All the women in the room laugh, to make Reed feel less bad about offending us, in that charming way we care about other people’s emotions before our own. I look up at Graham, who’s smiling but cautiously, like concern might be bubbling in him the same way it was in me.

“And I knew the second I saw her that she looked familiar. I told her that—I said I feel like we’ve met before. I was convinced we had. I mean, look at her—” All our guests turned toward me, looking me up and down. I smiled back believably, but it was only believable because just two people there knew me well enough to read through it. “She doesn’t exactly have a face you forget,” Reed continued, once he got everyone’s attention again. I felt myself get rigid in Graham’s arm. Was this really going to happen here? At my engagement party? The gig was going to be up after all this? I was so close.

“I started racking my brain, you know, trying to come up with places we would have met. Did we grow up together? No, she’s from Rhode Island, we’re from Vermont. What about college? No, she went to Brown, we went to Yale. That semester we studied in Spain? No, she was in London. Then I had the sudden panic that, well...maybe we’d hooked up...” The room exploded in guffaws loud enough to break the stained glass windows of the church behind us. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I felt like Graham’s hand on my waist was getting too tight, my dress was shrinking. If there was ever a moment in my five-year plan that I wanted to run, this was it.

“I’m kidding,” Reed continued, laughing, his hands out to the crowd apologetically. “We never hooked up. Don’t worry. Wouldn’t want to start a rumor here—”

“—she’s too good for you,” Graham yelled, squeezing me tighter against him as the crowd bloomed in laughter again. Talking about me like I wasn’t standing right next to him. Like every time he wobbled in his buzzed happiness, I wasn’t the one keeping him stable.

I kept a smile plastered on my face like I thought this was charming. Just boys being boys, and all that other bullshit. I scanned the crowd and saw Veronica, still staring at her husband with stars in her eyes. There were Jim and Ellis, slapping their knees and taking a sip of scotch from the old boys’ club. There were my coworkers, by the bar, laughing only because they were grateful for a break from talking to one another.