“It might not be all luck. It’s possible you had some kind of hand in it.”

“I suppose I was there for a few hours of her childhood.”

“Oh my God,” Juice says, coming back from the bathroom. Her hands are still wet from washing. “There was this sign in the bathroom that said 40 PEOPLE MAX IN THIS ROOM. Like why would forty people ever be in the bathroom? Like what would you even say to all forty people in a bathroom?”

“Hello?” Gary says.

Juice laughs. “Yeah! That’s a good start. Hello, forty people.”

“Why are we all in the bathroom?” Phoebe asks, pretending to be forty people.

“Whose idea was this, you guys?” Gary asks.

They laugh, and then Phoebe becomes embarrassed by the laughter. Or afraid of it. She’s not sure. Whatever it is, it’s too good. It connects them all. It draws them close. It’s like a warm sweater that they all wear. Phoebe sits back, and she sips her water. She has never, in her life, felt totally at home around any restaurant table. Not even with her husband. She was often worried about what to say and did they have anything left to say and was there food in her teeth?

“Here you go,” the waitress says and lays down the check.

Phoebe doesn’t want to go. She wants to stay at this table with Gary’s leg slightly brushed against hers and Juice reading off the back of the menu, which is really just a short story about how many times Flo’s has been demolished by hurricanes.

“In 1938,” Juice says. “In 1954. In 1960. In 1985. In 1991—”

“So … many times.”

“Many, many times.”

Phoebe imagines that rebuilding after each devastation must be a real chore, especially for a place like Flo’s, which has knickknacks covering every inch of the walls. To rebuild each time with the same level of bursting, idiosyncratic personality—how do you do that? How do you remember where each rusty spoon was randomly nailed to the wall? How do you care where each bottle opener hangs when you put it up the fourth time? How do you act like this singular and quirky existence is entirely natural and will never be destroyed again?

“Let’s get going, huh?” Gary says.

They get up and walk out the door. This is, Phoebe realizes, the one problem with falling in love with strangers. You don’t get to keep them. She watches them spread out in their own directions as soon as they reach the parking lot.

It’s a relief when Gary looks back and says, “Where to?”

AT CVS, JUICE proclaims her love for CVS. Literally everything in the world is here, she says. Anything you want! Juice buys herself a sleep mask with zebras on it. Then they follow Phoebe to the medicine aisle, even though Phoebe keeps saying, “I’ll just meet you guys at the front in a minute.”

“What else do we have to do?” Gary asks. “But follow you around like your helpers.”

“Yeah, we’re helpers,” Juice says. “Paid by the hour. What do you need? I’ll get it.”

“Gas-X,” Phoebe says.

Juice and Gary crack up so loudly, the employee at the counter looks over.

“We had cabbage,” is all Phoebe says.

“Say no more,” Gary says.

As they walk out, Phoebe looks up and sees them on the security TV for just a second. She is startled by the frankness of their image, the reality of seeing them on this ordinary trip to CVS, recorded by history, all together.

Lila does not stop by before the Blending of the Families the way Phoebe had expected. She thought Lila might have questions about her dress or complaints about Gary’s mother, who has requested to say grace at the rehearsal dinner.

But at six, the hotel is emptied out, and Phoebe wonders if Lila is upset with her. If it’s because she left the Gas-X at Lila’s door without a bag. If she somehow knows about the joy Phoebe felt all day with Gary.

She suddenly feels guilty, but then reminds herself that it was Lila who told her to go. It was Lila who gave her the gift of today, and Phoebe is grateful. It’s a day she’ll remember for the rest of her life. It reminded her of a feeling she stopped believing she could have, a feeling she thought belonged only to other people. It makes her want to give something back to Lila, so she goes downstairs to the bar to work on her maid of honor speech.

But when she sits on the chair, opens a hotel notepad, she finds she’s not sure how to begin. Not after her conversation last night with Lila. And then her conversation with Gary. Writing a maid of honor speech now feels like writing a lecture on a discipline she doesn’t believe in.

It is becoming clear to Phoebe—they are not in love. Maybe they were in love, but now they are two people who are very confused. Very much wanting to be in love, because Lila doesn’t want to be alone. Lila is a woman who experiences a problem, and then finds a man who is compelled to fix it. A man who becomes happy only because he can make her happy. But she is not happy—so what’s the point of any of it?

Phoebe orders herself a beer from the Drink Concierge.

“Are you holding office hours, Professor?” Jim asks, sitting down before she answers. She closes her notebook.

“Mostly just drinking now,” Phoebe says.

“That’s too bad,” Jim says. “I was hoping you could help me with my speech. Turns out, Miss Finnegan from the tenth grade wasn’t wrong and I actually am a shit writer.”

“A teacher said that to you?”

Jim looks at her notebook. “What did you write?”

“Are you seriously trying to cheat off my speech?”

He laughs. “Can’t we think of this more like a brainstorming session? A writer’s room?”

Jim looks at her like they are playing a game of chicken now. Because the stakes are high for the maid of honor and the best man. If they don’t publicly believe in the couple’s love, who will?

“I generally find office hours work best when we stay focused on the student’s problem,” Phoebe says.

“Fair enough,” Jim says.

“So what’s the problem?”

He says he could write a whole book about Gary, about what they’ve been through together.

“But I don’t know this new Gary who’s with Lila. I only know the Gary who was with my sister.”

“Don’t mention your sister,” Phoebe says.

“Then what do I write?”

“Good writing is driven by a question,” Phoebe says. “And the essay is the writer’s best attempt at answering that question. So let’s start there, with a question.”

“But what’s the question?”

“It’s a wedding speech, so the question has to be, Why are these two people perfect for each other?”

“Why is anyone perfect for each other?”