We crash the wedding reception with style. Kind of by accident, Nick says he’s a friend of the groom, while I say I’m a friend of the bride, and so we end up pretending we just met, which in some ways, it feels like we have.

We listen to the toasts, eat cake, and watch a video that shows the bride and groom as babies, as kids swimming and camping and doing various sports and performances, as lanky awkward teens, then young adults studying and having fun, and finally, as two people who found each other—this couple so very in love. The video makes it feel like their entire lives were a series of moments that has led up to this one night. This moment. Now.

Maybe that’s true. I can’t hold on to being cynical about their chances at happiness. They seem like nice people. Normal people. They seem happy. In spite of everything, I can’t help but wish them well.

Then the music starts up again, and everyone is dancing.

“I’ve never been to a dance before,” Nick tells me as we sit eating a second piece of wedding cake, watching people pair up on the dance floor. The cake is vanilla with vanilla frosting, but it’s one of those cakes that proves that simple can be amazing. “I asked this girl at school, Lola, if she wanted to go to homecoming with me, but she didn’t think that was a good idea.”

“She said no?” I lick frosting off my fingers.

“She said, ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’”

“Ouch.”

“Agreed. It could have been worse, though. She could have said, ‘No way, loser! Get away from me!’ I think she was at least trying to be polite. And anyway, my friends and I beat the Dragonstar Arena on veteran that night, and that wouldn’t have been possible if I’d been at homecoming with Lola, so, I figure it was destiny.”

“Destiny, like the game.”

“No, the real thing.” He hands his empty plate to a passing waiter. “As in fate.”

“I go to a private Catholic school. All girls.”

“You’re Catholic?” He sounds surprised. Maybe because he thinks Catholics prefer to wait until they’re married to have sex, and that doesn’t exactly seem to be my modus operandi.

I shrug. “I am for the purposes of school, which basically means I go to mass once a week.”

“So you’ve never been to a dance, either,” he says.

“Well, yes, I have,” I admit. “I went to prom this year.”

“Oh. With the asshole.”

“Yes.” I remember the way my prom dress burned when I tossed in the fire in my backyard. It was pretty satisfying, watching it go up in flames like that. I turn my focus back to Nick. “So you’re a dance virgin.”

“I guess so.”