“TifAni FaNelli,” Mom gasped. “You do not speak like that to your aunt Lindy.”

“Okay then.” I popped another noodle into my mouth. I wanted to shake the entire bowl down my throat, anything to fill the raging hole of hunger. “I’ll speak like that to you.”

“We came here to have a nice dinner,” Mom hissed. “If you are hell-bent on ruining it, you can just leave.”

“If I leave, so does Luke’s credit card.” I chewed noisily and gave her a crushing smile.

Mom managed to fit a calm veneer over her panic about Aunt Lindy witnessing such a scene. Surely my cousin would never embarrass her mother like this. She was marrying a man of the law. Mom turned to Aunt Lindy as though every bone in her body wasn’t screaming at her to strike at me like a snake, and said Disney-princess-fucking-sweet, “Do you mind giving me a minute with TifAni?”

Aunt Lindy looked like she was sorry to miss this, but she unhooked her purse from the back of her chair. “I do need to use the ladies’ room.”

Mom waited until we no longer heard Aunt Lindy and her jewelry clanging through the restaurant like a goddamn marching band. She pushed away the hair that wasn’t in her eyes in preparation for her lecture. “TifAni, I know you are under a lot of stress right now.” She reached out to me, and I jerked away. Mom stared at the spot where my hand had been for a moment. “But you need to pull it together. You are this close to driving Luke away.” She held her thumb and index finger a millimeter apart to show just how little breadth I had left.

It was impressive she knew to go there. So impressive it was suspicious. “And what would you know about that?”

Mom rocked back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “He called me. He was worried. He asked me not to tell you, but”—she leaned forward and her neck popped with stringy purple veins—“seeing how you’re acting tonight, I think you need to hear it.”

The idea that it might not be my call anymore, that I didn’t have Andrew, that I might not have anyone, cinched that corset tighter. I shifted in my seat and tried not to look as concerned as I was. “What did he say exactly?”

“That you’re not you, TifAni. You’re combative. Hostile.”

I laughed like it was the most absurd thing I’d ever heard. “I wanted to do the documentary and he doesn’t think I should. He wants me to move to London and give up my shot at The New York fucking Times.” I lowered my voice at Mom’s glare. “And so now advocating for myself is being hostile?”

Mom lowered her voice to match mine. “It doesn’t really matter if it’s hostile or not, does it? Because it’s more about how you’re not acting like the person Luke fell in love with.” She took a sip of the water the busboy had brought her while I was outside, battling Mr. Larson. “You better start acting like the old you if you want this wedding to happen.”

We settled into our corners, our fierce silence only magnified by the merry, rambunctious room. I spotted Aunt Lindy on her way back from the bathroom. I’d gone with her and Mom to see the tacky little wedding factory where her daughter was getting married, the manager showing off how the lights in the “ballroom” could flash from neon pink to green to blue in tandem with the club music the house DJ was playing. Then she’d bragged about the menu, how it may have been a hundred dollars a plate for the surf and turf, but it was her only daughter and she would spare no expense. What a laugh. I’d jump for fucking joy if that was all my caterer was charging me, well, charging us. The memory made that thirst come over me again, the one that expert said could indicate a person wasn’t getting a basic biological need met. Aunt Lindy gave me a tentative, questioning look, and I nodded at her to return while I drained my water glass, the ice cubes bumping up against my teeth in a way that always makes me cringe.

I signed the bill, and Mom reminded me to take my leftovers. “Take them for Dad,” I offered, generously. I’d gone toe to toe with Mom, and I’d lost. “I don’t have anyplace to store them in the hotel.”

Out in the parking lot, both Aunt Lindy and Mom told me to thank Luke for dinner. I promised them I would.

“When do you head back to Manhattan?” Mom asked, doing that thing she does where she thinks she sounds in-the-know by saying Manhattan instead of New York.

“Not until tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “I have one more thing to film.”

“Well,” Aunt Lindy said, “get some rest, sweetheart. There’s no makeup like a good night’s sleep.”

My smile felt like a knife carving all the way around my head. I nodded a good-bye to Mom, imagining the top half of my head peeling off cleanly as an acorn squash halved, ready for my disgusting, gluten-free dinner. I waited until Mom and Aunt Lindy climbed into her cranky BMW. The last time my parents had had the money to renew the lease and trade in for the updated model was seven years ago. I’d suggested something less flashy, not so expensive to maintain, and Mom had laughed. “I’m not driving a Honda Civic, TifAni.” For Mom, success wasn’t working at The New York Times Magazine, success was marrying someone like Luke Harrison, who could provide all the things she pretends she can afford.

I risked a glance at the even older version of Mom’s car, in the same spot where I’d left it an hour ago, only after Mom and Aunt Lindy puttered out of the parking lot.

I walked past and pretended I didn’t notice the New York plate. There was a quick flash of movement from inside, and then the taillights saluted me in red. Andrew was gone by the time I unlocked the doors of the Jeep.

Five years ago, Bryn Mawr College shaved down the trees barricading the Spot from the road. Empty beer cans, mouths ringed with decades-old teenage DNA, were collected and recycled, and the land was coiffed into a sweet park with picnic tables and a swing set, a demure fountain spitting water into the center. Sunday morning, I followed the spindly tracks he left in the grass to their end, the cameras watching at my back.

He looked up at me, which I suppose he has to do to everyone now. “Finny.”

I snared my bottom lip in my teeth. Willed the location to contain all that name called up before I spoke. “I can’t believe you got me here, Dean.”

Aaron urged me to sit on a bench. It would be better for the shot if Dean and I were the same height, and only one of us could even the disparity. I balked at first, but I gave in when I noticed Dean staring at the ground, the humiliation beading red in his cheeks.

We finally settled into our marks, the crew trained on us like an execution squad, but neither of us knew how to begin. Dean was the one who’d wanted to do this, had asked Aaron to ask me if I would be willing to see him. Which was what he had approached me about on Friday, as I left the studio on the first day of filming.

“What does he want?” I’d asked Aaron.

“He says he wants to apologize. Set the record straight.” Aaron was looking at me like, Isn’t that great?

I know I’d promised Luke I wouldn’t talk about that night. I know I’d said I didn’t even want to talk about that night. But with Dean willing to admit what they had all done to me, some vindication, finally, I suddenly realized how callously I’d been lying to myself. Of course I wanted to talk about it.

On Dean’s level now, I raised my eyebrows at him, expectedly. I wasn’t going to be the one to speak first. Dean attempted nostalgia, which just goes to show you how dumb Dean still is. “Remember how much fun we used to have here?” He gazed around, the yearning in his face an unintentional insult.

“I remember you inviting me to your house here. I remember going and being passed around like a gift bag.” The sun jumped out from a cloud, and I squinted. “I remember that like it was yesterday.”