“Open,” Brooke said, and I opened my eyes to see she was leaning forward, uncapped mascara wand in hand. “Now look over my left shoulder and try not to blink.” I stared ahead at the wallpaper by my door as Brooke leaned closer to me, carefully applying mascara to my eyelashes.

“Um,” I started, running my fingers through Waffles’s fur. I wasn’t sure what I even wanted to tell her, but I knew I had to at least try. The longer I sat here, with Brooke helping me when I didn’t deserve to be helped, I was feeling like I had to say something, even if it didn’t come out right.

“Look up,” she murmured.

“I just,” I started, then tried again. “I wanted to say—”

“Right shoulder,” she said, switching to my other side.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, and Brooke lowered the mascara wand and straightened up, taking a step back. “I’m sorry if I’ve been—if I wasn’t—” I realized I wasn’t making any sense, so I took a breath and started over. “Thank you for doing this for me. I’m sorry if I haven’t made you feel welcome.”

“Oh,” she said, blinking. She looked down at the black tube in her hands and turned it between her fingers for just a moment, then took a slightly shaky breath, the mascara spinning faster. “I should have known, I guess. But I just thought . . .”

She uncapped the mascara and leaned forward again, and I looked over Brooke’s right shoulder, trying to stay still, knowing somehow that there was more she wanted to say and that it would be easier for her if she didn’t have to look right at me. “Danny and I had been dating for a few months, and we talked about me coming to the wedding. But then we broke up . . .”

I felt my eyebrows rise even as I tried to keep looking in the same direction and not get stabbed in the eye by a mascara wand.

“And then we got back together, and he said that I should come. I might have pushed him on it—I really wanted to meet all of you, and I thought it meant something that he asked me. . . .” I blinked but tried to keep looking ahead, at the height lines that crawled up my doorframe, marking every year of my life until I’d declared myself over it at eleven. “But I think it’s just hard,” she said, taking a step back and capping the mascara. “I don’t . . . think it’s what he thought it would be.”

“Well,” I said, taking a breath, getting my automatic defense of Danny ready. But I hesitated, Brooke’s words hitting me, and letting myself see, for the first time, just how she might have felt about this weekend. I suddenly saw all the times we had made it clear we hadn’t known she was coming, all the times Danny had wandered off, not making sure she felt comfortable or happy. But he probably hadn’t meant anything by it. He probably just hadn’t realized how she felt. I tried to tell myself this—and I believed it—but it didn’t necessarily make me feel any better.

I opened my mouth to respond to this when Brooke nodded and spun my desk chair around so that I was facing my dresser mirror, causing Waffles to raise his head and look around, like he was confused as to why we were moving. “You’re done,” she said, stepping back with a smile.

I blinked at my reflection. My hair was in rollers all over my head, but my makeup looked amazing. I was wearing more than I normally ever did, but it didn’t look like it was garish or too much—I still looked like me, but with all my features subtly enhanced.

“What do you think?” Brooke asked, giving me a hopeful, nervous smile.

“It’s great,” I said, returning her smile in the mirror. “Thank you.” I took a deep breath. I knew I needed to try to make this better, even though something inside me knew that it was probably Danny who should be saying this, not me. “Brooke,” I started slowly, picking up the dog’s ears, then dropping them. “I’m really—”

She waved this off. “It’s okay.”

“But—”

“Really,” she said firmly, then smiled at me. “But thank you. Now,” she said, her voice suddenly businesslike. “I need you to leave the rollers in for as long as possible, okay? And I’m going to need to touch up your lipstick in about an hour.”

I glanced down at the time on my phone and jumped, sending Waffles tumbling to the ground. He shot me a look of betrayal, then hopped up on the bed and rolled onto his belly. I pushed myself up from my chair—it was later than I’d realized and I still hadn’t put on my dress. “I should go,” I said, already halfway to the door. I opened it, but then turned back to Brooke, who was giving Waffles’s belly a scratch. “Um . . . thank you.”

Brooke nodded, then pointed out the door. “Go,” she said, and I hurried out of the room. I ran out to the landing, where J.J. was standing in his suit, fastening his cuff links.

He took one look at me and immediately burst into laughter. “Oh my god,” he said, doubling over slightly. “What is on your head? Oh my god.”

“Shut up, Jameison,” I snapped at him as I headed to Linnie’s room, which thankfully looked empty. “They’re just rollers!”

“No, wait, come back,” J.J. said, sounding out of breath, still laughing in between every word. “I didn’t mean it. You look, um . . .”

I slammed the door to Linnie’s room, then tried to hit the lights, not remembering until I flipped the switch twice that the power was still out. J.J. being upstairs, in his suit, either meant that the group that had gone into the basement to try to fix things had either failed, or they’d just told J.J. to go away and stop trying to help. Figuring that the second option was more likely—frankly, hoping it was—I looked around in the dark. The power outage looked like it had stopped the getting-ready party that had been going on in here not that long ago, though I could still see the evidence of it—half-empty champagne glasses on Linnie’s dresser and makeup and Q-tips scattered across it. I walked to the closet, opening the door wide, since there were no windows in the long, narrow space and it was totally dark in there.

I made my way to the end of the closet and, with the little light that was left, pulled my bridesmaid dress off the rack. I changed quickly, then walked back through to Linnie and Rodney’s room. I looked at the mirror over the dresser, in which I could kind of see myself, but not really. My bridesmaid dress was peach silk, with spaghetti straps and a little V cutout on the bodice. We’d all had to wear the same color, but could pick our own options in straps, length, and fit. I smoothed down the skirt, which flared out slightly and which I’d felt would be more fun during the dancing portion of the evening. Peach wasn’t my favorite color, and on my own, I never would have chosen this dress—but it had been Linnie’s pick, and I had to admit, as I looked at it now, that I kind of liked it.

I peered out into the hallway before leaving, to make sure J.J. wasn’t still lurking around, waiting to make fun of me. When the coast was clear, I hurried down to the first floor, hoping that while I’d been getting my makeup done things hadn’t gone too far off track downstairs.

“No,” I heard a voice say as I stepped off the last stair and into the front hall. “Still a negative on power in the house. I have the number of an electrician . . . okay. Sounds good.” Then there was a sound of feedback, and Bill came around the corner, holding a walkie-talkie and wearing a tux.

I took an instinctive step back, remembering a second too late that I was right in front of the stairwell, and I stumbled slightly, reaching out to the banister post and holding on to steady myself, trying to look like I’d done all of this on purpose. But the fact was that Bill was wearing a tuxedo.

The tux fit him well, somehow transforming the lanky guy I’d been running errands with this morning. His black bow tie was perfectly tied, and his hair had been combed back. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him dressed up—just last night, he’d been wearing a suit. So I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly having trouble focusing as I looked at him.

“Hey,” he said, lowering his walkie-talkie and smiling at me. “You look great.”

“Oh,” I said, just blinking at him, then looking down at my bare feet, trying to pull myself together. “Thank you. So do you. Um, with the whole tuxedo thing.”