Jillian did not cry in the bathroom. That is the part I want to emphasize, because I had expected her to. She was calm. She was cold. She said, "Get out" in a voice I had never heard her use on me in seventeen years. I got out. I walked back to the table. I did not tell the other bridesmaids what had happened. I sat down next to Will, who did not notice anything wrong, and I ate three bites of my dessert. Twenty minutes later, Jillian came back out of the bathroom. She sat down next to Will. She kissed

him on the cheek. She gave the rehearsal dinner speech she had planned. It was funny and warm and she did not look at me once for forty-five minutes. The dinner ended. I drove to my hotel. I did not sleep. My phone did not buzz. Jillian did not text me. Colette did not text me. The group chat went dark. I sat on the edge of my hotel bed in Charleston at 2 AM and I thought — very seriously, for the first time in seventeen years — that I had probably just ended a friendship I had been building since I was nineteen. And I thought: I would do it again.