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And yet.

The Maple Lane Cafe was warm and smelled like cider and woodsmoke, and under other circumstances, Rachel would have been charmed by it—the low lights, the orange glow of strings looped across the ceiling, the woman on stage with a guitar and a voice that deserved better acoustics than this. Under other circumstances, she would have found a corner, ordered a beer from tap, and listened to that voice for as long as the evening allowed.

Instead, she was at the bar with five women she was related to by varying degrees, all of them wearing matching pink shirts that read team bride in block letters, and Sloane wore a white shirt with bride and had the tiara on and was telling Brynn about Clyde’s mother’s opinion of the venue deposit.

“She said the minimum spend was excessive,” Sloane said. “I said, Sandra, it’s one night, and she said—“

Rachel stopped listening. She was good at this by now. She’d been practicing since the flight up from Austin on Thursday, which had featured four hours of Kayleigh’s road trip playlist and an extended group discussion about whether it was worth going gluten free if you didn’t have a sensitivity, but your boyfriend did.

She ordered a ginger ale.

“Seriously?” Tatum said. She was on her second vodka soda, her nails—each one a pale, pointed impracticality—wrapped around her glass. “We’re on a bachelorette weekend.”

“I’m aware.”

“You’re drinking ginger ale.”

“Also aware.”

Tatum made a face. Rachel smiled at her and took a sip.

“Right,” Brynn said, surfacing from the Clyde’s mother conversation with the bright, determined energy of a maid of honor who had a schedule to keep. “Activity. Okay. Who’s doing the husband material survey?”

A cheer went up from three of them. Rachel looked at the ceiling.

“Come on,” Simone said, nudging her shoulder. Simone’s makeup was extraordinary, as always—precise, a whole evening look at nine on a Friday. “It’s harmless. You just pick someone and make up a life with them. With all the fixings—house, dog, kids...”

“I did this when I was seventeen.”

“Then you know how it works.”

Rachel knew how it worked. She and Ana had done it at seventeen, picking boys across restaurant booths and building entire imaginary marriages out of nothing. It had been funny then. At thirty-seven, it felt like a game that had simply stopped being her size.

Still, she looked. She couldn’t help looking. She always catalogued a room.

There was a man at a far table, bearded, big through the shoulders, nursing a beer alone—Brynn was already pointing at him with focused energy. A tall man near the bar, with hands that made Simone raise both eyebrows and say nothing, just look. A young guy holding court for a table of friends, laughing at his own joke before he’d finished telling it, which Kayleigh apparently found attractive.

And then the other table.

Three men at the table: one built like a door and about as expressive, one who looked like he’d been telling the same story for twenty minutes, and a third.

He was leaner than the others—almost slight in a deceptive way, the kind of frame that looked unassuming until you looked twice. His hair was dark, almost black, neat above the collar. The two men with him had the easy sprawl of people who’d been friends long enough to stop performing. He sat differently, contained somehow. Watching the room the way someone did when they were doing it on purpose.

Rachel studied him from across the bar. He had a good jaw, a short dark beard, and she would have liked to see the color of his eyes, but she was too far away.

He picked up his bottle and took a long drink, emptying it. Set it down. Then she noticed the color was wrong—not beer at all. Her own bottle matched.

He was drinking ginger ale.

She felt a pull toward him that was entirely disproportionate to the situation.

“That guy in the corner,” Tatum was saying, and she was pointing.

At him.

“Dibs,” Rachel said.

The word came out louder than intended. Several heads turned, including those at the table in question. Ginger Ale Man looked up. Rachel looked directly back at him.