Chapter 1

My phone buzzed just as I was folding the train of my wedding dress back into its garment bag, the zipper jamming for the third time.

A picture message from a number I didn't know.

I knew everyone in the photos.

Charles Fox, sprawled on top of Gay Sullivan, my best friend, still wearing the silver necklace I'd given him last week for his twenty-second birthday, the one engraved with my initials. The lighting was dim, but their faces were too clear to mistake. Gay's hair was spread across the pillow, in the pillowcase I'd helped her pick out last month—pure cotton, pale gray, the kind she said helped her sleep.

I zoomed in and swiped through them one by one. Not one photo. Four. Different angles, all on the same bed. In the last one, Charles even smiled at the camera.

Below the images was a single line: He's the one I love.

The sender was saved as: Gay.

I stared at the screen for at least five minutes.

The battery dropped from sixty-two percent to sixty. Then to fifty-nine.

Outside the door my mom called for me to come drink my tonic, said the makeup artist would arrive at seven tomorrow, don't stay up too late.

I called back that I would. My voice came out so normal it startled even me. No shake, no crack, the exact same tone as last night when I'd asked whether the tonic was done simmering.

I saved the original photos to my encrypted album. Then I copied them onto my work flash drive—the one that held screenshots of every payment I'd sent Charles over three years: the two hundred thousand I transferred without a second thought when he said his startup was short on cash, the eighty thousand in surgery fees I covered when his mother was hospitalized, the hundred and twenty thousand hole I filled last year after he lost a sports bet. Every one of them had a timestamp, a transfer note, a bank receipt number.

And the fifty thousand Gay borrowed from me last year, saying she needed it for rent, never mentioned again.

I deleted the picture message. Cleared the chat history. Switched the phone to silent and shoved it under my pillow.

I touched the wedding dress three times. The little crystals along the hem I'd picked out one by one, three months' salary. As my fingers ran over each stone, I remembered the day I chose them, Gay there beside me. I asked her to help me pick and she said everything looks good on you. She'd tried on my veil, stood at the mirror wearing it for ten minutes, longer than I ever did. She took a photo of the receipt and posted it, captioned "my best friend's getting married, this old mama's crying."

Now that receipt, along with the screenshot of her post, was sitting in my flash drive.

Tomorrow's wedding would go on as planned.

I wasn't just going to get married. I was going to do it grandly. Everyone was going to be happy.

Even if tonight I swallowed the biggest disgust of my life, tomorrow I'd put this face on and smile all the same. The gift money was already collected, the venue was booked, half of the three-hundred-thousand wedding deposit was paid and nonrefundable.

The account, I'd settle slowly.