My parents tossed my wedding invitation straight into the trash and told me not to embarrass myself, but the morning they saw me walking alone down the aisle at a $40 million Malibu estate, with cameras catching every second, they finally understood the daughter they treated like an afterthought had built a life too big for them to ignore.

I woke to the sound of the Pacific Ocean on the morning of the wedding. James had left the guest suite before dawn — tradition, he’d said, even though neither of us was particularly traditional. The bed was empty on his side.

On the nightstand, where my phone usually sat, there were two things.

My T-square. Six inches of steel, slightly bent at one corner from the night it hit the drywall. James had pulled it out of the wall that morning, spackled the hole without comment, and kept it in his camera bag for weeks.

And a note in his loose, crooked handwriting: Something borrowed. Something steel.

I held it against my chest, then set it on the dresser next to my vows and went to get married.

Mrs. Park arrived at eight sharp. Nina came with a curling iron and a YouTube tutorial she had watched three times. The first attempt at my hair was structurally unsound — lopsided in a way that defied her master’s degree.

Mrs. Park observed from across the room without mercy.

The hair does not agree with your degree.

Real laughter, from the belly, the kind that makes your eyes water.

Nina recurled the left side. It was still slightly uneven.

I didn’t care. Real things are never perfectly symmetrical.