She pressed the elevator button for the twelfth floor and rested against the elevator’s citrine-lacquered side, imagining how Grant would laugh over the old man’s latest tirade, the Episode of the Encroaching Tree. In their yearlong residency at Palmetto Towers, they’d witnessed a slew of poor doormen tasked with resolving various problems sparking the old man’s outrage. There was the Episode of the Noisy Air, the Episode of the Boy Who Played Very Loud Video Games, and, Grant’s favorite, the Episode of the Too-Gray New Hallway Carpet.

At the wedding invitation place, there’d been a pinch to Joey’s knee. But babe, is the wording too gray?

But she didn’t want to tell Grant about the Episode of the Encroaching Tree, not until she told him about Leo. She needed to tell him about Leo. Maybe she was making too big a deal of it. She’d already mentioned her boyfriend on Corfu, and Leo had contacted her wholly unprovoked. Grant would understand that Joey would need to see Leo and hear whatever he had to say that was apparently so important.

Wouldn’t Grant understand?

The elevator dinged. Joey walked down the brightly lit hall atop the plush, too-gray carpet. She stood outside their apartment for some time, unable to force herself over the threshold.

In a spurt of courage, she swiveled her key and entered cold darkness. Flashes of moonlight illuminated the jumbled contents of the catchall on the entry hall table. It was intended to hold their keys—which Grant was constantly misplacing—but his were there, for once.

“Joey?” called Grant, light now trickling from beneath their bedroom door.

She popped into their bedroom. Grant glanced up from his phone with that light, glad look he always got just to see her.

“Hi, babe!” He was shirtless and wearing gray sweatshirt shorts, his dark hair doing something different from normal that she couldn’t pinpoint. As he leaned over to kiss her, she could hear his favorite weatherman from the news app he favored, talking about South Florida’s heat wave.

“Hi! I’ll just shower, ’kay?”

“Sure.”

She slipped into the bathroom, stripped, and stepped into the shower. Her hands roamed her skin, brushing sand as she went. It surprised her anew each return from the beach just how much sand managed to burrow into crevices. After Joey’s shower, she toweled off, rough-dried her hair, and appraised herself in the mirror—her eyes sometimes light brown, sometimes hazel; her skin its late-summer caramel; her long chestnut hair with new pre-wedding ombré highlights; her lips with their little bow, her favorite feature; and on the unfortunate end, her ears that stuck out a little bit like Dumbo.

Leo’s coming to town, she practiced, making her voice nonchalant. It’s not a big deal.

Oh God, a giant arrow pointed to it’s a big freaking deal.