We would do the tasting for the main course and the cake on Sunday. “It’s simply too much food to take in all at once,” Kimberly declared breathlessly, her thighs spilling over the sides of one of the Harrisons’ lawn chairs. Oh, she could have taken it, all right.

“Can you believe they’re getting married?” Mom gushed to Mrs. Harrison, clasping her hands together, girlishly. I hated when Mom pulled this cutesy shit with my future mother-in-law, who is a simple, serious tomboy, not prone to syrupy displays of affection. The problem is that Mrs. Harrison is too polite not to reciprocate. When Mom gets sentimental with her, it’s excruciating having to watch Mrs. Harrison struggle to keep up, which only intensifies my fury toward Mom.

“It is exciting!” Mrs. Harrison tried.

It was 3:00 P.M. when Kimberly left, when Luke stretched his arms up to the ceiling and suggested we go for a run.

Everyone else was “having a lie-down” at Mr. Harrison’s suggestion. It was all I wanted to do. When I was off the Dukan diet, I was off. No exercise. Wine until I dragged myself to a sleepless night in bed. As much food as I could fit into my shrinking stomach until it was time to starve again.

Mom and the Harrisons retired to their rooms to have their lie-downs while I begrudgingly laced up my sneakers next to Luke. “Just three miles,” he said. “Enough to feel like we’ve done something.”

Luke and I made a left out of the driveway. I was already breathing hard as we broke over the small incline on his street, the ragged dirt road opening up in front of us, sun beating relentlessly on the thin slit of exposed skin splitting the middle of my scalp. I’d meant to grab a hat.

“You happy?” he asked.

“I’m annoyed they didn’t have a better crab cake,” I gasped.

Luke shrugged without breaking his gait. “I thought it was pretty good.”

We kept on. Before I started working out twice a day—barre class in the morning and four-mile run at night—I felt strong as I ran and ran and ran. Now it was like the muscles failed me, my legs heavy when my legs were the one thing that had never been heavy. I knew I was overexercising, grinding myself into exhaustion, but the scale was moving, and that was all that mattered.

“You okay, babe?” Luke asked about half a mile in. He had set the pace, hadn’t slowed when I tried to, when the stitch braided the muscles in my lower left side. I rebelled by falling behind him, wondering how big the distance between us would have to get before he realized something was wrong.

I stopped and stretched my arm over my head. “Cramp.”

Luke jogged in place in front of me. “It gets worse when you stop.”

“I ran cross-country. I know that,” I snapped.

Luke’s hands were balled at his sides—which is the wrong way to run, it wastes energy. “I’m just saying.” He grinned and smacked my butt. “Come on, you’re a survivor.”

This is Luke’s favorite thing to say about me, to remind me. I’m a survivor. It’s the finality of the word that bothers me, its assuming implication. Survivors should move on. Should wear white wedding dresses and carry peonies down the aisle and overcome, rather than dwell in a past that can’t be altered. The word dismisses something I cannot, will not, dismiss.

“You go.” I flung my arm accusingly at the road. “I’m heading back.”

“Babe,” Luke said, disappointed.

“Luke, I don’t feel good!” I made my hands fists now, held them over my eyes. “I haven’t been eating! And now I just shoved eight fucking pounds of lobster-cheese into my system.”

“You know what?” Luke stopped running in place, shook his head at me like a disappointed parent, and laughed bitterly. “I don’t deserve to be treated like this.” He took a few steps away from me. “I’ll see you back at the house.”

I watched him sprint off, plumes of dust billowing at his heels, lobster cheese curdling in my intestines as his stride propelled him farther away from me. I’d never been on Luke’s bad side before, ostensibly because I’d never dared to do anything but charm him. It must sound stupid, but it was the first time I realized that for the rest of my life, till death do we part, it was on me to maintain this veneer’s sparkly, streak-free shine. If Luke noticed so much as a pinkie’s smudge, he would punish me for it. The spin came on so fast, a vibrant swirl of white-hot sun, I actually sat down in the dirt.

After dinner, Luke’s cousin Hallsy came over for a nip of bourbon. “Hallsy?” I’d echoed, incredulously, the first time Luke mentioned her to me. He’d looked at me like I was the one who needed to get a grip.

Hallsy’s parents have a house down the same dirt road Luke and I had just run, and Mrs. Harrison’s parents both have houses on the other side of the island, in Sconset. You can’t ride your sweet little Sunday bike into town without running into a pearled member of Luke’s bloodline.

Hallsy had brought with her a Tupperware container of pot brownies she’d gotten from the busboys, twenty years her junior and still not off limits, at Sankaty Head Golf Club, where all the Harrisons were members. It’s weird, how some people like Mrs. Harrison can grow up with all the money in the world and it’s just so normal to be rich that she doesn’t even realize she has something to flaunt. Then others, like Mrs. Harrison’s very own niece, are so insecure that they have to wear it in contempt on their faces, in the tacky diamond watches on their wrists. Hallsy is only thirty-nine, and already her face is pulled tight as a pair of Lululemon yoga pants across a plus-size girl’s rear. She’s never been married, which she’ll tell you she never wants to be even though she hangs all over every remotely fuckable guy after a single drink, while they gently untangle her Marshmallow Man arms from around their stiff necks. It’s no wonder the only ring on her finger is the Cartier Trinity, what with the way she’s ruined her face and the fact that she spends more time sunning on the beach than she should running on a treadmill. But it’s not just her sunspot-speckled chest and stocky, lazy frame. Hallsy is the type of person others describe as “whacky” and “kooky,” which is just the civilized way of saying she’s a nasty cunt.

Hallsy she loves me.

Women like Hallsy are my specialty. You should have seen the expression on her sci-fi-looking face the first time I met her, when I had the audacity to say that while not everyone in the room may support Obama’s politics, I think we can all agree that he is a supremely intelligent man. The conversation between Mr. Harrison and Luke and Garret waged on without anyone really paying my comment much attention, but I happened to look over at Hallsy to find her glaring at me, waiting for me to notice. “This family doesn’t care for Obama very much,” she said through her teeth. There was a moment between us where Hallsy saw more of me than I will ever show Luke, but I recovered quickly and gave her a nod, like I was grateful. I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the conversation, only swiveling my head from Luke to Garret to my future father-in-law and back again to show how enraptured I was with all the fine points the Harrison men were making. Later, when we went into town for drinks, Hallsy chose to sit next to me in the cab, and at the bar she asked me where I got my hair cut because she was looking for a new stylist. I told her to ask for Ruben at Sally Hershberger, and the corners of Hallsy’s plumped-up lips fought their way upward, against the tide of the Botox. You might think someone like Hallsy would only be inclined to torture someone like me, but if she did that, it would be an admission of her own aesthetic shortcomings. As long as I deferred to her, it was in her best interest to embrace me. It sent the message that there was no need to be jealous or intimidated—she was every bit as desirable as an overaerobicized twenty-something.