The 2008 sauv blanc is taunting me in the glass at my seat. It is making my head spin, I want it so badly. Here, in this house with these people, I can’t outwardly be on my wedding diet. I’m not about to eat a grilled cheese with French fries, but I have to eat what I am served. With my friends in New York, everyone knows you can say the words wellness or gluten free or intermittent fasting and it means you’re dieting in one of the many socially acceptable capacities. Here, food is the biggest topic of judgment. If they knew the diet I’m on, the amount of restricting and bingeing and puking I do daily, Veronica and Cheryl would look at me with their heads tilted, small smiles escaping their lined lips—How sad for you that to look like us you need to diet. But if I ate whatever I wanted, gave in to every salty or sweet craving my mouth watered for, then I’d get the Oh, you’re having another one? or Didn’t you just eat? or Are you sure you need that?

So I drink the wine. And, yes, Cheryl, I do fucking need it.

Veronica enters a few seconds behind Reed, always. An eighteenth-century tradition they don’t even realize they’re following. She’s tall and thin and is the kind of put together that probably made her look thirty-five when she was twenty-two, a trait that comes with family money. Sometimes when I look at her, I think about how in different circumstances—in a different life—we probably could be friends. She was the first family member I met. We got a bottle of rosé at Café Cluny when Graham and I first realized this was serious; that we were moving fast and on the same page about it. We sat at a table outside one cool spring afternoon, when the temperature was chilly but the sun was hot like summer on your face. Every few minutes I’d bring the glass to my lips and let the liquid sit there, cold and sweet, barely seeping through into my mouth. Then I’d put it down.

“Do you not like the wine?” she’d asked when her glass was empty and mine was still full. “We can get a different bottle.”

“I love it!” I said before she could call the waiter over. “This is my second glass!” I lied. “You’ve got to catch up.” She blushed as I refilled her.

Then refilled it again. And again.

When she was drunk enough—one bottle had turned into two and it might as well have been an IV straight to her head—she leaned in, wobbly and giggly, like a happy child. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “You really don’t.”

“Do what?” I asked, charmed by her drunkenness.