“I’m sorry!” She folded into the seat. Nell is so tall her spindly legs never fit under the table. She crossed them in the aisle, one bootie dangling over the other, the heel sharp and thin as a talon. It was one of those nights. “I couldn’t get a cab.”

“This place is a direct shot on the one from your place,” I said.

“Subways are for people who work.” She grinned at me.

“Asshole.”

The server came by, and Nell ordered a glass of wine. I already had one, half down. I’d been trying to make it last, since I was only allowing myself two, essentially dinner.

“Your face,” Nell said and sucked in her cheekbones.

Finally. “I’m starving.”

“I know. It sucks.” Nell opened her menu. “What are you getting?”

“The tuna tartare.”

Nell looked confused as she scanned the menu, small as a prayer book in her hands. “Where is that?”

“It’s under appetizers.”

Nell laughed. “I’m so fucking glad I’m never getting married.”

The server returned with Nell’s wine, asked what he could get for us. Nell ordered a burger because she’s a sociopath. She wouldn’t even eat the whole thing anyway. The Adderall would have her disinterested after a few bites. I wish that worked for me, but whenever I took one of Nell’s blue pills, even the occasional night that coke turned into morning in the blink of an eye, my appetite always clawed its way to the surface. The only thing that worked for me was pure, hard discipline.

When I placed my order the waiter said, “Just so you know that’s a very small dish.” He made a fist to show me.

“She’s getting married.” Nell batted her eyes at him.

The waiter made an “ahh” noise. He was gay, tiny and pretty. Probably had a beefy bear he’d hook up with after his shift was over. As he took my menu he said, “Congratulations.” The word was like an ice cube held to an exposed nerve in a tooth.

“What?” Nell gasped. My forehead had creased into that V shape, which it always does right before I cry.

I covered my eyes with my hands. “I don’t know if I want to do this.” There, it was said. Out loud. The admission like the one tiny pebble that dislodged, tumbled down the mountainside, so insignificant it didn’t seem possible the thrashing white avalanche that followed.

“Okay,” Nell said, clinically, her pale lips pursing. “Is this a recent thing? How long have you felt like this?”

I exhaled through my teeth. “A long time.”

Nell nodded. She hovered her hands on either side of her glass of wine, staring into the red depths. In the dim restaurant there was no sign of blueness in her eyes. Some girls need that light, those two bright pools, before you can decide, yes, she’s pretty. But not Nell.

“How would you feel,” she said, and there was a quick flare of her nostrils, “if you called it off. If Luke was one day just some guy you used to know?”

“Are you actually quoting Gotye?” I snapped.

Nell tilted her head at me. Her blond hair slid off the side of her shoulder and dangled, glinting like an icicle on the edge of a roof.

I sighed. Thought for a moment.

There was this one night, not too long ago, when some belligerent guy had called me an ugly whore because he thought I’d cut him in line at the bar.

“Fuck you!” I’d sneered at him.

“You could be so lucky.” The chain around his neck was dancing silver in the lights, and his reptilian skin folded in places it shouldn’t have at his age. If only he had resisted the local Hollywood Tans like I had.

I’d held up my most important finger. “You’re adorable, but I’m engaged.”

The look on his face. That ring’s almost magical powers in the way it emboldened me, protected me from the hurt.

I said to Nell, “It would make me really sad.”

“What about it makes you sad?”

Because when you’re twenty-eight and you live in a doorman building in Tribeca, step out of a cab, Giuseppes first, and are planning a Nantucket wedding to someone with the pedigree of Luke Harrison, you’re thriving. When you’re twenty-eight, single, and look nothing like Nell, hawking those same pumps on eBay to pay the electric bill, Hollywood makes sad movies about you.

“Because I love him.”

The next two words sounded innocent enough, but I knew Nell, and they’d been chosen for maximum impact. “How sweet.”

I nodded an apology at her.

The silence that followed seemed to hum, like the highway behind my house in Pennsylvania. I grew up so used to it I mistook it for quiet. Only noticed it when I hosted a sleepover for the first time with my Mt. St. Theresa friends. “What is that noise?” demanded Leah, wrinkling her nose at me accusingly. Leah was married now. Had a baby she dressed in head-to-toe cotton candy pink for her Facebook albums.

Nell brought her hands together in one last plea. “You know, people don’t care about you as much as you think they do.” She laughed. “That sounded bad. What I meant was it might only be in your head that you have something to prove.”

If that was true, it meant deposits returned, a Carolina Herrera gown sulking in my closet. Doing this documentary without my four-carat tumor, evidence that I was worth more than my previously determined value. “It’s not.”

Nell bore into me with her ink-colored eyes. “It is. And you should think about that. Hard. Before you make a big mistake.”

“This is rich.” I laughed aggressively. “Coming from the person who taught me how to operate every single person in my life.”

Nell’s lips slipped open, moving around words she wasn’t saying. I realized she was repeating what I had just said, back to herself, trying to make sense of it. In a moment her expression changed from frustration to amazement. “Because I thought this”—she circled her hands frantically, calling up all “this” I’d mustered for myself—“was what you wanted. I thought you wanted Luke. I thought this little charade made you happy.” She clapped one hand to the side of her face and sputtered, “Jesus, Ani, don’t do this if this doesn’t make you happy!”

“You know?” I layered one arm over the other. Each a carefully placed barrier to keep her out from where it mattered most. “I asked you here hoping you’d make me feel better. Not worse.”

Nell sat up, cheerleader perky. “Okay, Ani. Luke’s a great guy. He sees you for exactly who you are and accepts you for it. He doesn’t expect you to be someone you’re not. By golly, you should really thank your lucky stars for him.” She glowered at me.

Our adorable waiter reappeared with a basket in his hands. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “You probably don’t want this. But, bread?”

Nell gave him a dazzling, infuriating smile. “I’d love some bread.”

He visibly cheered in her spotlight, the blood dashing to his cheeks and his eyes brightening, sharpening, the way everyone’s do when Nell tosses out a handful of her fairy dust. I wondered if he felt it when his arm bisected the space between the two of us, when he placed the basket in the center of the table. The way the air crackled there, warning.

The weeks passed, pushing New York further from the summer, September only halfheartedly fighting the heat. Filming was scheduled to start, whether I was ready or not. I had a dress fitting, and the seamstress marveled at the gap between my waist and the size six bodice. I’d balked when I first ordered it. A size six? “Wedding gown sizing is completely different from the sizing of regular clothes,” the salesgirl had assured me. “You may be a two or even a zero at a place like Banana Republic, but that makes you a six or an eight in a wedding gown.”

“Don’t order the eight,” I’d said, hoping my horrified expression also explained that I would never shop at Banana Republic.

I was driving “home” to the Main Line on Thursday evening. First day of filming was Friday. The documentary team hadn’t received permission to shoot inside the school, something that brought me relief, but not for obvious reasons. Bradley wouldn’t want any negative press, and my story would certainly give it to them, so that implied the angle the documentary was taking was more in line with my own. I wondered who else the team had gotten, besides Andrew. I’d asked, but they wouldn’t tell.