She laughed, bumping his shoulder on her way to the bench. The gravel court was on the grounds of a hotel much less grand than the one they had left, surrounded by overfull bushes of pink flowers. In the afternoon sun, it looked like an oil painting, or maybe a scene from an old French movie.

“Remind me what time your flight is tomorrow?” she asked Paul, reaching into her tote bag to fish out her sunglasses.

“I would check, but I’m not allowed to turn on my phone.” He winked, standing up to refill their glasses of sparkling water.

“Right, duh,” she corrected.

It was a rule she had implemented after about two dozen abusive WhatsApp messages from Guy.

“But I know Dev and Bee are on my flight.” He took a long sip of his water. “So I’m sure they’ll catch me up.”

“I told Dev you don’t want to talk about it,” Danial called over from the court. “He’s not going to bother you with wedding stuff.”

“Don’t you love to see men be emotionally intelligent?” Paul laughed.

“That’ll go straight to his head.” Alex joined Paul at the high-top table with their water glasses.

“I am very modest about my emotional intelligence.” Danial smiled, scoping out his next throw with typical intensity.

Alex placed a cupped hand over her eyes, observing him. In the whirlwind of the past two days, Danial had risen to the occasion with spectacular flourish. He’d started by sitting down with Naomi and Edward to review the spreadsheet of to-dos he’d put together, sorting the tasks he could handle from the ones only they could execute. He’d reassured Naomi in particular that it would all be okay—that things would be uncomfortable for a bit, but it was all essential to ensuring their son lived a happy and healthy life. He’d also started a rather terse email thread with Guy, providing a buffer for anything they might need to communicate about until a lawyer could be brought up to speed.

“It doesn’t even matter now,” Paul said, peeling the label from his bottle of sparkling water. “But the hotel staff somehow magically found my caftan, now that it can no longer be used to humiliate a Norwegian man.”

“It absolutely does matter,” Alex corrected, allowing him the self-harmful comment while pivoting. “We need to find somewhere completely fabulous to wear it.”

Paul looked at her with a conspiratorial glint in his eye.

“Maybe at your wedding?”

“Paul—” Danial called out across the court, a faux sternness in his voice.

“Listen, I didn’t say to whom,” he called back, keeping his tone perfectly mercurial. “I’m still pulling for some of those guys from the Marital Mindset.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “The Marital Mindset guys are not the villains of my story, they’re my fellow victims.”