Okay, and seriously? That dress was to die for. Somebody said later it had come from Bobbles and Lace. Maybe it was the Portsmouth location—we were in the Bobbles in town all the time and we had never seen it there. The shoes, the earrings, all of it. It was so very completely un-Sherri that we didn’t know what to do. We just stared. Then one of us said, “Ohmygod, Sherri, you look amazing,” and soon the rest of us followed suit, the way you do. OMG. OMG. OMG.

Except for Melanie. She had nothing to say; she was nowhere to be found. Later we learned that she and her husband had been at the far end of the lawn, just out of reach of the lights, arguing to beat the band.

There was no band, by the way. Brooke always hired a really good DJ from Boston.

Did we mention that the rest of us, excepting Melanie, and Rebecca, who hadn’t yet arrived, were all standing near the bar when Sherri entered the party? The bartender Brooke hired was, dare we say it, easy on the eyes. She’d stocked the bar with some really good tequila. Like we told you in the beginning, it was the summer of tequila.

The bartender was making an Aperol tequila cocktail, which was a-mazing, even though some of us had never tried elderflower liqueur. We contemplated a round of shots before we got into the cocktails, and the bartender was kind enough to allow one of us to pick up a bottle from the bar while we thought about it. It was Roca Patron Silver, very good, though he was using a Blanco in the cocktail.

Yes, we decided. Yes. Summer was almost over; Brooke’s party came around only once a year; the night was gorgeous; the very air felt full of longing and possibility. We all felt the need to make something happen. Or to let something happen. The DJ was playing something background-y and good vibe-y, something you didn’t specifically notice, nothing you’d dance to yet, but something that echoed the mood exactly. The bartender readied the shot glasses.

And then, like we said, Sherri Griffin walked in, and our mouths fell open. She walked toward us, smiling an unfamiliar smile. Even her walk was different. Not like she was impersonating a hot person, no. Like she had become a hot person. Those of us who were blond may have attributed the change completely to her hair color, but the brunettes among us (there were a few) believed that there was more to it than that.

Sherri greeted us. She accepted our compliments. She watched some of us cast nervous glances at our husbands to see if they were looking at Sherri the way we were looking at Sherri.

Then Sherri said seven words that changed everything that night.