This place just feels temporary and empty now that Cassidy is gone.
Luckily, it doesn’t stay that way for long. I’m mid-swipe when the doorbell rings, and very nearly drag a messy black line of mascara across my cheek. Crisis averted, I go to the door to let Cassidy and Nora in.
“Hey,” I say over the music, “come in. I’m almost ready.”
“Ugh, what is this noise?” Nora asks. She goes over to my phone to swap out my dance music for classic rock, and I just shake my head.
“You have your dad’s taste in music.”
“Yup, and proud of it,” she says as a Rolling Stones song comes on. “Anyway, I can’t help myself—I’ve had ‘Start Me Up’ stuck in my head for days. I think I will forever associate that song with drywall.”
“Huh?” I ask. Cassidy doesn’t look nearly as perplexed as I am, and I think I must have missed something. “Drywall?”
“For the renovation?” Nora says. “Dad and I were hanging that heavy stuff all day on my day off. Times like these, I wish he’d had a son or two.”
Cassidy chuckles, but I’m still confused. “Where were you hanging drywall?”
“At the house,” she says. “Didn’t Mom and Dad tell you about the renovations they’ve been planning?”
Welp, now I just feel like I’ve been kicked in the shins because no, they haven’t. Martha and Cory Baker let me live with them from fifteen to eighteen, and I was over at their house so often before and since that they feel like my second set of parents… but they’re still Martha and Cory to me, not Mom and Dad. And apparently they feel the same, because this is the first I’m hearing about renovations.
I put on a brave face and say, “Oh? What are they changing?”
“Well, for starters, they’re replacing all that old, cracked plaster in the upstairs bedrooms,” Nora says, then makes a big show of flexing her biceps. “I’m telling you, I’m gonna be both an expert carpenter and totally ripped by the end.”
“Umm, cool,” I say, trying not to let the hurt creep into my voice. It’s not a big deal, I tell myself. Just a little updating. But the truth is, that house—and the Bakers—means as much to me as it does to Nora and Cassidy, and their younger sisters. “Anyway, can you help me pick something out to wear? I can’t decide if I should go with my LBD or something more casual, more festival-appropriate.”
“Uh, none of the above,” Cassidy says. With a flourish, she produces a garment bag that I hadn’t noticed was draped over her shoulder. “I brought you the red dress.”
“The red dress?” I’m practically drooling, and I’ve got hearts in my eyes. “Really?”
“This is obviously a special night,” she says. “I’ve never heard you get so excited about a guy so fast before.”
She goes over to my bedroom, acting right at home like she never left, and hooks the garment bag over the back of the door. The red dress is a strappy little thing that Cassidy bought for her parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary party a few years ago, and I fell in love at first sight.
Ever since that party, the dress has been imbued with love magic in my mind, like a talisman, and I’ve made no secret out of how much I like it. The fact that Cassidy brought it tonight… well, she must be as excited about my date with Prescott as I am.
“Please don’t make this something more than it is,” I say, even as I’m gently lifting the dress out of the garment bag. “He’s just tagging along with a girl and her friends to a movie.”
“Yeah, about that…” Nora smiles mischievously.
“What?” I ask.
“We’re ditching you,” she says.
“What?”
Cassidy takes over. She takes the dress from my hands, slipping it off its hanger as she says, “You’re going to put on this sexy little number and have a romantic evening with a handsome stranger who just happens to have read all your favorite books, and you’re not going to have your two best friends tagging along, ruining the moment.”
“But–” I start to object, but honestly, there’s no use. When these girls have made up their minds about something, there’s nothing anyone can say to change them.
Besides… the butterflies are starting to awaken in my stomach again, and I actually really love the idea of having Prescott all to myself.
“What will you two do tonight?” I ask.
“We’re commandeering your apartment for the time being,” Nora said, producing a bottle of champagne from the depths of her enormous sack of a purse. “We’re going to stay in and have our own little girls’ night, and when this bottle is empty… who knows? Maybe we’ll end up at the festival after all.”
“You mean you’ll come spy on Prescott and me,” I say with a laugh. I’ve known these two since preschool—I can read everything they say, and everything they don’t say.