He didn’t have a Sri Lankan license, and I rode with my parents on the way here, so we couldn’t speak freely on the chauffeured drive over to the Hilton. Thank goodness it was only a few minutes. As soon as we were seated and our glasses were filled with my favorite full-bodied merlot that Spencer had obviously preordered, I fixed him with my iciest glare.

“You cornered me into that, Spence. What the fuck?” He knew I’d never be able to turn down such a public proposal without my reputation taking a serious nosedive. Not when I’d stupidly spent so much of my speech gushing about what a wonderful man he was.

“Okay, I know you must be upset with me, but please hear me out first?”

“Go on, then.” The damage was done. The best he could do was make sense of it to me.

He must have spoken for about an hour while my mood went from okay, I guess that makes sense, to what the fuck is wrong with him? and back again. We’d finished our starters and our mains by the time he paused to take a look at me, and as far as I could make out, his argument was starting to make sense.

It pretty much boiled down to this—I needed to get married. I was in my late twenties, hurtling toward middle age by Sri Lankan standards, with no sign of settling down. Yes, I know that Western media made it seem like we women had a choice. That we didn’t need a man to complete ourselves. That we were strong, independent, and could do it all on our own. Those advocates didn’t know what it was like over here, where I’m often treated like my dad’s secretary by his colleagues, and can’t even make a police entry without being asked why I’m unaccompanied. And while being a woman in Sri Lanka sucked for a plethora of reasons, tipping over “marriageable age” with no potential groom in sight was a real disaster. It wasn’t just my mother who reminded me every waking moment. There were family friends, aunties, and even professionals at business meetings who brought it up. And it would be all well and good to say screw it and stay single, like my more liberal friends have started doing, but their businesses and livelihoods weren’t staked on their reputations, after all.

Besides, as Spencer reminded me, it’s not that I just needed to get married. It made practical business sense to want to get married. It would give me stacks of content for my influencer platforms, it would make me some significant bucks in endorsements, and it would give confidence to my old-fashioned charity donors who thought it unseemly that a woman stayed single past the age of twenty-two.

That bit made sense. Yes, it was indeed a good move to get married. But why Spencer? We weren’t even dating. Hell, we’d only even gotten back in touch a year ago. I flew to the Bay Area for our college reunion and there he was. I don’t think I ever even had a proper conversation with him till then. He’d always just been my best friend’s boyfriend. I think even I was a bit surprised at how much he’d grown up. At how much we’d hit it off, now that Amaya wasn’t in either of our pictures. He’s been a huge supporter of my charity—that part of my speech wasn’t bullshit—and we’ve built what I’ve come to think of as a relatively honest friendship, but apart from the occasional drunken stumble into bed after too many gin and tonics, I hadn’t really thought about him as marriage material. If getting married was such a good idea, I could easily take my pick from the mindless, soulless procession of men who were already at my disposal.