But something has happened. Something has changed. He’s not shooting eye daggers anymore.

  He’s looking at me kindly. Affectionately.

  He’s looking at me like a man in love.

  Chapter Nine

  The bleat of an accordion startles me back to reality. The notes are loud, aggressively festive, and too close to our party. The tune verges on familiar, accompanied by . . . is that a tuba?

  My maid of honor instincts kick in—instincts I hadn’t realized were lying dormant all my life. Whoever this random traveling klezmer band is, they need to find another celebration to destroy. Because they’re drowning out the string quartet’s version of “Just Like Heaven.” It’s supposed to play after the big kiss, as the newlyweds walk down the aisle.

  It’s hard to get my gaze back from Glasswell’s grip, but I turn toward the sound of the accordion.

  That’s when I realize something is very, very wrong.

  A moment ago, there were eighteen wedding guests seated in eighteen wicker folding chairs under a candlelit canopy.

  Now, there must be two hundred and fifty people pressing against me on all sides. Most of them are my mother’s age, and the decibel of their conversation hits me like a hurricane. Looking around in panic, I recognize Masha’s third cousin, and I think that’s our fourth-grade teacher Mr. Rayco who just pushed past me, making his way toward—inexplicably—a white vinyl bar beside the ocean.

  Where did that come from? Where did any of this come from? All these people. All this noise.

  Somehow, in a second, Masha’s wedding . . . changed. Instead of the handmade silk gauze chuppah crowning the altar, there’s a digital monstrosity strobing like a nineties rave. Instead of twine-tied bouquets of ranunculus in terra-cotta vases . . . black urns of long-stem roses flank the aisles. The aisles . . . which are no longer made of sand. Someone has slapped down an enormous dance floor. Silver bunting lines an expanse of bloodred folding chairs. Masha made it very clear her wedding palette was soft gold. I rub my eyes and slap my face, but the nightmare thunders on. Did someone slip a molly in my Pellegrino?

  “I can fix this,” I say. Because if not me, who?

  But how? What even is this?

  Deep breaths. First, check on Masha. If I’m freaking out, imagine what she’s going through.

  I turn toward her, ready to help . . .

  But Masha isn’t at my side. Neither is Eli. Or Glasswell.

  I rise on my toes and squint into the writhing mass of bodies. I see her! Standing with Eli, very far away. She’s overrun by relatives—or should I say party crashers, because there was never a moment when leering Cousin Jeffrey made the cut. A polite smile strains her face. My poor, poor BBS.

  I collapse onto a folding chair. I plant my elbows on my knees, hang my head, and close my eyes. I take deep gulps of air. I pause, waiting to inhale.

  A hand—warm and firm—touches the skin where my dress opens at the back. The feeling is electric.

  “Hey,” says America’s sexiest voice.

  I jump away. “What are you doing?”

  Glasswell leans down to massage my shoulders. I freeze because . . . he’s really good at it. Every now and then his chest rubs against the back of my head, the tops of my ears. There’s something about his touch that finds a secret place inside me, like a hidden velvet pocket inside a favorite old handbag. Like something that’s always been there but you’ve only just discovered. His lips are at my ear. I hold my breath in shock.

  “You were right,” he whispers.

  His breath against my neck weaves through my body like a stiff narcotic. I can’t help wanting more.

  “Right about what?” I whisper.

  That couldn’t have been me. I don’t speak in that throaty, sexed-up voice.

  But that’s definitely me tilting my neck to give Glasswell a bigger piece, in case he wants to whisper all over me again. I’m coherent enough to know I’ll be embarrassed later, but that doesn’t change what I want right now.

  I set a goal: as soon as he answers my question, as soon as I feel one more rough brush of his stubble on my skin—then I’ll pull away.

  But not yet.

  “That I’d cry during their vows,” he says into my neck.

  I don’t recall having breathed a word about anything related to Glasswell’s tears.

  “Was it obvious,” Glasswell asks, “all the way back here?”

  What does he mean back here?

