Mistakes We Never Made

21 Mistake Four The Other Wedding

(Four and a half years before the wedding)

IT WAS DECEMBER 31;a new year was just on the horizon, and in a few months, I’d be turning twenty-four. I was full of glittery, naive optimism. Sunlight burst against white-topped mountains, and the gently drifting snowfall made it seem like crystals were dancing everywhere in the air. That amazing feeling of being on vacation after months of the hard grind in New York settled into my bones as Nikki and I traipsed in our heavy ski gear onto the shuttle heading to the lodge.

Katie Dalton’s wedding was tonight, and a bunch of us had made plans to arrive early and spend the day skiing. Wasn’t that the point of a wedding in Vail?

To be honest, though Katie Dalton and I ran in the same friend circles in high school, we were never super close, so I was a little surprised to have rated an invite to her wedding—surprised and thrilled. And not just because it gave me an excuse to travel to Vail for the first time. But because Finn was invited also.

“He’s totally in love with you,” Nikki said. I had brought her along as my plus-one, since Willow and Sybil had been invited as well, and we never missed a chance for the Core Four to reunite. Currently, Nikki was wedged between me and the window of the ski shuttle, scrolling through the last three months of my text chain with Finn—everything since that night on the rooftop back in September. Though I couldn’t see the screen, I could probably recite most of the messages verbatim, I’d reread them so many times:

Things are complicated with Pilar

I want to make it work.

You’re one of the most important people in my life. I can’t lose that.

After those initial texts from Finn, it was like a dam broke open. We’d text all day and into the night like teenagers—sending funny memes, having heated debates about our favorite TV shows (Mine: anything Shonda Rhimes. His: a 1970s show called M*A*S*H that he swears still holds up). But it was more than just that. Finn confided in me his insecurities about the next round of funding for his company. I told him how worried I was that Liz wasn’t taking her SAT prep seriously. Maybe it was the buffer of sending messages through a screen instead of talking on the phone or speaking face-to-face, but it felt like we were finally able to open up to each other. Like we were connecting on a deeper level and growing the intimacy that had sparked to life on my rooftop three months ago.

I’d broken up with Preston the day after he returned to the city from his trip. He’d been slightly taken aback. I don’t think anyone had ever broken up with him before. But it wasn’t fair for him to be with someone who wasn’t all in. And there was no denying that I had fully moved on.

Beside me on the ski shuttle, Nikki squealed as she read, and I forced her to show me which texts had elicited that response.

Sybil and I went up to the roof tonight…

Oh yeah?

Thought about you.

Emma, please don’t do this to me.

Finn clammed up whenever I tried to steer the texts to a flirtier place, which I understood. Sexting wasn’t really my thing either. And like he had said, things were complicated. The logistics alone were tricky—we were living on opposite sides of the country, for starters. But even so, it felt like we could work through all those issues together. Like maybe this would be the weekend where we’d finally talk about making us official.

After all, there were only so many times you could hook up with a friend before they stopped being a friend and started being something more. Right?

AFTER A COUPLE OFruns (blues only, since I did not want to risk injury before getting to enjoy the dance floor with Finn tonight), Nikki and I stowed our gear in a locker and broke for lunch at a cozy German restaurant at the foot of the mountain.

“What am I going to do if I can’t text you for eight weeks?” I asked, blowing on the steaming cup of cider our waiter had just set in front of me. Nikki had just been cast on LovedBy and would have her phone confiscated once filming began. After months and months of listening to Nikki complain that none of the guys in LA wanted something serious, I decided to sign her up, and just as I predicted, she’d sailed through auditions with flying colors. But now that it was really happening, I found myself almost regretting having sent in her application… and giving yet another friend a reason to move away without me.

