I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Ethan squeezed my hand and led me to our table, where my daughters were waiting with huge grins. My ten-year-old whispered, “Mom, Dad’s face looks like a tomato.” My five-year-old just asked if Ethan could sit next to her. For the rest of the night, Jason avoided our side of the room, and Brittany barely spoke to him during the first dance.

In the parking lot, I finally asked Ethan if he had meant it. He told me the truth. He had liked me since the week I started at the company, but he had watched me walk around wounded for two years and didn’t want to be one more person asking something of me. When I asked him to be my fake date, he said yes because it was the closest he could get to asking me himself.

The mirror, he admitted, had been a last-minute idea after I told him what Jason used to say. He bought it on his lunch break the day before the wedding and hid it in his trunk, unsure whether he’d have the nerve to use it. Then Jason laughed at me in front of everyone, and Ethan decided someone should finally hold up a mirror to the man who had spent years making me feel small.

Ethan and I went on our first real date the following Friday. That was a year ago. My daughters adore him, and he has never once commented on my waist, only on my laugh. We’re taking the girls to the lake this summer. Jason’s marriage lasted seven months; Brittany left after he criticized her weight during a family dinner. Last week, I caught my reflection in a shop window and smiled. For the first time in years, I liked who I saw.