“What don’t you understand?”

“I felt it when we talked that first night. I honestly cannot stop thinking about that first night in the tub. And trust me, I’ve tried. I have been trying to figure out why I can’t stop thinking about you, because I am getting married tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she says. “You are getting married tomorrow.”

“But I feel so drawn to you,” he says. “I just want to be around you, Phoebe. Because when I’m around you, I feel good. I feel honest. I feel like myself. Like maybe I understand what life is again. I know what to say, finally, after years of never knowing what the hell to do or say. Do you know what I mean?”

Phoebe knows. She feels this way, too. Exactly. And she wants to tell him. It would feel so good to tell him.

“Is that crazy?” Gary asks. “You’re looking at me like that’s crazy.”

“I don’t think it’s crazy. I think it’s scary.”

“It’s scary,” he says.

“It’s very scary that you’re saying this all to me the night before your wedding,” she says. “I don’t think you should be doing that.”

“When else am I supposed to be doing it?” Gary asks. “If I don’t do it now, when do I do it?”

The door dings. Nick is back.

“You got to use a fucking credit card now,” Nick says. “So, the usual?”

“The usual,” Gary says.

Gary gets up, slowly. Phoebe watches as Nick takes the clippers to the thick mass of Gary’s beard. Phoebe watches Nick work, like a sculptor, who is trimming off layers of Gary, until he arrives at “the usual.” It makes Phoebe nervous, seeing pieces of Gary fall off in giant clumps to the floor. After, Nick puts a towel over Gary’s face and, for some reason, when he starts to shave him, Phoebe can’t watch. Looks down at her magazine. She has always liked the sound of the razor against a man’s stubble. Like the sound of a mason spreading mortar on a brick.

When he’s nearly done, Phoebe looks up, and they lock eyes in the mirror. They stay like that for a moment, just looking at each other. Nick nicks him on the back of the neck. Phoebe instinctively leans forward as if to help with the blood. But Nick’s got it.

“Happens all the time,” Nick says, and puts a towel to his skin.

“I’m not sure I’d go around telling your clients that,” Gary says, and the two men laugh.

“So you’re still a wise ass,” Nick says.

THE WHOLE WAY home, it’s like driving with a different Gary.

“Is it weird?” Gary asks. “Do I have beard face?”

“What’s beard face?”

“It’s like glasses face. When you’ve only seen someone with glasses and they take them off, and all of a sudden, they’re a different person.”

“Maybe,” she says. “I think it’s more like when someone brings a dog to the groomer and the dog comes out looking like it’s been robbed.”

“Oh, gee, thanks. A dog that’s been robbed. Totally the look I was going for.”

They laugh. He looks at himself in the mirror, rubs his chin, like he can’t get used to it.

“I do feel a little like I’ve been robbed,” he says.

Maybe this is when one of them would have started up their conversation from Nick’s again, but Gary says, “Shit, I forgot about cash for the vendors. I’m sorry. One more thing.”

“No problem,” Phoebe says.

THEY CAN’T TAKE out enough cash at the first bank, so they drive to another bank, and at the second bank, Phoebe just waits in the car. She watches him disappear into the building, and then studies the strangers on the road. She sees families on vacation. Non-wedding people eating ice cream. Collagen shot lattes. People just shopping, carrying on. People who have no idea that Lila and Gary exist.

Amazing to think that just last week, Phoebe was one of those people, too. She had been so bold then, doing exactly what she wanted for maybe the first time in her life. She wants to feel that feeling again, the one she felt in the elevator, the one she felt in the tub, the feeling of standing up proudly in her lingerie, of owing Lila absolutely nothing, being loyal to nobody but herself. Because Phoebe knows what Lila cannot know yet: There is no reason to make decisions you don’t want to make at twenty-eight. No reason to marry a man with gray sideburns if you hate the look of them. They are only going to get grayer.

Yes, Lila will be just fine, she thinks.

But then she sees Gary come out of the bank and put the money in his wallet, the wallet in his pocket, and something about this looks so final to Phoebe. He looks like such a groom, clean-shaven, putting money in his wallet to pay the vendors for his wedding. And Phoebe feels like the maid of honor again, with the box of booze heavy in the back seat.

She is loyal to Lila now. Loyal to the production that is this wedding—that’s the truth of it.

When Gary gets back in the car, he says, “Should we finish our conversation?”

But Phoebe says no. “I honestly don’t think there’s anything left to say.”

Phoebe just drives.

WHEN THEY STEP in the lobby, the hotel feels very empty. Like a stage just before the big performance. Everybody must be off doing their last-minute tasks before the rehearsal, getting dressed in their costumes.

Gary and Phoebe are quiet in the elevator, quiet as Gary carries his tux and Phoebe carries the box of liquor down the hallway. Gary says, “Do you mind holding this?” and gives her the tux as he gets his key. It feels so intimate, like they are opening the door to their home after a long day of errands.

But before they enter, there is Lila coming out of her room. Lila looks at Gary and then back at Phoebe. A flicker of realization—Phoebe is certain that she saw it. Certain that Lila knows. Women can feel these things. They know. Phoebe knew. Phoebe knew in that moment when she saw her husband laugh with Mia. Love is visible—it paints the air between two people a different color, and everyone can see it.

But all Lila says is, “Gary, oh my God, your face looks so different!”

“Good different?” Gary asks. “Or bad different?”

Bad different, Phoebe thinks. He is the clean-shaven groom ready for his ceremony. A man she will probably never get to know. By the time the beard starts to grow back, they will be strangers again.

“Good different, of course,” Lila says.

Phoebe puts the booze down on the desk. Outside through the window, Phoebe can see Carlson setting up the chairs for the rehearsal dinner tonight. Phoebe feels a fog of grief, a sudden depression moving in like an afternoon storm. Like if she doesn’t run now, it’ll take her alive.

“I should go get ready,” Phoebe says.

Lila gives Phoebe a big strong hug like she did the first day they met. Maybe Lila doesn’t know. Maybe all Lila can feel right now is fear of what Lila doesn’t want, all the bad things circling around her like a boa constrictor, closing in tight.

“Two things,” Lila says. “It’s just you and me driving to the wedding tomorrow. And can you make sure my mother doesn’t get too drunk tonight? Apparently, she started drinking at two. Why does she do that?”

It’s a rhetorical question, but Phoebe can’t help herself.

“She can’t drink at night,” Phoebe says. “You’ll understand, when you’re older.”

Lila’s mother is sober by the time they get to the Breakers.