Sybil had been grumbling about suffering through another New York City winter, and I could sense that she was itching to move back to the West Coast, where she’d had four years of seventy-five degrees and sunny during college. And then there was Willow, who had been spending more and more time abroad, dealing with family stuff over there, and now Nikki was going to be sequestered in a TV mansion for the next two months. Instinctively my hand reached for my cell phone, itching to text Finn. I wanted to tell him how I felt like adulthood was pulling my friends in all different directions, and how I hoped that he’d be the one exception to that rule.

“Don’t worry. I won’t forget you while I’m gone,” Nikki said, taking a sip of her cider. “And I won’t replace you either. After all, I’m not here to make friends,” she said with exaggerated bitchiness, holding up her manicured claws. I snorted, and she released her cat pose and slouched back in her seat. “What? You don’t think I’d make a good villain? I could totally flip a table or something.”

“I think you would be the worst villain of all time. You’d flip a table and then be back two minutes later with a mop and broom,” I said. “I think you should just be yourself, and then whoever the guy contestant is, they’re guaranteed to fall in love with you.” Our waiter was back, placing our orders in front of us. I dove in immediately, smearing a forkful of spaetzle and schnitzel with lingonberry sauce before dipping it in gravy.

Nikki picked up her knife and fork, but didn’t make a move to eat. “What if I don’t fall in love with him?” she asked softly. “Everyone on these shows acts like it’s a foregone conclusion that all the girls will fall for the guy, but what’s the likelihood that the one guy they pick is my soulmate?”

I set my fork down and reached across the table for her hand. “I guess you just have to be honest—with yourself, and with him. But either way, it’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

We decided to try to squeeze one more run in before we had to start getting ready for the wedding. The packed snow squeaked beneath my ski boots as I walked over to the rack where we’d left our skis. I had just clicked my boots into my bindings and was pushing over toward the gondola when I spotted him.

Finn was just a few yards ahead of us, standing in dark ski pants and a hunter-green jacket, his helmet tucked under his arm.

My heart rate ratcheted up as I called out his name. He seemed startled at the sound of my voice, then smiled and gave me a small wave. The sight of him, live in person and not just a series of gray bubbles on my phone screen, made me suddenly nervous. I tried to skate over to him, and promptly crossed my ski tips and fell flat on my face, even though I was basically standing on a flat patch of ground. I could see Finn chuckling behind his neck warmer. Nikki pulled me up and unclipped my boots from my skis, thrusting them into my hands and not so gently pushing me toward him and the gondola that went to the summit.

“Oh, man. Y’all, I realized I forgot my… ski… goggles,” she said.

“They’re right on your—” Finn motioned to the goggles on her head, but Nikki was already moving away from us, blocked by the next scrum of skiers jockeying for a gondola.

“She’ll figure it out.” I shrugged, quietly grateful that I’d get this time alone with Finn before the onslaught of wedding activities. Nikki might have been worried about being villainized on LovedBy, but she’d clearly be adored by the other women because she had the wing-woman role down pat—including when to bow out not so subtly.

“Allow me.” Finn pulled my skis and poles from my hands and put them in the ski rack of the slow-moving gondola. The group in front of us had filled up the previous gondola, and there was a gap behind us, so Finn and I ended up in a little cable car by ourselves. The liquid caramel sensation of finding myself alone with him for the first time in months seeped through my veins, warming my frozen toes. We sat on the bench seats opposite each other, our knees almost touching, our breath mingling in little puffs of cold air. Even though I was wearing about a dozen layers, including a very unsexy set of thermal long underwear, I suddenly felt naked in front of Finn. Probably because the last time we were together, I was naked in front of Finn. Well, half-naked, at least.

As the gondola started up the mountain, I turned my gaze out the window, trying to slow my racing heart. Below us, little kids in ski school were pizza-wedging their way down an easy green trail, led by their instructor. I watched their wide slalom path down the hill for a minute, trying to regulate my breathing in time with their turns.

“So, how have you been?” I asked as casually as possible.

