Aside from the government officials I wasn't familiar with, I'd seen most of the other guests around before. Lately, I'd been out almost every day trying to land clients for Blue Knight, and if nothing else, my network had been growing rapidly.

After a few polite hellos, the small talk didn't take long to drift into more personal territory—namely, whether Tyler and I were getting back together, and what exactly was going on between Zachary and Rachel.

People often ...