“Do you want me to come tomorrow? To the caterer?” Graham asks as we round the bend away from the house toward the passage to the lake. His arm was wrapped around my shoulders in that way it was the first time.

“If you want,” I say, knowing he wouldn’t. I didn’t want him there either way. He was so uninvolved in the whole planning process that when he decides to show up, it just confuses things. It’s like trying to have an opinion on something you’ve never thought about before in your entire life. “But I think your mom and I have it handled if you want to make other plans.”

“I think the guys start arriving around noon, so I want to be around when they get here.”

“Then you should stay,” I say, as if this entire conversation wasn’t just an excuse to get me to allow him to hang out with his friends guilt free. They’d be drunk before I got home from the meeting, I knew it. They didn’t have anything to say to each other, so instead they drink to fill the silence. I’m really looking forward to walking into that room.

I spin around and walk backwards a few feet in front of him, watching him watch me.

“We’re almost there,” I say, smiling wryly.

He adjusts himself and continues walking, watching me like a bear stalking its prey.

I see the small patch of poisonous berries—the red kind that Graham reminded me three times never to eat, as if I had a penchant for plucking food from the wild and sticking it into my fucking mouth. Graham’s favorite tree was three feet away from the berry bush. “Go for a walk” was Graham speak for “Let’s have sex at my favorite tree.” I had a favorite tree growing up, too, but this was never something I imagined doing against it.

As we approached the tree, I lifted the back of my coat and dress so my thong was visible and I let him slap my bare ass so hard I was sure it would bruise.

The tree had formed around the corroded stump of another tree and the way the tree’s bark enveloped the stump made it look like an asshole. Like a naked butt was squatting. Graham really knows how to get a girl in the mood.

Graham picks me up and I wrap my legs around his waist until he bangs me up against the tree, pulling at his belt buckle like if this didn’t happen right now he’d explode.