The boutique air is thick with chilled champagne and the cloying sweetness of tuberose perfume, a scent that immediately coats the back of my throat. Racks of silk and tulle brush against my bare arms like ghostly fingers as I follow Amelia into the low, golden light where four women are already perched on velvet settees, glasses in hand. “Everyone, this is my sister, Imogen,” Amelia announces, her hand a brief, proprietary press between my shoulder blades. “Imogen, this is Joy, Maribeth, and you know Lucy, and Kara.” A chorus of polished hellos. I feel like a moth that’s blundered into a jewel box.

I’m half-listening to Amelia explain the blush versus champagne undertone debate for the bridesmaid dresses, already drifting toward a rack of emerald green satin, when Lucy’s voice, bright and curious, slices through. “So, Amelia, what’s the deal with the mysterious British roommate? Arthur’s brother, right? Is he single?” The question hangs in the perfumed air. I go very still, my fingers freezing on a slick strap of silk.

“Sebastian?” Amelia says, and her tone is a closed door. “He’s lovely, but off-limits. He just moved here because things with his long-term girlfriend are… paused. On-again, off-again, you know the type. But I adore her. We all do. And trust me, they will be on again soon.” She says it with the serene certainty of someone who has already written the ending. My stomach plummets through the tastefully distressed floorboards. A long-term girlfriend. On-again, off-again. Adored by the family. The words paint a portrait so complete it erases the memory of his hands on my skin, his breath in my mouth, the desperate way he said my name in the water.

“Right,” Lucy says, sounding suitably chastened. “Of course.”

“Imogen, you’re up first,” Amelia commands, handing me a heap of taffeta the color of a dusty rose. “Let’s see how this looks.” The dressing room mirror shows me a stranger—flushed cheeks, wide eyes, a smile plastered on too tight. As I struggle with the tiny hooks, my inner monologue is a frantic, screaming thing. *Off-limits. Paused. Adore her. Soon.* Each word is a pin pricking the fragile bubble of last night. He wasn’t retreating behind professional walls this morning. He was retreating toward her. The fitting becomes a silent montage of me being shoved into pastel horrors, each dress more constricting than the last, while the conversation swirls around me—venue logistics, floral arrangements, the undeniable perfection of Amelia’s future sister-in-law, Eleanor. “She’s a literary translator,” Kara sighs, as if this is the pinnacle of human achievement. “So perfect for Seb.”

I finally emerge in a sheath of lilac chiffon that makes me look like a wilting flower. The women coo politely. Amelia’s gaze is analytical, assessing the drape. All I can think is that Sebastian watched me kiss a stranger last night and found me fascinating, but this morning, he remembered his translation. I feel the gulf he created widening into a canyon, and I do what I do best: I paint my face with a dramatic, unbothered smile. “This one makes me feel like I’m about to sing a tragic aria in a third-rate opera,” I declare, twirling just to make the chiffon flare. “I love it.” Amelia just shakes her head, but for a second, I see the faintest crack of fond exasperation in her eyes. It’s the only solid ground I have left.

The final dress is not lilac chiffon, but a column of liquid silver sequins that catches every low light in the boutique. It’s shockingly, undeniably flattering, hugging the curve of my waist and the swell of my hips before falling straight to the floor. “The maid of honor should stand out,” Amelia declares, her critical gaze finally softening into approval. I stare at the shimmering stranger in the mirror. She looks like someone who has her life together, someone who wouldn’t fall apart over a professor with a girlfriend. I paste on a grin. “It’s very ‘disco ball attends a garden wedding.’ I’m into it.”

Lunch is at a bistro down the street, all exposed brick and ferns. We’re seated at a long wooden table, and the champagne from the boutique has been replaced with crisp white wine that does nothing to cut through the perfume still clinging to my skin. The conversation is a soft buzz of wedding logistics until Kara, whose smile is a little too sharp, leans forward. “So, Imogen, tell us. Are you seeing anyone back in California? Or maybe here?” The question hangs over the bread basket. I feel every eye at the table land on me.

“Imogen is never serious about anyone, or anything,” Amelia answers for me, her tone fond but dismissive. She spears a piece of grilled asparagus with surgical precision. “It’s one of her more admirable qualities, really. A free spirit. Never needs to settle.” She says it like it’s a fact, like she’s reading my biography from a dust jacket. *Free spirit*. The words feel hollow, a cage made of compliments. I take a large gulp of wine, the acidity burning a clean line down my throat.

“Yeah,” I say, my voice bright and brittle as the sequins I was wearing. “Who needs feelings? Yuck. So messy. So… permanent.” I wave a hand, the gesture encompassing all of human attachment. “I prefer the temporary exhibits. Much less paperwork.” The table laughs, a light, tinkling sound. Inside, my chest is a raw, silent scream. *Off-limits. Paused. Adore her.* I see Sebastian’s face from this morning, the polite, final shutter that came down over his eyes. He wasn’t just ending a night. He was returning to a life, a story where I was a footnote he’d already edited out.