But Finn was glancing at his phone. A gust of wind hit the gondola. As it swung slightly on its cable, I felt the lump of spaetzle from lunch shift in my stomach. Finally, Finn finished with whatever he was reading and tucked his phone into the sleeve pocket of his ski jacket. “Sorry. Just wanted to make sure my group up ahead was okay.” There seemed to be tension radiating off Finn as he turned back toward me. “Um, I’m good. Great.”

“Great.” The sound-deadening snow that blanketed the mountain amplified the silence filling our small space. I looked around for something to say.

“That’s a nice coat.”

“Have you been down any black diamonds?”

We spoke at the same time, then smiled sheepishly. Finn’s face relaxed, and I could feel the awkwardness starting to evaporate, and in its place, I felt that that familiar Finn feeling: safe, but with a crackle of excitement, like walking a tightrope, but knowing there’s a net to catch you. I realized that I was so keyed up about seeing him that I must have been projecting that sense of tension I thought I had seen on Finn’s face. He was probably just as nervous as I was. Like with Nikki and LovedBy, it was one thing to fantasize about something, playing out all kinds of scenarios in your head—but when you’re actually in the moment and the reality hits you, it can be kind of nerve-racking. And besides, the short ride up the mountain was probably not the time to do a deep dive into our future plans. Or even our plans for later that night… though I’d had more than a few fantasies already about the dance floor, and the after-party, and maybe having our own little after-after-party. Still, it was better to just let things unfold naturally, I decided. Like I’d been doing with our texts over the last few months, it was better to take things slow and let him lead.

“We didn’t really grow up skiing,” I said, trying to keep the lustful thoughts off my face by answering his question about the black diamonds, “so I’m more of a blue square kind of girl. Have you been skiing a lot?”

“Not really as a kid. Pilar’s family had a place in Deer Valley that we used to go to a couple times a year, but they sold it.”

“One less reason to date her,” I joked weakly.

A slight frown formed across Finn’s brow. “About Pilar, Emma—”

But just then the gondola jerked and slowed as we reached the summit. Finn and I stood up, stepping out of the car and onto the landing, grabbing our skis and carrying them over to the trailhead.

“What were you going to sa—”

But the words froze on my tongue, and I felt my imaginary high wire snap along with the stomach-dropping realization that there was nothing to keep me from slamming into the ground.

Because there, at the top of the lift, wearing skintight black ski pants and a silver puffy coat, skiing over to plant a kiss on Finn’s lips—was Pilar. Beautiful, effortless, and very clearly not his ex.

“DO YOU WANT TOtalk about it?” Nikki asked me carefully from the bathroom as she swiped mascara onto her lashes.

“No.”

On the mountain earlier that day, I had sent Finn a look of utter shock and disgust, then strapped on my skis and flown down the first trail I could find—which happened to be a black diamond. Somehow, I’d managed to make it down safely. Too upset by what I’d just seen to worry about dying, I was fueled down the steep hill by a surge of hurt, anger, and adrenaline. Feelings that were still coursing through my system now, hours later.

I jerked my dress off its hanger and yanked it over my head. Last spring at an estate sale in the West Village, I’d found a bolt of the fabric tucked into the back of a closet. It was a ruby-red brocade that made my skin look soft and milky instead of translucent and ghostly. In exchange for helping my friend Kendall, an FIT grad, redesign her studio apartment, she’d offered to make me something bespoke, and I knew I wanted to do something with that fabric. I waffled between a jumpsuit and a dress, and finally decided on a gown. At the time, it’d been a totally frivolous request, pure luxury, but so much of my life seemed to involve barely scraping by, I couldn’t resist the indulgence. The dress with its deep V-neck and voluminous flounced skirt had hung in my closet for months. As soon as I found out Finn was going to be at Katie’s wedding, I knew this was the occasion to wear it. Unlike my dress for prom, this one was literally made for me. Pulling out my pair of pumps, I stomped my feet into them and then shrugged on a white fox fur coat that I’d inherited from my grandmother.

Nikki walked into the room, giving me a once-over while she finished putting on her earrings. “You look gorgeous, Em.”