  I look around. How did I get all the way back here during the most important part of Masha and Eli’s ceremony? Maids of honor don’t sit way back here. It must be Glasswell’s fault.

  I stand to face him, my eyes bright with accusations. But when they land on his, all my ire disappears, like someone opened a trapdoor inside me. Bitterness and rage dandelion away. What remains is a feeling for which I know only one word.

  Home.

  That’s what it feels like to look at him. As crazy as it sounds.

  Are we smiling? I think we’re smiling. Now he’s . . . leaning in . . . to . . .

  Holy shit. Glasswell’s going to kiss me.

  Stranger still: it feels like we’ve practiced this pre-kiss pose a million times. I don’t just mean his grip on my hips or the tangoing tilt of our heads. I also mean the chemicals amalgamating within me. I find myself softening, opening . . . for him. I’m so swept up that for several breathless eternities I forget to ask myself what the hell I’m doing.

  This would be a waste.

  His words from all those years ago return. I break away and catch my breath. When I’m not looking at Glasswell, and not touching Glasswell, and not being touched by Glasswell, I can see clearly. And what I see are tacky folding chairs, smarmy Cousin Jeffrey, a strobe light Morse-coding how wrong this wedding has become. Masha must be on the edge of passing out.

  “I’m gonna check on—” I say as a caterer comes between Glasswell and me. He holds out a finger-smudged tray of gray stuffed mushrooms and sad crab cakes—the hors d’oeuvres Masha and I have choked down at all her cousins’ weddings.

  “Where did you come from?” I demand of the waiter. I point at the food in his custody. “This is all wrong!”

  “Is that Olivia Dusk?” A whisper pricks my ears.

  I turn toward the voice and find a woman I’ve never seen before. “Who the hell are you?” I say, which makes her and her friend laugh and turn away.

  “What’s their problem?” I ask Glasswell, not really wanting an answer, especially one whispered like an orgy on my neck. What I want is to find Masha, to snap my fingers and make this reception deception disappear.

  “We can leave whenever you want,” Glasswell says.

  I laugh. Leave in the middle of my best friend’s wedding?

  “I’m going to find Masha.”

  Glasswell looks alarmed, like I’ve just said I’m going to strip down and run naked into the ocean. He intercepts me, his broad shoulders squaring off in front of mine. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Yeah, well, neither was all that cologne.” I motion for him to step aside.

  “I thought you liked—never mind.” He sighs. “It’s her wedding day, Olivia.”

  I pat his shoulder. “I knew you could figure it out.”

  I scan the crowd for Masha. There. I exhale at the sight of her—an island of sanity in this paint-by-numbers storm. Thank god she looks the same—beautiful dress, vintage Temperley, loose ringlets I watched her cousin wind around a curling iron this morning. Her lips in Vice by Urban Decay, spotlighting her smile.

  “She’s swarmed,” Glasswell says, looking at the crowd around her. This is true, and precisely why I need to save her. “You can email her tomorrow.”

  I whip my head around. “Did you say ‘email’? Tomorrow?”

  “You heard the rabbi,” Glasswell says. “All that talk about Masha and Eli needing peace in their new life. It’s important to them. And we should honor it. Tonight of all nights.”

  My mind hones in on one word, and it isn’t peace.

  Rabbi? The only rabbi at this wedding was the one Masha’s babushka brought as her plus-one. And he certainly wasn’t given a speaking platform. Doesn’t Glasswell remember the mission to recover Yogi Dan?

  “Where’s the celebrity officiant?” I ask.

  “Where is what?” Glasswell asks.

  “Yogi Dan? Willie Nelson’s little brother in pretzel form?”

  Glasswell’s staring at me, straitjackets in his eyes.

  I look past him, past the entire mystifying scene. Off in the distance, I dimly discern the silhouette of Yogi Dan’s afro gliding toward the parking lot.

  I take off running.

  “Hey!” I shout. “Yogi! Wait!”

