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“It’s our wedding. Work can wait.”

The band started playing our song, and Garrett pulled me onto the dance floor. We’d practiced this dance for weeks. Lessons every Thursday evening at that studio downtown. He’d complained the entire time but showed up anyway because that was what good fiancés do.

Now he held me close, one hand on my waist, the other entwined with mine. We moved in perfect synchronization while everyone watched and took photos and probably posted them to Instagram with hashtags like #PerfectCouple and #WeddingGoals.

“I love you,” he whispered in my ear.

“Love you too.”

The words were starting to taste wrong too.

The dance ended, another began. I danced with my Uncle Ray, who cried through the entire thing because he’d promised my dad he’d walk me through every milestone. Danced with Garrett’s father, who barely spoke. Danced with Joel, Sophie’s husband, who kept apologizing for stepping on my dress.

“Sophie’s been so excited about today,” Joel said, spinning me awkwardly. “She’s been talking about it for months. You’d think it was her wedding.”

“That’s Sophie for you.”

“She really loves you, you know. I’ve never seen siblings as close as you two.”

I smiled and agreed and didn’t mention that Sophie and I hadn’t been close in years. Not since she married Joel and moved to the suburbs and started living the life she’d always said she never wanted. We performed closeness well enough. Twin telepathy, everyone called it. But the truth was, I barely knew my sister anymore.

The music changed again. Time for the bouquet toss. I climbed onto the little platform they’d set up, holding the bundle of roses and baby’s breath that had cost more than my monthly grocery budget.

“All the single ladies!” the DJ called out, and a crowd of women gathered behind me.

I turned my back and threw. The screams told me someone had caught it. When I turned around, Garrett’s secretary was holding it triumphantly. She was pretty. Young. The kind of girl who wore too much perfume and laughed too loud at her boss’s jokes.

Was she 2?

No. Stop it. I was being paranoid. Crazy. The text was nothing. Everything was nothing, and I was ruining my own wedding with my imagination.

“Time for your dress change!” my wedding planner announced, appearing at my side like a tulle-wrapped fairy godmother. “Let’s get you into that reception dress.”

Right. The dress change. Because apparently wearing one overpriced dress wasn’t enough. I needed two. The second one was shorter, easier to dance in. Less princess, more party.

“Oh wait,” I said, remembering. “I have Garrett’s change of clothes too. Let me grab him.”

But when I looked around, Garrett wasn’t on the dance floor. Wasn’t at the bar. Wasn’t with his groomsmen doing shots.

“Where’s Garrett?” I asked his best man, trying not to sound like a wife who’d already lost track of her husband.

“Think he stepped out. Said he needed air again.”

Air. Because this ballroom with its soaring ceilings and open French doors was apparently suffocating.

I made my way back to our table, the dress change temporarily forgotten. My mother sat alone, watching the dancers with that distant look she got sometimes. The look that said she was already saying goodbye to all of this.

“Mom, have you seen Sophie?”

Her face did something. A flinch, maybe. Or a wince. There and gone so fast I almost thought I’d imagined it.

“Oh, she wasn’t feeling well. Pregnancy. She went to lie down upstairs.”

“Is she okay?”

“Just tired, I think. You know how it is.”

I didn’t know how it was. I’d never been pregnant. Had barely even thought about kids, despite Aunt Pat’s baby prophecies. But I nodded anyway.