“Thanks. You do, too, babe.” And she did, in an elegant ice-blue dress with a plunging neckline. I inhaled deeply and blew out a gust of air. “Let’s get this over with.”

Walking into the hotel lobby, I spotted Finn among the crowd, and for half a second, my rage gave way to longing. I suddenly realized I’d never seen him in a suit before. For a moment I was glad he didn’t take me to prom all those years ago, because grown-up Finn filled out his formal wear far better than teenage Finn ever could. But then my brain processed the full image—this suit-clad Finn had a beautiful brunette on his arm. Pilar.

“She’s here,” I said, pulling Nikki away from the warmth of the lobby toward the patio where the outdoor ceremony would take place. We grabbed fleece blankets from the baskets set up on either side of the aisle and took our seats, huddling beneath the blankets.

“Are you sure it’s her?” Nikki asked for the third time since I’d told her what happened.

I nodded once, not trusting myself to speak. Pressure built behind my eyes, but I forced it down. After that night on the rooftop, I had managed to get the girl’s full name out of Sybil and did some serious cyberstalking. Pilar Riva: twenty-four, from LA. Worked in tech, like Finn. She was building her own start-up focused on bringing fresh drinking water to high-need areas around the world. “She’s like a Californian Amal Clooney,” I had groaned to Nikki over the phone back in September when I first unearthed Pilar’s Instagram. Of course, back then, her perfection had only been slightly jealousy inducing. Because Finn had made it clear that he and Pilar weren’t going to last as a couple. They wanted different things. Isn’t that what he had said?

Now, I looked over my shoulder through the hotel ballroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows, toward the crowd of guests still inside who weren’t desperate enough to hide out in the cold. Nikki craned her neck to get a better view. “Don’t look,” I managed softly. Nikki heard the croak in my voice and looped her arm through mine.

“You have to explain this to me again. I thought they broke up.” Nikki had been Team Finn for years and couldn’t believe that he had strung me along.

“I did too.” I took a deep breath and blinked rapidly. I was not going to cry over Finn Hughes. Nikki reached over and rubbed small circles on the back of my neck.

I mentally ran through our texts, trying to remember if Finn had actually typed the words “I broke up with Pilar,” but I couldn’t picture them. I had texted him immediately after breaking up with Preston. His response had been quick: I’d say I’m sorry, but my mom taught me never to lie . But even though it had seemed implied throughout our many text exchanges, I was suddenly realizing that Finn had never explicitly said that things were over between him and Pilar. Even still, his showing up here with her felt like a betrayal.

And deep down, it hit me that he must have known I’d be upset—otherwise he could have just told me the truth. Maybe that’s what stung the most; not that I’d been foolish and wrong about what was going on between us, but that I hadn’t been. He may not have made a single promise, but the flirting, and the implications, and the closeness we’d developed over these past months… that was all real. And he obviously knew it, too, knew I had real feelings for him, or he wouldn’t have felt the need to avoid ever saying her name to me.

More and more guests began to filter out to the ceremony site, but luckily, Finn wasn’t yet among them. I took in the scenery. When the invitation came, I had been dubious about a winter wedding in such a cold climate, but it really was beautiful. Mountains scraped against a lavender sky that was giving way to a soft tangerine as the sun set. The air was crisp, but I was warm cuddled up next to Nikki in my fur coat and with the fleece blanket draped across my lap. Then, I felt Nikki’s frame tense beside me.

“They’re outside now,” she whispered. My spine stiffened, but I refused to turn around. “They’re sitting on the other side.” Nikki continued to give me the play-by-play while I kept my eyes trained on the silvery-white floral arrangements that lined the aisle. “Her dress has cutouts.” Nikki looked at me meaningfully, “Who wears cutouts to a wedding? In December. On a mountain. She’s obviously a monster.”

