“Agreed.” Joey placed her hand over her best friend’s. They weren’t touchy-feely friends, but it felt important to convey her solidarity. Joey knew what they were both thinking, how unfair it was that Siya’s mom had recently lost dexterity in both her hands due to her MS diagnosis. Joey found it almost inconceivable to imagine Siya’s warm, giving mother doing something other than puttering around her kitchen.

Joey could feel Siya’s we-can-stop-holding-hands telepathy so Joey lifted her hand and checked her phone. She saw a text from an unknown number that was now wholly known to her, but that she hadn’t yet added to her contacts. Her stomach somersaulted. Can I see you again tomorrow, Jonesey? It was unfair of me to come to Florida before your wedding, I realize that now. I’m sorry. I’m also sorry for how many times I’m telling you I’m sorry. But now that you know everything, we really need to talk again, don’t you think?

“What?” asked Siya. Joey’s fingers hovered over the phone. It could all slip so easily out to Siya, but Joey wasn’t ready for Siya’s judgment, however well meaning.

“Nothing,” she said, maybe too brightly.

Joey shot off a quick text in reply. Tomorrow at 9am?

She couldn’t see Leo again before she told Grant. Which meant she had to tell Grant. Tonight.

Joey slid down her silver pouf and smoothed her olive-green silk midi skirt so she didn’t flash all her guests. She’d found it for a steal at a local boutique going out of business and paired it with a simple chunky cream sweater, which perhaps wasn’t weather-appropriate for August in Florida, but the air conditioner was on full blast. Joey adjusted her three gold coin necklaces so the coins all lined up uniformly in the center of her chest. She and Grant had discovered them at an antiques fair in Sarasota, from a dealer who’d told them an elaborate, questionably true, but nonetheless romantic story about each. Grant had surprised Joey for Valentine’s Day, both with his thoughtfulness and for knowing her taste, by having the coins strung on thin gold chains of varying lengths.

“Jo, why are you being so secretive? Who were you texting?” asked Siya, and Joey was quiet, at a loss for a response.

A welcomed distraction—somewhat—was Lily now striding across the mahogany wood, calling, “Siiiiiiiiya!” Joey’s sister wore her Power Lily jaw clench, a rose crushed-velvet jumpsuit, and mules with big, black, furry straps that resembled Chia Pets. She looked like some stern but sultry headmistress roused out of bed at an all-girls boarding school. Her hair ran in copper crimps to her waist. She had twenty necklaces draped in her cleavage, but they were all so delicate it was like gold and diamond webbing.