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Mel was moving toward him, though she had her phone pressed to her ear. “I’d love to,” she was saying. “Absolutely. I’ll call you first thing on Monday.” She hung up just as she reached him. “Showtime?” she asked.

“Looks like. Who was that?” He gestured to her phone.

“Just work.”

Right. But now was not the time to press it. He didn’t have a champagne glass in his hand. Shit, that was an oversight, wasn’t it? He needed something to clink, and to raise for a toast at the end of the speech.

Without asking, Mel pressed an almost empty martini glass into his hand. “It’s not champagne, but I’m sure Hattie won’t mind. And I’ve heard you practicing your speech. It’s great, so don’t be nervous.” Then she gave him a gentle shove, so that he moved into the center of the roof terrace, London’s dusky skyline at his back.

He cleared his throat, feeling awkward as fuck, and tapped his glass. Hattie, thankfully, clinked hers more forcefully to get people’s attention and followed it up with an “Oi! Speech time!” She crossed to Dylan, who wrapped an arm around her, cementing her firmly to his side.

Everyone turned to look at Finn, smiles expectant. He took a deep breath, worked up a smile he’d been told more than once was charming. “When Hattie first told me she’d fallen in love with an actor, I’ll admit I was a bit worried. As anyone here will know, Hattie is very much a leading lady of her story, not a supporting act, and here I was, imagining someone equally as dramatic as her.”

Hattie gave him an eye roll, and Mel gave a subtle thumbs-up. A few people around the terrace tittered appreciatively. And some of the tension left his body, allowing him to settle into the rhythm of it. “Thankfully, Dylan doesn’t live up to the typical cliché of what an actor should be. At the risk of offending several people here tonight, he doesn’t demand to be the center of attention—meaning Hattie can be that—and, from what I can tell, he isn’t inclined to throw tantrums when things don’t go his way. Which, again, means that Hattie can do that.” She sticks out her tongue at him, while Dylan laughs, showing off those impressive white teeth. In writing the speech, it had struck him how little he really knew Dylan—but with his sister, when she said it was right, he had to believe her.

He carried on through, barely having to consult his notes, and got a few more laughs and one or two whoops—probably from Hattie’s school friends, if they were anything like his memory of them. He tried not to, but his gaze kept drifting back to Mel as he spoke. Mel, who he’d once imagined proposing to—having a party just like this one, though maybe not quite as glamorous. She was watching him, smiling at all the right places, but one hand was tight around her phone, which had found its way back out of her bag.

He pulled his attention away from her, told himself to stop being stupid. “I’m sure there are those of you here that will also attest to how convincing Hattie can be, too, when she sets her mind to something. I swear she once convinced me it was her who’d come up with the idea behind Zoom and someone had stolen all the software.”

He remembered the conversation with Mel, where they ended up doubting themselves. How do we know for sure she didn’t, though? Are we entirely certain we know what she actually does?

“So convincing me to like Dylan, before I’d even met him, was easy for her. And luckily, from the moment she introduced him to the family, we all got it—the way they make each other brighter.”

He managed to get through the whole thing without stumbling, and when he raised a glass in a toast at the end and everyone clapped he was just so bloody relieved it was over.

His mum came to envelop him in a hug, smelling, as always, comfortingly of lavender. “That was wonderful, Finn. You should give speeches more often.”

He laughed as she pulled away. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

Hattie and Dylan came over, too, Hattie hugging him tightly, then punching him on the arm. “You didn’t need to be so mean about me.”

“Would we call it mean?” Dylan mused. “Or accurate?”

Hattie punched him too at that, but he could see her eyes sparkling. Around them, dark had settled in, London’s skyline lit up against the dark, the lanterns on the terrace glowing. He could see Mel, on her way over to them, but she stopped a little way back, chewing her lip as she read something on her phone, her face illuminated by the screen light.

“Mel okay?” Hattie asked, and although the question was casual, it made his stomach clench.

“I think so,” he said, and she gave him a curious look. Perhaps because he didn’t sound overly confident.

It made him feel ever so slightly nauseous. Hattie pressed a margarita into his hand. He was doing this to Mel. He was dimming her, bit by bit, making her anxious, the way his mum had been, even as she’d tried to hide it from them. And although his mum was doing okay now and claimed to have no regrets, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t strip Mel back, layer by layer, couldn’t watch it happen to someone else he loved. And she wouldn’t talk to him—which meant it had to be bad, because Mel always said what she thought.

“So when are you going to pop the question?” Mark asked him, winking. “Or, don’t tell me, you’re too chicken.”

“Leave him be, Mark,” Kristen said firmly. “He’s teasing, Finn,” she said. Then she reached up to kiss him on the cheek. “We’re both so proud of you.” Would they still be proud of him, though, when they learned that he’d quit his job, with no plan of what to do next? And what would Mel say then?

He couldn’t marry her, could he? He was unstable. He didn’t even have a bloody job. The only thing he was good at was moving from place to place, instability inherent in every nail he hammered or wall he painted. He couldn’t drag Mel around with him—it would only make her give up what she loved, and then he’d dim her even further.

“I can’t do it,” he said out loud.

Mark glanced at him. “What?”

The conversation had moved on, but he felt like he was treading water, standing in the middle of his family. He looked at his brother. “I can’t marry her.”

“Finn,” his sister-in-law said gently, “he was only joking.”

Mark was frowning at him now, clearly sensing something was wrong. “Yeah, mate, I didn’t mean—”

“I think it might be over.” He thought he’d said it quietly, but silence descended over their little group and it made him realize that he might have said it far more loudly than he meant to.