But Pilar was not a monster. I snuck a look out of the corner of my eye. She was gorgeous. Tall and willowy. Glowing warm brown skin, long black hair swooped down her back. Even in the bulky winter coat she wore over her gown, she managed to look chic. She was nearly as tall as Finn. With six-inch heels, I’d still be half a foot shorter than he was. Maybe he wanted to be with someone who he wouldn’t have to develop a hunchback to kiss, I thought bitterly. My mind flashed to the rooftop when Finn had scooped me up and kissed me, and how, at the time, our height discrepancy had made me feel delicate, easily protected by Finn’s strong arms. I squashed down the memory.

Nikki’s phone lit up. “Willow and Sybil said they’re here.”

I turned to look for them, but it was Finn who caught my gaze. He gave me a half-hearted wave. I crossed my arms over my chest and pulled my jacket more tightly around me.

The service was short and sweet. Katie looked beautiful in a scoop neck A-line dress in ivory moiré silk and a white fur stole, her chestnut hair twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. As she stood beside the man she loved, her veil fluttered behind her. I teared up during the vows just like I always did at weddings, but this time the familiar reciting of 1 Corinthians 13:4 hit extra hard. Love is patient. Love is kind. I wanted to believe it was true, but my entire life experience seemed to negate the sentiment. I had been patient for the past three months, not pressuring Finn to define our relationship, even after everything that had happened between us. And all along, he was in love with someone else.

KATIE’S RECEPTION WAS HELDin one of the hotel’s ballrooms, which had been transformed into a winter wonderland, complete with birch branch centerpieces, white roses, and a giant snowflake-shaped ice sculpture. A quick glance at the seating cards revealed that FINN HUGHES +1 had been assigned table twelve, while I was with the girls over at table four—thankfully, at the opposite end of the hall. I just needed to avoid Finn for the next few hours, and then I could return to New York City and put this whole embarrassing ordeal behind me. During dinner, I tried to enjoy my friends’ company, but Sybil and Sebastian were all over each other, and Willow spent most of the night texting her long-distance boyfriend. Even Nikki was flirting shamelessly with some buddy of the groom’s who had ended up at our table. I felt like a poster child for pathetic singledom. I listlessly chewed my preselected beef tenderloin and zoned out during the speeches. Then, at the first few notes of Tim McGraw’s “My Little Girl,” I bolted from the table. One thing was for sure: I was in no emotional state to sit and watch a father-daughter dance.

I wandered over to the bar on the edge of the ballroom and asked for a glass of white wine. While I waited for my drink, Katie and Mr. Dalton’s dance wrapped up, and the bandleader invited everyone else to take the floor. Suddenly, there was a piercing screech of feedback. I pressed my fingers to my ears while the band members traded glances, looking for the source of the sound.

“Timothy!” A woman’s voice cut through the noise to my left, and I turned to see a mother grab the extra microphone that had been used for speeches out of her five-year-old son’s hands. I hadn’t even noticed him, sitting on the floor, half under the banquet tablecloth covering the bar.

“Mooooom, I wanna go home. Weddings are stupid.”

I’m with you, kid.

The mother hoisted the little boy onto her hip, trying to shush his whining. Then, she turned to me, pressing the microphone into my hand. “Sorry, he’s way past his bedtime. Can you figure out what to do with this?”

I stood there, glass of wine in one hand, microphone in the other, like I was about to perform some boozy cabaret number, when all of a sudden, I spotted Finn heading toward me. I looked to my right and left, but the only escape was the swinging doors behind the bar leading to the kitchen. I darted through them, the first few notes of “Proud Mary” spilling in after me, and heaved a sigh of relief.

But my relief was short-lived as Finn squeezed in just as the doors banged shut.

“Leave.” I pointed back toward the ballroom with the mic.

“No. Why are you so pissed?”

“Are you serious, Finn?” I decided to go on the offensive. “How’s the open relationship?”

