I Brought a Coworker as My Date to My Ex’s Wedding, and One Comment From Him Wiped the Smile Off My Ex’s Face

all I could see was what Max saw.

You used to have a slim waist.

In the twelfth fitting room, I sat down on the little bench in my underwear and started crying.

Kate pushed the curtain open and sat down next to me.

“Hannah.”

“I can’t do this. I can’t go. Everyone’s going to look at me and think, no wonder he left.”

“Nobody is going to think that.”

“Max is going to think it. Claire’s going to think it. All his friends. All his family. His mother always thought I wasn’t good enough.”

Kate was quiet for a moment.

“Do you know what I think?” she said.

“What?”

“I think you’re trying on dresses to make Max like you again.” She took my hand. “Stop it. Pick a dress you like. For you. Not for him.”

I looked at her.

Then I looked at the rack of dresses

I hadn’t tried on yet. And there, at the end, was one I’d walked past. A dark green dress. Simple. Soft fabric that moved. Not tight. Not baggy. Just… a dress.

I tried it on.

I looked in the mirror.

For the first time in a very long time, I didn’t see what Max saw.

I just saw me. In a green dress. With my sister standing behind me, crying a little.

“That one,” Kate said.

“That one,” I agreed.

The wedding was on a Saturday in June. At a country club outside the city, the kind with a long tree-lined driveway and a white tent on the lawn and a string quartet playing by the fountain.

Max picked the girls up the night before. He wanted them at the rehearsal dinner. Ava hugged me tight at the door.

“Will you be there tomorrow?” she whispered.

“I’ll be there. The

whole time. I promise.”

“Is Mr. Hale really coming?”

“He’s really coming.”

Ava pulled back and looked at me. Ten years old, with her serious brown eyes.

“Good,” she said. “I like him.”

Then she got into Max’s black SUV with June, who was already wearing her flower girl dress, again, and waving at me through the window with both hands.

Edward picked me up at three o’clock the next afternoon.

I opened the door, and I didn’t recognize him for a second.

I’d only ever seen Edward in flannel shirts and work pants with sawdust on the knees. Today, he was wearing a dark charcoal suit. White shirt. Deep blue tie. He’d gotten a haircut. He’d shaved. He was holding a small bouquet of pink peonies wrapped in brown paper.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I said.

We stood there.

“You look—” we both said at the same time.

We