Amelia studies me over the rim of her water glass, her hazel eyes missing nothing. “Exactly,” she says, but it sounds less like agreement and more like a diagnosis. The conversation drifts back to centerpieces, a safe, floral harbor. I sit in my sequins, a glittering monument to not-settling, and feel the ghost of his hands in the water, the exact opposite of temporary, cooling fast in the air-conditioned chill of my sister’s perfect, planned world.

Amelia’s black SUV disappears down the winding drive with a crunch of gravel, and her parting shot hangs in the dry Wyoming air like smoke. *“Not everyone gets to relax all day long.”* I roll my eyes so hard I see my own brain, then turn toward the back of the house. The silence is a physical presence after the clatter of the boutique and the bistro. It’s the kind of quiet that feels like judgment.

The pool house is dark, the blinds drawn. I let myself in, the click of the door too loud. “Hello?” I call out, just in case, my voice bouncing off the sterile surfaces. Nothing. No low hum of his laptop, no scent of his bergamot tea. Just empty, sun-drenched space and the faint, lingering ghost of chlorine from the pool. A profound, stupid wave of relief washes over me, followed immediately by a sharper, colder current of something else. Grief, maybe. For a bubble that never really existed.

I sink onto the stiff modern sofa, back in my own jeans and t-shirt. The familiar cotton feels alien, like a skin I’ve outgrown. *We don’t know each other*, I think, pressing the cool pads of my fingers to my temples where a champagne headache is beginning to pulse. It was purely physical attraction. Chemical. The sexual tension was just a side effect of the way we met—naked, shocked, trapped. Now that we’ve… exorcised it, we can go back to being polite strangers. Practically family. A neat, clinical conclusion.

So why does my chest feel like it’s full of broken glass?

“You’re being dramatic,” I say aloud to the empty room. My voice doesn’t sound convinced. I hear Amelia’s diagnosis again: *free spirit, never needs to settle*. It was a dismissal wrapped in a compliment, and I wore it like a shield at lunch. But here, alone, the shield is just heavy, metallic fabric. I stand up, the sequins catching the late afternoon light slashing through the blinds, throwing frantic silver shards across the walls. I look like a human disco ball having an existential crisis. Fitting.

Enough with this pity party. I snatch my phone from the coffee table, the silver rings on my fingers catching the light and throwing a frantic SOS signal across the ceiling. I scroll past Amelia’s name, past the unread news alerts about California fires, and tap Lacey’s contact. It rings twice.

“Tell me you’re calling because you’re still with that pre-med Adonis and need bail money,” Lacey answers, her voice a welcome blast of popcorn-and-reality-TV static.

“I am calling from the depths of despair,” I announce, flopping back against the stiff cushions. My worn jeans feel thin and real against my skin.

“That tracks.”

“Shut up.” I groan.

“Let’s go out tonight then.”

“I would rather be waterboarded with cheap champagne,” I say, but my voice lacks its usual theatrical conviction. It comes out flat, a statement of fact. The silence of the pool house presses in, underlining the emptiness where his presence isn’t.

“That bad, huh?” Lacey’s voice softens, the popcorn crunching pausing. “Was the dress fitting a war crime?”

“The dress fitting was a reconnaissance mission into a future where I am a glittery, permanent accessory to other people’s perfect lives.” I trace the geometric pattern of the sofa fabric with a fingernail. “And I got some… intel. About the roommate.”

“Oh.” A single syllable, loaded with understanding. She’s the only person who knows about the pool, about the before and the catastrophic after. “Girlfriend intel?”

“Long-term. On-again, off-again. Universally adored.” I parrot Amelia’s phrases, each one tasting more bitter than the last. “She translates Lithuanian poetry or something. They’re basically soulmates on a comma break.”

“Fuck,” Lacey breathes. “Okay. New plan. We are going to The Rusty Spur. We are going to drink tequila that may or may not be gasoline. We are going to dance to terrible country music until our feet bleed and we forget our own names, let alone his.”

A laugh bubbles up, raw and unexpected. “That is the most beautiful proposal I’ve ever heard.”

“I’ll pick you up in forty. Wear something that screams ‘I am a joyfully uncomplicated free spirit who definitely did not have her heart lightly pulverized by a professor with a dry wit and a girlfriend.’”

“So, sequins?”

“Perfect.”

The line goes dead. I sit in the returning silence, the ghost of the laugh still trembling on my lips. *Joyfully uncomplicated free spirit*. I stand, my body moving on autopilot toward the bedroom. The silver sequin dress hangs from the closet door, a sliver of captured lightning in the dim room. It mocks me. I strip out of my jeans and t-shirt, the cotton pooling on the floor like shed skin.