“It’s closed again,” Finn said. “I told her what happened in New York—”

“You what?” I pressed the microphone into the crisp white cotton of Finn’s dress shirt. He took a step back, tripping over his feet and clanging into a stainless steel rack filled with dirty dishes. I advanced a step further. “I mean, how do you even have that conversation? ‘Hi, honey, how was your weekend? Mine was fine; fingered an old friend on her rooftop.’”

Finn winced. “Emma, come on. She and I had an open relationship.”

“Yeah, one you didn’t even want to be in in the first place,” I scoffed. Then realization hit me. “Oh my god. You used me to make her jealous.” Shame sliced through me at the thought that I hadn’t just been rejected, I’d been used. That night on the rooftop hadn’t meant anything to him. He’d just been testing the limits of his “open” relationship, trying to get the girl he actually wanted to commit.

“What? No, Emma. I—”

But I didn’t need to hear his pathetic excuses. “Does she know you text me every day?”

Guilt flashed across his face. “Emma, you’ve always been one of my best friends—I was glad that we were reconnecting. But I told you I wanted to try to make it work with Pilar. I thought you understood.”

“You are so full of shit,” I hissed. “What happened to ‘I would never hurt you without a good reason’? Or ‘I’m sorry for playing games’?” It felt good to throw Finn’s words from that night on the roof back in his face. But right then an avalanche of reality crashed over me. The texts I’d spent months poring over hadn’t been I want to work it out with you. It had been I want to work it out with Pilar. What if Finn hadn’t been stringing me along? What if I had just been reading into things, building a fairy tale in my head that didn’t exist? That stupid flirty text I sent about the rooftop flashed in my brain like a neon sign. Finn had replied, Emma, please don’t do this to me. I took it to mean “don’t make me hard when there’s a whole country between us and I can’t do anything about it.” But maybe all he meant was “don’t make things awkward.”

Here in the hotel kitchen, with caterers pushing past us unbothered, Finn continued, “I know I’ve been unfair to you in the past, that there were times when you weren’t able to count on me. But I’m trying to change. I’m trying to be a better person here, not just someone who bails the second things get hard. That’s why I wanted to give things a real chance with Pilar.”

Around us, the kitchen staff bustled about, preparing the dessert course. A chef was touching up sugar roses on a silvery-white three-tiered cake. Finn continued to look at me, a crease between his brows. But it was the tinge of pity I saw in his dark eyes that sent me over the edge. Here he was, claiming that he was trying to change, when all he’d done was prove to me yet again that he was the same Finn Hughes who stood me up at prom all those years ago. Someone who dangled happiness in front of me, only to snatch it away again. I grasped for a way to turn this back on him, for any proof that Finn had lied to me. “I told you that I broke up with Preston after that night, and you said it was the right decision.”

“Yeah, because he sucked. I didn’t think you were breaking up with him for me.”

“I didn’t do it for you.” I hadn’t—at least not totally. Preston and I weren’t a good fit. But it took being with Finn for me to realize that. And I had assumed that Finn was going to break up with Pilar too. That we were both on the same page. That we were both making the same decision. Instead, Finn had apparently weighed the pros and cons and decided that Pilar was the better option.

“Good.” Finn’s tone was heavy with a bitterness that he didn’t have any right to. “I mean, how was it going to work between us, Emma? I can’t leave California right now. You just got a new job in New York.”

“You’re right. It would never work out.” The words came out of me, dull and lifeless. I was so stupid for thinking it would. I felt like an idiot for googling design firms in the Bay Area even after I’d gotten my dream job in New York.

Finn paced across the kitchen, then wheeled on me. “You were never explicit about wanting to be together.”

“I don’t want to be together,” I shot back. “Not now. Not ever.” And I didn’t. I wanted to be as far away from Finn Hughes as I could possibly get.

“Okay, then.”

“Fine!”

We stood there, Finn’s arms folded across his chest, my hands still helplessly gripping a wineglass and a microphone, both of us breathing heavily. Then, there was a screech of feedback that we could hear even in the kitchen, and the door edged open. The wedding planner, eyes wide, pointed toward me and mouthed, “It’s on.”