  Yogi Dan is hurrying up-beach, almost to the parking lot off PCH. Something is different. As I get closer I notice his attire—he’s swapped the kurta and headscarf for a yarmulke, pin-striped suit, and tallis. But even though dusk has fallen, and even though this day’s gone haywire, of one thing I am sure: that man is Yogi Dan. And he’s got something to do with all of this.

  “Yogi Dan!” I shout again, running harder. My voice, now that we’re away from the klezmer band—is definitely loud enough for him to hear. But, like in the café, he doesn’t look up. He completely ignores me. Right up until I pelt the trunk of his hybrid Honda Civic with a handful of sand. “Rabbi!”

  He rolls down the window, leans his head out and smiles. “Shabbat Shalom.”

  “What did you do?” I demand.

  He raises one shoulder and flashes a cryptic smile. “Life is mysterious. If I may make a suggestion: Go with it.”

  “Go with what?”

  “The mystery. Or don’t go with it. It’s gonna happen, either way.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “The mystery.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “I’m not. The cosmos may be. Kidding, that is.”

  “That’s it?” I shout. “That’s all I get?”

  “The imbalance of love results from a limited perspective,” he says. “You need infinite subjectivity in your life.”

  “That’s heavy,” I say, “but I don’t have time to wander the earth, contemplating its meaning.”

  “That’s where you’re mistaken.”

  I sigh and turn to see the ocean at sundown, purple as a Mission fig.

  “Check your purse,” Rabbi Dan says.

  I look inside and find the joint Glasswell took from the café, just before the world went sideways.

  “What do I do with this?” I say. “If I smoke it, will it take me back?”

  “I doubt it,” Rabbi Dan says. “But who knows?” Then he peels out, screeching from the parking lot onto PCH, narrowly missing several honking cars.

  “Hey!” I shout, fumbling for my phone to take a picture of his license plate. Blurry. Useless. “Wait!”

  “What was that about?”

  I turn to find Glasswell, standing behind me.

  “And where did you get that joint?” he asks.

  “You gave it to me—never mind. I thought you wanted to leave,” I say, dropping the joint back in my purse.

  “Do you?” he asks. I don’t know why he cares what I do. But ever since that look we shared during the ceremony, Glasswell has been behaving quite un-Glasswell-esque.

  Tonight’s almost-kiss comes back to me—his lips so close to mine, the heat of his hands, the startling way our bodies fit together, like we’d practiced it. I bring my fingers to my tingling lips. As much as it confuses me to admit it, our almost chemistry back there had been almost fire.

  “Liv,” he says my nickname with such tenderness that it makes me melt inside. “Hear that?” He cocks his head toward the reception.

  I make out the rippling synth notes of the Talking Heads’s “Once in a Lifetime,” which Masha and I agreed ages ago is the GOAT dance song at a wedding. Suddenly I want to get back there, bounce around, and belt this song out. Get things back on track.

  “Dare me to throw out my back again?” Glasswell says, holding out his hand.

  “You do you,” I say, walking past him.

  Undeterred, he catches up and puts his hand in mine. “Thing is, I need someone to dip if I’m going to throw it out properly. And I choose you.”

  I look at his hand in mine and feel that shiver again. I look into his eyes. Instantly I’m smiling. Without wanting to.

  “You’re shaking,” he says. “Time to call it a night?”

  If I could speak to someone I trust, maybe I could get a handle on what’s going on.

  “That thing you said before,” I say, “about emailing Masha tomorrow—”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “That was cold. I know you want to make things right with her.”

  “Right with her?” Masha and I made up this morning. Surely Glasswell recalls torturing me when I called to apologize.

  “Just . . . baby steps, you know?” he says. “And maybe not starting on the night of her wedding?”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Olivia,” he warns, but I’m already gone. I need to find Masha. Now.

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  Back under the tent, I can see the wedding for what it is: the huge and impersonal factory-setting wedding I’ve been to several times before. The same DJ, the same catering company, the same florist as all Masha’s cousins have had. Her family should own stock in this racket. I’m pretty sure those disco ball-shaped centerpieces are the ones Masha and I built in her aunt’s garage for Pammy’s wedding last spring.

