“Sure, Uncle Joe.”

Joe kept his eyes on the ground as they walked, fighting his growing smile as they slid into two adjacent seats. They were surrounded by relatives Joe had been avoiding for years and unrecognizable old people whom Joe presumed to be his brother’s coworkers.

There were scattered groups of attractive twentysomethings, whom Joe assumed were Bee’s friends from childhood and college. He wondered which pack Vicki would have been sitting with had he not become her date for the day. He allowed himself to turn and look at her adoringly. She smiled back at him and then suddenly crinkled her nose. “Do you smell that?” she whispered, leaning into Joe’s ear.

“Smell what?” he said, taking the opportunity to place his hand around the back of her chair.

“Something reeks like…food. It smells like…” She paused, sniffing again. “Buffalo sauce. That’s what it is. It’s nauseating.”

Joe chuckled quietly, his face almost touching her hair. He noticed her shoulders relax. She leaned into her seat, which he cradled with his arm.

“It’s awful,” she continued. “It reminds me of the Walton’s prepared chicken section.”

“I think I do smell it,” he lied, as he looked at the side of her face and her tiny hands, which gripped the program. Vicki rocked her head from one shoulder to the other, loosening her joints.

Joe noticed an attractive young man with dark wavy hair sitting farther down their row. Not too tall but broad-shouldered. The man leaned forward and waved at Vicki to get her attention.

“I think you have an admirer,” Joe whispered into Vicki’s ear. She looked over at the waving man and gave him a robotic wave back. Her face was blank. She didn’t smile. Joe felt Vicki’s body tense in her seat.

Before he could ask, she turned back to Joe and whispered, “That’s my friend Hannah’s ex-boyfriend Tom and his new girlfriend. We hate him.”

“We do?” Joe asked, grinning wide enough to reveal the dimple in his right cheek.

“Yes,” Vicki said, matching his smile. “We do. Or, well, more accurately, we resent him and feel abandoned by him. Hannah’s a bridesmaid. She’s the one we’re bringing back to the hotel tonight. You’ll meet her later.”

Joe felt his stomach flip. There would be a later.

Vicki artfully turned her head back to Tom, slowly enough so he wouldn’t notice, and eyed the woman next to him, a petite blonde who stared forward, oblivious. She was a pretty woman with a freckled face. She wore a tailored black dress with a red belt. She sat up straight and held a matching red bag on her lap.

“She’s not that pretty,” Vicki mumbled to herself.

“Oh, come on, now,” Joe said, bringing his head close to her neck. “Let’s not be catty. She looks like a nice young woman.”

“Okay, fine. She’s attractive. But she’s no Hannah,” Vicki said, defensively, without turning her head from Jaime, the guidance counselor. “And I don’t like her shoes.”