She digs into a tote bag larger than her torso. “That would be great, thank you,” she says, distracted, pulling it onto her lap, sifting through it until—“Eureka!”—she pulls out a black Moleskine notebook, the pages wrinkled and browned from months of coffee spills. She drops the tote onto the floor without a second glance to make sure nothing fell out.

The waiter appears next to the patient bottle. “Ready?” he asks Lena, who nods toward her glass, shoving off any dramatic tasting.

“We ordered a bottle of wine,” I explain. “A little prewedding thing. I hope you’ll join us.”

Sarah’s eyes go wide, like an eighteen-year-old getting into a club for the first time with her brand-new fake ID. “I’d love a glass, thank you!”

Once the long-stemmed goblets are filled, and Lena forces a cheer “to Vows,” which is embarrassing but just corny enough to get a chuckle from Sarah, she opens her notebook, uncaps a pen, and begins.

“First, I’ll say—” Sarah sits stick-straight in her chair, as if a nun slipped a ruler down the back of her wrinkled white button-down. “You’re impossible to google, Eliza Bennet.”

“I know,” I say, shrugging, letting out a short laugh, as if it was so charming of her to bring up. As if it wasn’t intentional. Or, at least, an invaluable coincidence. “What can I say—I moonlight as an eighteenth-century millennial.”

Sarah’s head falls back as she lets out the longest and most unattractive guffaw I’ve ever heard. Something that would come out of a bird as it was being shot down. Lena and I share a look: Did that really come out of her?

“I love that,” she says, once she catches her breath. “So funny.” She scribbles in her notebook, then puts the cap of the pen in her mouth, biting down. “Let’s start with how you met,” she says, teeming with excitement. She either really loves her job or is incredible at faking it.

“I can answer this one,” Lena cuts in. “I introduced them.”

“Oh, I love that.”

Lena takes a long sip, expertly drawing out Sarah’s anticipation. She knows how to keep the attention on her when she’s not the main event. I play along with this game every time Lena brings it up. Yes, Graham and Lena went to Yale together—though they had different classes and different social groups. Yes, on that day she shimmied to my desk to ask me to get drinks, Graham was also at the bar, downing bourbon as if it weren’t a Tuesday. And yes, she did say, “Oh shit, is that Graham Walker,” so loud when she spotted him that we had no choice but to go over. But I would hardly call it an introduction, in the ordinary sense of the word. It was more that we were all in the right place at the right time.