  I remember that day clearly. It was less than a week after Masha had gotten engaged to Eli, but she hadn’t told her family yet. She’d invited me to help with the centerpieces on the condition that I didn’t breathe a word of her engagement. She left her ring at home, knowing that the second her aunts and cousins saw it, the wedding train would leave the station.

  But the wedding Masha is having is precisely the one she wanted to avoid, the kind of wedding she feared would swallow her like a whale. How is this possible?

  I watch Masha now with Eli, making the rounds on the dance floor periphery. She was clear in her wedding plans that she wanted to spend the bulk of this time dancing. But there’s no room for getting down, besieged by all her aunts. The smile plastered on her face pains me. All teeth, no eyes. Those cheeks will be sore tomorrow.

  “She’s miserable,” I say.

  “Are you sure you’re not projecting?” Glasswell counsels at my side. Somehow, this doesn’t annoy me. I don’t mind having him to bounce ideas off. I don’t even mind when he takes me in his arms as the Talking Heads fade into Frank Sinatra.

  “This isn’t her,” I say.

  “What do you mean?” Glasswell asks, holding me close, Frank singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” A different kind of dizzy sweeps over me.

  “I’m so confused,” I say. “How did we get here?”

  Masha. Glasswell and me. The Yogi-turned-Rabbi peeling out like a bail-jumping Buddha in the night. I’m starting to worry that no one’s going to explain this to me. That even if they wanted to they couldn’t.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” a girl I’ve never seen before appears before me. “Would you mind if I took a selfie with you?”

  I step away and gesture that Glasswell’s all hers. The girl laughs and says to Glasswell, “She’s so funny!”

  “Olivia doesn’t do selfies,” Glasswell says. “But she’s happy to sign autographs.”

  “Cool, yeah,” the girl says.

  Glasswell reaches into his breast pocket, turns to me. “Do you want to use the Beast?”

  Out of curiosity, I nod, and Glasswell puts a beautiful Montblanc pen into my hand. I glance at its inscription. Olivia Dusk, Zombie Hospital.

  Zombie Hospital? As in the TV drama where exhausted, lovelorn doctors operate on the undead? Masha and I are addicted to Zombie Hospital, mostly because of its leading man, Miguel Bernardeau. But I’m not so big a fan I’d shell out for a fancy pen . . . right?

  The girl fishes into her purse and pulls out a receipt. “Can you make it out to Janelle and write Follow your dreams?”

  Glasswell gives me his shoulder to write on, and in a bewildered daze, I do. When I hand the receipt back to Janelle, a smile fills her face.

  “TYSM!” She beams and bounds away.

  “Glasswell,” I say. “What the howling heap of hell was that?”

  Instead of answering, he puts his arms out to dance with me again. I see Masha’s parents, Yulia and Lev, a few couples over. I steer Glasswell toward them, until I can catch Yulia’s eye. As soon as I do, I smile, ready to fall into the firm hug she’s been giving me since elementary school. But when Masha’s mother glances back at me, there’s only cold vacancy in her eyes.

  I suck in my breath.

  “Yulia.” My voice is intimate, laced with years of sleepovers and dinners. I need Masha’s mother to validate my existence. She’s a central character in the story of my life.

  “Beautiful wedding, isn’t it?” she says to me stiffly, then with a smile, “Hello, Jake.”

  Glasswell leans in to kiss Yulia, then to shake hands with Lev, who ignores me completely.

  “I’m so happy for Mash—” I start to say.

  “Everyone’s been civilized.” Yulia gives me a pointed look. “So far.”

  Glasswell swoops me away.

  “Was that dig aimed at me?” I say to him. “Because that felt like—wait, there’s Masha. Almost alone.”

  It’s time to go straight to the source. I pull away from Glasswell and beeline for the far side of the tent. For my best friend, my BBS.