Harrison/Cyndi stops a foot away from us and firmly shakes Graham’s hand, then takes mine and puts it between his. The most professional version of a hug this man is allowed to give. “We are just so thrilled to be even the smallest part of your special day,” he says, holding just a second too long before freeing my fingers. The worst part is that he means it. He will genuinely be thinking about us for the next five days, smiling at the thought of our cocktail parties and cake towers and handwritten vows. But we won’t think about him again after this moment. Hell, I’ve met him at least five times and I can’t even remember his fucking name. That’s how much space this man occupies in my mind.

From the corner of my eye, I catch one of Harrison/Cyndi’s Men in Black flunkies pulling my white garment bag out of the trunk like it’s a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

“Oh, that one stays with me,” I say pleasantly, trying to sound nonchalant and not like a worker at Williams Sonoma whispering they break it they buy it to the mother whose children are playing hide-and-seek in the glassware section. “This one gets its own seat,” I joke, overcompensating, of course, as they place the white bag in my outstretched arms.

This dress cost more than they make in a year, and I love every single fucking stitch.

I had the dress picked out before Graham and I even started officially dating—a silk masterpiece with a high neck and a back so low no underwear is possible. It was the kind of dress that looks like a cheap Zara slip if you have even one extra pound on your waist. But me, right now, the only thing protruding from the silk will be my hip bones, wiry and ossified, precisely what the dress was made to highlight. Just what God would want, right?

The week after Graham proposed, Lena made an appointment at the boutique in Greenwich Village—where Emmy Rossum is purported to have browsed before her nuptials—and we bought the dress. I didn’t try it on in the moment because I knew it was fruitless. My bingeing was back and strong, and it wasn’t until buying this dress that I realized I needed to supplement my binges with something that could get me to the skin and bones I was expected to look like at my wedding. That night, after Lena and I celebrated with martinis and veggie burgers (in lettuce wraps, not buns, obviously), I stabbed my tonsils with a finger to throw up for the first time.