“Okay,” I said, “you’re getting married on Saturday, and we’re not invited. That’s okay. If you need me to do something to help you with the wedding, I will. You said you planned this all at the last minute. Do you need a photographer or something? A guy I know at work might be able to do it on short notice.”

Blake shook his head. “We’ve got all that covered. Band, photographer, flowers. It’s really going to be nice. I mean, if it happens.”

“If? What do you mean, if? I thought you’d patched it all up with Sam, mended the fences, and rebuilt the bridges.”

Blake started to say something, then stopped. His cheeks flushed again. He almost looked embarrassed.

I’d never seen anything embarrass Blake. And plenty of things over the years should have. But maybe not drinking allowed him to feel shame more acutely.

“Like I said, I was really open with this woman,” he said. “I could tell her anything about myself.”

“What did you tell her that’s a problem?”

“I put my thoughts and feelings about her down in writing. In some letters. If you follow me. It’s actually kind of romantic and old-fashioned. I mean, who writes those kinds of letters anymore? A hell of a lot better than changing your Facebook status to say you’re dating someone. Or to post something on Instagram with some gauzy filter. It was a grand gesture, right?”

I shook my head, trying not to say too much. But I couldn’t help myself. “It would have been grand if they’d been written for your future wife. Yes.”

Blake had always fancied himself something of a romantic. I was never sure he understood what the word really meant. From his point of view, being romantic meant falling in love easily, telling a woman whatever she wanted to hear in the moment, and dealing with the consequences later. In college, he had preferred to communicate with everyone, including his romantic interests, through the phone or face-to-face. He’d hated to text or e-mail. He’d never joined social media. He once showed me a note he wrote to a woman he dated casually in college. The flowery, sentimental language made me feel queasy, but it worked to convince the woman to date him for a month. Blake spun all of these choices as something romantic as well. He occasionally referred to himself as a man born in the wrong time, and he liked to mock my social media habits.

“Well, this woman has those letters. And I don’t.”

All of a sudden, I got it. “Are you saying she’s threatening to show them to Sam?”

Blake’s face unclenched for the first time in a few minutes. “More or less, that’s what she’s told me.”