As soon as the door closed behind Sara, Andi gaped at Emilia. “Holy shit, Em! What’s up with you? I didn’t even know you could be that snappy.”

“Yeah, well…” Emilia sighed and looked toward the door Sara had just walked out of. “I sat next to her for the eight-hour-long plane ride. And do you know what she said to me?”

Andi and I waited, both assuming it was a rhetorical question. We were right.

“Nothing. She didn’t say a single word that I didn’t drag out of her. ‘Yes,’” she mimicked. “’No,’ and one ‘great,’ I think. Although, I probably misheard her. That’s it.” She picked up a tube of mascara, unscrewed the top, then shoved the wand back into the tube repeatedly as if she were stabbing something. “You’d be snappy too if the friend who sits in the same office you do for three days a week talks more with the UPS guy than with you.”

I wondered if I should take the mascara away from her.

Before I could, Emilia leaned closer to the mirror, opened her eyes really, really wide, and brushed the wand over her top lashes. “And when she does talk to me, I get the only three words I ever hear coming out her mouth nowadays. Stupid me, I’d hoped being stuck on an airplane would give us a chance to really talk about what’s going on with her, but she completely shut me out.”

“So you decided being a bitch to her would make her open up to you?” Andi asked.

“No,” she whined, “but it should’ve made her react—be a bitch back to me, at least. All I want to do is help.”

It wasn’t my place to say anything. But today was supposed to be about Andi and Hayden, not Sara or Emilia. “She’s afraid.”

Both women looked at me, surprised.

“Of me?” Emilia asked.

I tilted my head side to side. “Kind of, but not. She’s afraid of what you think of her. Or, more importantly, of what you’ll think of her if she actually tells you what’s wrong.” I took a sip of my lukewarm bubbly. “I mean, I could be—and probably am—wrong, and it’s definitely none of my business. But when someone you love doesn’t tell you something, it’s usually because they’re afraid you won’t love them once you know the truth.” Something I’d learned from Carson, actually. One of the many things.

“Damn it,” Emilia said. “So I’m basically proving her right—that I’ll freak out if she tells me what’s going on. Well great, now I feel awful.” She raised an eyebrow, looked at Andi, then flicked her head toward me. “She’s smart. Why didn’t you tell me how smart she is?”

Andi smiled. “Have you met her boyfriend? Anyone who can handle that man has to be brilliant.”

“Actually,” I said, “being with Carson takes more patience than intelligence.”

We all laughed at that, both of them agreeing if women really were smart, we would’ve given up on the opposite gender long ago.

When someone knocked a rhythm on the door, Emilia went to open it, pulling Sara into a bear hug as soon as she saw her. “Oh, thank goodness!”

“Uh…it’s just ice, Em.” Using the metal bucket as a shield between them, Sara peeked around Emilia’s arm and mouthed, Is she drunk? to us. Andi cracked up at the expression on her face.

“Can we pretend I haven’t said anything to you yet today? Whenever you’re ready to tell me, I’m ready to listen. No judgment or prying. Promise.”

“Okay,” Sara said before mouthing, Seriously, what’s wrong with her? “It’s all good.” Should I call a doctor?

“I mean, yes, today is one of the days I’m allowed to be a bitch—massive PMS.” Emilia finally let go of her and pulled the ice bucket from Sara’s clenched fingers. “But I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. That’s what husbands are for. Right, Andi?”

Andi swallowed and dabbed the skin under her eyes to wipe away any tears before they ruined her makeup. “I won’t know for sure until five o’clock, but sure, sounds reasonable.”

While Emilia and Andi joked about balls and chains, Sara and I…didn’t. At least there was something we could bond over—being single. Except I wasn’t actually single. I was in some kind of weird couple-limbo between being in a committed right now relationship, and a committed forever relationship. Both of those being completely different than being committed, something I imagined would happen to me eventually.

“So, Laney…” Emilia looked at me for a moment, one eyebrow raised. “Am I allowed to ask when you and Carson are tying the knot?”

Sara gasped. “Oh shit, Em! You can’t ask that!”

“Why not?”

“It’s like asking someone if they’re pregnant!”

“It’s fine.” No one heard me over the chorus of arguing voices.

“That’s not the same thing at all.”

“Yes, it is.” Sara dropped the bottle of Champagne into the bucket Emilia was still holding, grimacing as she twisted it to drive it deeper into the ice.

“No, it’s not.”

“How is it your business what they do?”

“How is it your business what I ask her?”

Andi pointed at me. “Guys, she’s trying to talk.” They didn’t hear her either.

“Plus, I only asked if I was allowed to ask. I didn’t actually ask.”

“Seriously?” Sara yanked the bottle back out of the bucket and refilled her flute…to the brim.

“Think she knows the Champagne wasn’t in there long enough to get cold?” I asked Andi loudly.

“Oh, she knows. She just doesn’t care.” Andi stared at her two friends with a clenched jaw.

“How would you feel if I asked you a bunch of personal things in front of other people?”

“Since we’re friends, I’d be fine with it,” Emilia snapped. “But I guess not everyone is like that.”

“It’s fine. Really,” I said louder. “I don’t mind.”

“Would you please stop yelling at each other?” Andi yelled. I held back from laughing at the irony. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be freaking out today, so I get to decide what I want to freak out about. And I don’t choose this crap.”

Both women mumbled an apology.

Andi ignored them. “Sara, if you want to fight with someone, please do it on another island.”

Emilia laughed dismissively. “Maybe you should join a fight club or something—deal with those anger iss—”

“And Emilia,” Andi said with just as much irritation as she’d just shown Sara, “just because we’re all friends does not mean we should, or do, know everything about each other. Everyone is entitled to some privacy.”

“Exactly!” Sara threw up her hands. “Laney, feel free to tell Emilia to shut her pie-hole. It’s totally none of her—”

“Zip it!” After Andi pantomimed squeezing Sara’s mouth shut, Sara shut up and downed half her Champagne in one gulp, somehow managing not to break angry eye contact with Emilia.

“I’m going to talk now, and you two are going to be quiet until further notice.” She carefully placed her hands over the twist I’d worked so hard for, checking to make sure it hadn’t fallen. “First of all, I agree with something Sara said. Laney, you should definitely tell Emilia to ‘shut her pie-hole’ but only because that expression is hysterical, and today is my wedding day, and I want to laugh and be happy. Second, I also agree with something Emilia said. Just asking a question doesn’t make you evil.”

Andi’s smile broke through any past or future faux pas. “And, you know, if Laney wanted to answer her question…”

“Nice segue.” I laughed. Andi joined me, followed by Emilia and eventually—after a quick, silent peace accord between the two women—Sara did too.

“Alright, alright,” I said. It made sense they were curious. Carson and I had been together longer than Andi and Hayden had, after all. “But I don’t want a big discussion about it because it’s a day to celebrate you and Hayden.” Not worry about Carson and me. “Overall, I’ve never been happier with anyone and, from what he’s told me, neither has he. But we’re still trying to figure out our future.

“We’ll have one,” I added quickly, “a great one…together. But we have some work to do before we…take the next step…” Man, was there a lot of hand movement in this explanation. A fair amount of slow, not quite understanding nods from them, too. “You know…whatever that step is…and whenever that step is. It’ll be right…for us.”

“Totally,” Andi said, the others nodding and telling me what a good idea that was. Then someone suggested a toast.

I should’ve been a politician. I’d just said a whole bunch of absolutely nothing. But, unlike most politicians, the nothing I’d said actually made sense to someone.

“Oh no!” Sara emptied the last drop of Champagne into Andi’s glass. “How many more bottles should I get?”