to squeeze mine briefly, her eyes welling with tears. I’ve seen it before, of course, emotional brides—those flare-ups of sentiment or stress or simple, pure happiness. But with Sibby I know the emotion of this moment is different. It’s taken us a while, after all, to get here. A new version of being best friends, one that’s not so rooted in our past—and past patterns—together.

I squeeze her hand back and go over a few more elements of the job, offer some suggestions for some additional changes. Then I stand, the same as I would have were this any old wedding job. It was always a good idea to step away for a few minutes, to give the clients some time to really see the work, without my presence looming.