The microphone.

I looked down at it in my hand, its green light shining up at me. My breath started coming in short bursts. “Did… did anyone…”

At the look of pity in the wedding planner’s eyes, I knew. Everyone in the other room had heard me get rejected by Finn Hughes. Everyone on the other side of that door knew that I’d been pining for him while he was “becoming a better person” for his perfect girlfriend.

Even worse, I had gone into explicit detail about exactly what Finn did to me on that lawn chair.

Oh my god.

Mortification unlike I’d ever known washed over me in waves.

The wedding planner pulled the microphone from my slack fingers—along with the wineglass I clearly did not need to be drinking from—and I turned away from the doors to the ballroom in a trance. I couldn’t bear to see any more pitying looks or barely concealed smirks. I made my way through the kitchen and into the hotel lobby, and kept walking.

Wrapping my arms around myself to keep warm, I’d gotten half a block from the hotel before I heard a shout. Sybil waved both of our coats in her hand as she caught up with me.

She draped my coat around my shoulders and pulled back. There was a heavy pause, as if she was waiting for me to fill in the blank. I couldn’t bring myself to explain all that had happened with Finn, because then I would have to explain what I thought was going to happen this weekend. Instead, I looked down at the hem of my dress sagging with melted snow and swallowed down a sob. Another dress with another shitty memory attached to it. How could I be in the same situation all over again? Besides, she and all of our friends from high school had had a front seat to the shit show. What else was there to say?

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

My shoulders dropped in relief, and I let out a small hiccup. “It’s nothing,” I said, shaking my head and wiping at my eyes. “I’m just an idiot.”

“You are one million things, and not a single one of them is an idiot.” Sybil’s arm came around my shoulder, and she pulled me away from the wedding and all its disappointments.

“Where’s Sebastian?” I asked.

Sybil waved back toward the hotel. “He’s fine. He loves being around a new group of strangers.” She took a deep breath and looked up. “It’s nice to be able to see the stars. Do you want to get a hot dog?” I blinked at her, not sure if I’d heard her correctly. She continued, “There’s a place that’s open late that serves fancy hot dogs. I think you need to eat something.”

I let her lead me through Vail Village to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. I slumped into a booth, and Sybil ordered for us. She handed me a hot dog slathered in ketchup, and a large water.

“I can’t believe you’d rather have ketchup than mustard on your hot dog,” she said, taking a seat across from me.

“Mustard is disgusting, Sybil.”

“And ketchup is a condiment for children.” I wrinkled my nose at her and took an enormous bite of ketchup-covered hot dog.

“Well, it’s perfect for me, then,” I said after swallowing. I hated the tears that prickled behind my eyes.

Sybil reached across the table and took my hand. “You are the most grown up, put-together woman I know. It’s not childlike to want to find your person.” She smiled. “Besides, it’s nice to have an excuse to take care of you for once. It’s always the other way around.” A warm feeling settled around me. It was nice to be taken care of every now and then.

“Do you think Katie will forgive me for ruining her wedding with my meltdown?” I took a much more manageable bite of hot dog this time.

Sybil shrugged. “I’m sure she will. If her grandfather recovers from the heart attack he had when you said ‘fingering,’ that is. Kidding!” she added at my look of horror. “It’ll make a good story. Something always goes a little wrong at a wedding. No one will remember in a few months.”

“You’ll have to tell me what it’s like when you get married.”

“You’ll find out yourself.”

“I don’t think that marriage is in the cards for me. I will just be godmother to all y’all’s kids, get an Upper West Side apartment, and fill it with trinkets from my travels. Maybe I’ll get really into birding.”

Sybil looked at me solemnly. “I would love you, even if you got really into birding.”

I snorted. “Gee, thanks.” The picture I painted actually did sound like a lovely life, but it wasn’t the life I wanted. I’d spent the last few months imagining what a life with Finn might look like, and now I wasn’t sure I could ever trust myself to imagine a happily ever after again.