Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death. 

Gail wakes up the morning after Debbie’s wedding thinking about Andrew Mason. She’d fallen in love with him the year Debbie was in fifth grade. He was an admissions counselor at the school where she taught math. She reflects now that they might have become friends and that he could have even been friends with Max. However, that is not the way things progressed. 

He was a new hire that year, and he and Gail ran into each other alone most of the time. Neither spent much time congregating with the other faculty and staff, and their relationship grew without public scrutiny. One day, they were both forced to acknowledge the sexual tension, and their relationship became physical from there. They arranged to go to Andrew’s at a time when she could get away from Max and Debbie. Initially, they were awkward, but then they bonded over their shared love of ironing. Andrew was a neat, tidy man, and he valued having a clean, orderly space. The ice broke, and they had sex for the first time.

After that, they met whenever they could.