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“Moving on,” I say, and bring the wine out.

I tell them about my mother’s phone call. The seating chart. Josh one table away. Caroline Whitfield. I lay it all out, sipping wine as I talk, in an attempt to console myself.

Gemma goes first, because Gemma thinks in logistics. “Caroline Whitfield runs the festival. That’s a legitimate business opportunity. You need face time with her.”

“I know.”

“You need to seem like you have your life together.”

“I know.”

“Do you, though?” Gemma looks up from her notebook. “Because the last time you talked to someone about the bakery at a social event, you undersold yourself so badly that Liv had to intervene.”

“I did not undersell myself—”

Liv raises her hand. “You told the woman your bakery was ‘hanging in there.’ Those were your exact words. I wanted to shake you.”

“It is hanging in there.”

“Ruby.” Avery’s voice, from the window. Quiet and direct. “Your bakery is great. You are great. You just can’t say it out loud because you’d rather set yourself on fire than risk sounding confident.”

The room goes quiet for a second. Part of me knows she’s right.

“The real problem,” Liv says, pulling the conversation back, “is Josh. Josh is going to be right there, with Audrey, being—”

“Aggressively happy,” Gemma supplies.

“And in love,” Avery adds.

“—and you’re going to be alone, and your mom is going to be watching you, and Caroline is going to be judging whether you’re a serious business owner or just Natalie’s sad single cousin.”

“Thank you, Liv, for that vivid portrait.”

“I’m just saying. You need a date.”

“I’m not renting a boyfriend.”

“You don’t need to rent one.” Liv looks at Aiden. Looks at me. Back at Aiden. “You have one sitting right here.” She waves at him with a flip of her wrist.

The room goes very still.

Aiden is on the couch. He hasn’t said anything during the wedding conversation—just listened, the way he listens to everything, with complete attention. But I can see him tracking, taking in every detail, cataloging the problem the way he catalogs everything about my life.

“No,” I say.

“Ruby—”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“He passed at the register,” Liv says. “You told us. Under fluorescent lights, face-to-face with a customer, and she didn’t blink. If he can sell a muffin, he can survive a wedding.”

“A wedding is not a thirty-second muffin transaction, Liv.”

“He’d have to learn social cues,” Gemma says, and I can tell she’s already running the problem like an engineering challenge, her brain shifting into problem-solving mode. “We’d need a backstory. Cover identity. Practice runs.”

“You’re already planning it,” I say.

“I’m assessing feasibility.” She taps her pen against her notebook. “And the feasibility is surprisingly high.”