“Just put them on and stop imagining all the different ways you can thank him.” She laughed, her eyes sparkling. “I saw all the folders on your desk. Want to bring me up to speed over lunch?”

And just like that, Jillian was back in town. All was right with the world.

We spent most of the afternoon working in a corner booth at our favorite restaurant in Chinatown, getting caught up over our sizzling rice and office gossip. Not much escaped Jillian’s eye, even across an ocean. But there was still some scuttlebutt to fill her in on, and as we chitted and chatted, I relaxed more and more.

“So tell me all about the wedding?” she asked, after we’d covered everything office related.

I paused, chopsticks halfway into my mouth. “Thah wady?”

“The wedding! Mimi and Ryan!”

I chopsticked, chewed, and nodded. “Oh sure, sure, that wedding.”

“I was sick to miss it, but we had so much going on at that point with the house in Amsterdam it just wasn’t possible for us to get back,” she said, stirring her mustard sauce. “But I bet it was perfect, wasn’t it? Timed down to the millisecond?”

“What’s smaller than a millisecond?” I snorted, digging back into my pot stickers. My pulse was racing. What the hell was up with that?

“Oh, I bet. Did she manage everything the entire day, or did she let go and enjoy?”

“She totally enjoyed. She actually had a great day, even though she had a huge dress snafu at the last minute.”

“Oh no, what happened?” Jillian slurped her noodles.

“Sophia’s had terrible morning sickness—actually, morning, afternoon, evening, and middle-of-the-night sickness. It hit all of a sudden, and blammo—right onto Mimi’s wedding dress.”

“You’re lying.”

“I wish that I was! But you know Mimi—she had a second dress ready to go for her reception, so she just wore that for both.”

“I would have died,” Jillian moaned.

“Anyone else would have! But she assumes if celebrities get to have more than one wedding dress, then so should she.” I laughed, remembering. “Actually, she was more upset about the shoes—she hadn’t planned on a backup pair for those.”

“Ah jeez, Sophia didn’t—”

“Sophia did! A little flyaway yak landed on Mimi’s Choos. She flipped her lid over that one. Until Ryan came to see her; then it all melted away.”

Jillian shot me a surprised look. “Wait, Ryan came to see her? Before the wedding? I figured Mimi’d be too superstitious for that.”

“Oh, she was. She hid behind the door so he didn’t see her. But then, oh my goodness, Jillian, it was the sweetest thing. Ryan said something about how much he couldn’t wait to marry her, and how he couldn’t wait to call her his wife—and then it was like . . . what are shoes?”

“Aww.” Jillian sighed.

“Yeah, thank goodness she was okay going barefoot. Or you know my ass would have been running all over town trying to find her some new shoes.” I chuckled.

“She got it,” Jillian said, her eyes growing soft.

“She got what?” I asked.

“She realized it wasn’t about the wedding; it was about the marriage. Her. Him. Together. She got married barefoot because all she cared about was him. That guy. And throw-up shoes weren’t going to stop that from happening.”

“Yeah, she did seem a little Zen after that,” I said, thinking back to the look on her face. “Also a little horny.”

“I remember that,” she replied with a dreamy look on her face.

“Officially, I should be saying eww. But it’s about Benjamin, so please be free with the details.”

“Shush. How are things with you and Simon?”

“Hello, segue,” I said, shaking my head.

“Hi, deflection, how are things?” she asked again, chasing a carrot around her plate.

“I’m not deflecting; things are good. Things are very good.” I smiled, thinking about balcony sex. And when we got back to our home last night, the hallway sex. And this morning in the shower sex. And—

“I can tell by the look on your face, and the way you’re sucking that egg roll, that things are very good,” she said, pursing her lips.

“Hey, you asked.”

“I did, I really did. So, friends getting married, friends having babies—is that making any bells go off for you?” she asked.

I pointed my pot sticker at her. “Do I have a sign on my back that says Will Work for Wedding? Why is everyone asking me that all the time now?”

“Really? Everyone is asking you that?” she repeated, pointing her own pot sticker.

“Okay, not everyone. But it feels like that’s all anybody is talking about lately. Seriously, it’s in the air. It’s in the water. It may very well be in this pot sticker.”

“It’s that time—your friends are all moving into a different phase of their lives. When my friends were all getting married and starting their families, I was too busy to date anyone. My entire life was Jillian Designs. Every wedding I went to for one of my girlfriends, everyone asked me who was I dating, and when was I going to think about getting married. It’s like, if one goes over the cliff, we all have to.” She sipped her tea, then shrugged. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to nudge you toward that cliff.”

“You didn’t. I guess I’m just realizing lately things are changing. I mean, we’re all still ridiculous and childish in our own rights sometimes—so it’s hard to imagine now that Sophia and Neil are going to be, like, in charge of a person. A tiny person, but still a person.” I leaned my head in my hands, having a hard time narrowing down on what I wanted to say. “It’s just weird, I guess, everyone growing up.”

“Hey. Growing up and being a grown-up are two very different things. I can’t see Neil ever being an actual grown-up. And he’s on the news, for pity’s sake,” Jillian said, laughing.

“Are you glad you put in all the time that you did?”

“What do you mean?”

“Back then, building your business. If you could go back and do it the same way, would you have wanted to get married sooner?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether I’d met Benjamin sooner. I never wanted to get married until I met him. And we didn’t get married for a long time. But I knew it’d happen. Because he was my guy. And luckily, I’d been smart enough to wait for my guy.” She smiled at me with a knowing look. “Don’t you think Simon’s your guy?”