“Ah,” I said, glancing around the lobby, like Mike might suddenly reappear. But this didn’t sound great—if Mike had been arguing with our dad too, that meant he’d fought with both our parents in a very short time, which meant he was doing just what I’d thought he would do—bring drama into Linnie’s wedding. I could feel my frustration with him start to bubble up again.

“So,” Jesse said, moving a step closer to me. “Want to get out of here?” I’d taken a breath to respond, when I noticed, across the lobby, my parents and Rodney’s sitting together in a cluster of armchairs, talking and laughing.

Jesse seemed to notice this as well and took a step away, tipping his head to the right. I glanced around, making sure nobody was watching—nobody seemed to be—and followed a few steps behind him, down the hallway. Jesse headed into a room I hadn’t ever noticed before, and I followed him in. He shut the door behind me and I looked around.

“Wow,” I said. It was a games room, with a pool table in the center, pool cues in holders all along one wall, and a series of dartboards along another. There were whiskey-colored leather sofas—the kind that had round feet and looked almost tufted—and what looked like a very stocked bar cart in the corner. “How did you know about this?”

“I went to a lot of bar and bat mitzvahs here.”

“I did too,” I said immediately. “Do you remember Ariel Franken’s? She had the early-Hollywood theme?” Jesse and I hadn’t gone to many social events together, but I remembered every one in blinding detail.

Jesse frowned, looking up slightly, like he was trying to bring something to mind. “I think I went to that one. . . .”

“You did,” I said immediately. “You, me, and Mike ended up in the photo booth together. Don’t you remember? You were—”

“Wow,” Jesse said, shaking his head. “You’ve got a good memory.”

I smiled. I didn’t want to tell him that, when it came to him, I had a perfect memory. “I just remember that you—”

“Charlie.” Jesse took a step closer to me. “We don’t need to talk about kid stuff.”

“Right,” I said quickly, suddenly feeling the gap in our ages. He was in college, after all. Why was I trying to talk about things that happened years ago? But it was right there in my mind, so vivid I couldn’t believe he hadn’t remembered. He’d worn a black tie with white stripes, and during the last song, we’d danced together. It was one of the Jesse memories I had turned over and over in my mind so often that the edges had all been worn smooth, like sea glass. We’d been dancing in a group, but for one perfect moment, he’d reached out, taken my hand, and spun me around twice before letting me go, leaving me dizzy from more than the dancing.

“And after all,” he said, bringing me back into the present as he came even closer. “We’ve got more important things to talk about.” But Jesse didn’t say anything else. He just he took my head in his hands, leaned in, and kissed me.

And just like that, it was as though no time had passed. It was like we were pressing play again on a song that had been paused right before the beat drop—that easily, we were back in it. In the months that had passed, I would sometimes wonder if I’d remembered it correctly, or if time and far too much going over the events of that night had clouded my memory. That maybe Jesse really hadn’t been that good a kisser. That I’d let my imagination run away with me.

But all it took was one kiss for me to remember that I hadn’t gotten it wrong. If anything, I hadn’t remembered just how good it was. We were falling into a rhythm together right away. In a matter of seconds, I was breathless, my heart beating hard and my hands twining in Jesse’s hair.

He walked me backward toward one of the leather couches, then somehow managed to ease me down onto it, all without stopping kissing me. “Did I mention,” he said, in between kisses, “just how nice it is to see you again?”

I laughed at that and kissed him back as he ran his hand along the side of my silk dress. “So,” he said, just as there was a loud, electronic-sounding beep. It wasn’t my phone, and Jesse paused for a moment before leaning in again—just as it beeped four more times, in quick succession.

“I’ll turn that off,” he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and then frowning down at the screen.

“Everything okay?”

“You tell me,” he said, handing me the phone. “They’re all from Mike.”

I took it from him, feeling my eyes widen as I read through them.

Mike

Hey man. Where’d you go?

I’m hiding in the back of the lobby trying to avoid my parents

Family drama—what’s new

My mom thinks that this is a great time to like go inot everything

Like in the middle of the rehearsal dinner

And my dad’s mad at me too

He would have yelled at me if you were there too I know

They seem to think me being g here means I want to have a wholething about it

Annnnyyyyywayyyyyyyy

Where did you go? Text me text me

text me

I looked up from the phone and handed it back to Jesse. “It kind of sounds like he’s drunk.”

Jesse nodded. “That’s what I thought too. I recognize a Mike drunk text. Usually there’s more autocorrect mistakes, though.”

“But . . .” I tried to figure out how this could even be possible. I’d seen Danny get him a drink from the bar, but then it looked like Mike had just been slowly sipping it all night. Unless . . . I suddenly realized the much more probable answer was that he’d been getting refills from the waiters, which meant he might be something like four or five drinks in. And I wasn’t sure I wanted Mike, full of liquid courage, to suddenly start telling my parents what he thought about them. “I think we should go find him.”

Jesse nodded and gave me a steady look. “We’ll sort Mike out,” he said, reaching to take my hand, sending shivers throughout my body, “and then . . .”

I had been waiting for him to finish the sentence, but a moment later I realized what he was implying. For just a second, a headline flashed across my mind—Clueless Virgin Very Slow on Uptake.

We headed back into the lobby, and I saw that my brothers, Rodney, and Bill were no longer at the bar—I didn’t see them anywhere. “He said he was in the lobby—” I stopped short when I saw Mike was standing near the restaurant entrance, swaying on his feet like he was actually on a boat that nobody else could see. He was frowning down at his phone and jabbing at it with one finger, which I had a feeling explained the number of typos in the texts he’d sent. “There he is,” I said, lowering my voice slightly as I nodded toward him.

“Oh jeez,” Jesse said, shaking his head. “This is looking like senior prom all over again.”

“What happened at senior prom?”

“Another time,” Jesse said, flashing me a quick smile.

“Right,” I said, focusing on the task at hand. “Of course.” We were halfway across the lobby, walking toward Mike, when he looked up from his phone and squinted at us.

“Jesse!” he said, too loudly, throwing his arms up and sending his phone flying. “Oops! Where—did you guys see—”

“I’ve got it,” I said quietly, bending down to pick up his phone, like if I talked more softly it would somehow balance out Mike talking too loud.

“Did you get my texts?” Mike asked. “Because I like just texted you. Look, I’ll show you the time . . . thingy. . . .” He looked at his empty hands, then patted his suit pockets, then shook his head. “I don’t know—I think I lost my phone?”

“Here,” I said, handing it to him, and Mike brightened.

“My phone,” he said, his volume getting loud enough that I glanced around. He frowned at me. “Why’d you take my phone, Charlie? Why are you always taking my stuff that’s mine away from me?”

“Um,” I said, trying to remember the last time I’d seen him like this. I got the sense that Mike didn’t party as much as our older siblings—neither of us did—but I knew he had his fun.