Hannah threw her head back, furious at the unspoken betrayal. Without Jackie’s dissent, Dawn was able to lead the weary group to two more bars, where she flirted with men in baseball caps, leaving Hannah responsible for the overintoxicated Bee, who could only murmur phrases like “Do you think Matt and I are gonna get divorced?” and “Do you think he’ll cheat on me?”

Hannah tried to reason with Dawn, who had as much energy at 11:00 p.m. as she’d had five hours earlier, when the group started drinking.

“Dawn,” Hannah said, trying to be as polite as possible, “I think Bee’s going to get sick. I think we should take her back to the hotel.”

“Baby,” Dawn said, clapping twice in front of Bee’s wilting face, “you’ve got to boot and rally!”

“Can I be honest with you?” Dawn yelled, this time directing her commentary to Hannah. “This is one of Bee’s last nights of freedom. She’s not going to be happy if she wakes up and finds out that she was in bed by midnight.”

It was another eighty minutes before Dawn allowed the group to return to the hotel. And that was only because Bee had vomited on herself at the bar—booting without showing any signs of rallying.

Dawn had sprinted out of the club to find a cab as soon as Bee became a spectacle. Lisa, the shy bridesmaid, had run behind her, as Dawn yelled over her back to Hannah, “Good luck! She’s all yours!”

It had taken Hannah twenty minutes to clean up Bee’s mess and get her out of the bar. Once they were outside, Hannah held Bee’s waist and rubbed her back as she helped the bride-to-be vomit into an Atlantic City storm drain. When Hannah was confident that Bee had emptied her stomach, she flagged down a cab and helped Bee get in.

The driver banged his head against the back of his seat when he saw Bee’s queasy face in his rearview mirror. “She better not puke,” he said. “If you puke, it’s two hundred dollars extra.”

“She won’t,” Hannah said, as Bee swallowed her saliva and grimaced.

Bee barely made it through the ride. She vomited between Hannah’s feet as soon as they stepped out of the cab and then leaned in so Hannah could give her a hug.

Hannah held her tight, ignoring the mess between her shoes, and then led Bee slowly through the hotel lobby, which was more crowded after midnight than Hannah would have expected, even for a casino town. Not wanting to lose sight of the sweater Bee had been wearing, which was cashmere and probably expensive, Hannah kept the vomit-soaked cardigan balled up in her left hand. She used her right hand to clutch Bee’s s right elbow, first steadying her and then leading her past the front desk and toward the elevator.

After a few steps, Bee’s tube top fell down.

It was probably loose, Hannah assumed, because Bee had lost weight in preparation for the wedding. Hannah clenched her teeth as the spectators gasped. Bee had gone braless for the night, and with the tube top around her stomach, all was revealed. Three college-age men in the hotel lobby gawked at the topless woman in front of them.