The man at the bar was dressed in a rumpled suit with an orange stain on the elbow. He was definitely a wedding guest, not a golfer. His lips moved, but he didn’t make a sound. He was mouthing numbers, doing some sort of math equation in his head. Hannah was parched and warm. She took a seat on one of the stools next to the man, set her wine down on the bar, and asked for a glass of water.

“David Boreanaz,” she whispered to herself almost inaudibly as he turned to notice her. “Definitely David Boreanaz.”

Phil

In a panic Phil turned his head to the left so the score on the television screen was out of his sight line. He bit his bottom lip hard, puncturing it, and then brought his beer bottle to his mouth to soften the sting. Unless Oregon and California could make miracles in the next five minutes, he was going to lose an unreasonable amount of money, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to watch it happen. He had no interest in watching fans in blue and gold cheering in the stands.

Not only that, Phil knew that the old men sitting at the other end of the stuffy country club bar had been watching him watch the game ever since he’d asked for their permission to change the channel. In his peripheral vision, he’d seen them monitor his reactions to fumbles and first downs. He’d even overheard one of them, an older man who most likely had a hearing problem, shout, “Want to bet on how much he’s about to lose?” The man had been shushed by his friends, who chuckled and stared at Phil, probably hoping he’d turn to them and reveal the amount.

Phil took the bottle away from his lips and set it back on the bar. Much to his surprise, he noticed a woman sitting two stools away. She hadn’t been there a few seconds before, but he certainly recognized her. It was one of the bridesmaids, the bustiest and shortest of the bunch, the one he’d seen in the photomontage on the computer in the lobby.

It was impossible not to notice cleavage in a V-neck dress, Phil thought defensively, as if he could hear Elizabeth chastising him for objectifying this bridesmaid. Really it wasn’t his fault. The bridesmaids’ dresses, while classy, long, and black, dipped strangely low in the front and were quite revealing, unless the woman was built like an ironing board.

The bridesmaid smiled at him. Her eyes were glassy. She was double fisting—a wineglass in one hand and what looked to be a pint glass full of water in the other.

“Tell me that’s a big glass of gin and not water,” Phil said to the bridesmaid, her smile making him confident. He looked closer at her face. She was perspiring, mostly over her lip. She dabbed her face with a cocktail napkin and asked the bartender for a Diet Coke before turning back to him with an embarrassed smile.