“Did you finish packing?” I ask, moseying toward his desk.

“We had an emergency at work,” he says. “But I’ll do it tonight.”

“What are you not going to forget?”

He feigns hesitation. Then winks. “My suit.”

“Because...”

“That would be a catastrophe,” he quotes the line I’ve told him at least eight times since we decided to have a spurious destination wedding. (Though, real destination weddings involve resorts in the Maldives, not... Vermont.)

He pushes away from his desk to make room for me to amble onto his lap and see, firsthand, that I had not, in fact, interrupted a raucous afternoon of KarJenner madness.

“Lena and I are getting drinks with the New York Times person tonight.”

“Right...” The left side of his lip lifts slightly in contempt. Graham does not like Lena. To be honest, most of the time I don’t really like Lena. Being gay, hot, half-Black, and third-generation rich has afforded her the luxury of an extraordinarily bland personality. She’s inherently more interesting than anyone she surrounds herself with, without really being more interesting at all. It’s a disappointing dynamic for anyone who meets her expecting the depth of conversation to verge beyond the surface. Which is the basis of most of Graham’s disdain. Though it’s not as if he’s personally profound himself.

“Are you sure I don’t need to be there?” he asks.

When I returned Sarah Keens’s call last night and she asked for this very last-minute meeting to “get to know us” she did request we both attend—spouting something about how meeting both of us in person helps shape the tone of the article or something. I didn’t see why this preinterview was necessary—they had all our information from the application, and the real meat of the story was going to be the ceremony. But she insisted and I knew Graham’s aversion toward Sarah’s perceived intrusion would be blatantly obvious on his overly emotive face, so I told her he was traveling—“So close to the wedding?” she asked, disapproving. “Boys will be boys!” I responded, a statement that puts a virtual end to any male criticism despite being a male criticism in itself. And then he was cordially uninvited, so Lena took his place.

Plus, Lena had been begging me to get dinner all week—despite seeing me at work every single day—so I was killing two birds with one 2003 vintage.

“If she has any questions for you, I’m sure she’ll find you at the wedding,” I say. “I think Lena’s going to ask at dinner if she can bring her new girlfriend.”

“She’s dating someone?”

“Apparently. She described herself as smitten and you know how infrequently Lena uses fluff words.”