I set the photo down, but Max picked it back up.

“Does this picture make you feel like shit?” she asked sincerely.

I hesitated—I didn’t know if she was making fun of me or not—and then, overwhelmed by trust, nodded. Max ripped the photo in half, then quarters, then eighths, and kept ripping until there was a pile of shredded confetti in front of her on the floor. Next, she scanned a wall, pulled out a binder, paged through its plastic sheets until she found the negative, pulled a lighter from her pocket, and lit it on fire. The celluloid collapsed into her fingers and she dropped it on the floor into the pile of confetti, letting it burn down to ashes.

“There,” she said, as the house rang three loud notes out of the nearest speaker. “Let’s eat dinner and get drunk and forget about it.”

*  *  *

Two hours later, I was on Max’s phone, calling Tyler.

“Hey.” He was casual, warm.

“Heyyyyyyy yourself,” I said, full of beans.

“You’re alive,” he said, and I could hear him smiling. “Where you been?”

“I’m at Max’s house. She kidnapped me. My truck is still at the studio. Can you come and get me? I don’t want to walk in the dark.”

“Uh—sure. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said. I ran to the front door, pulled it open, and left it ajar for him.

“Is Tyler coming?” Max screeched from the bottom of the courtyard, where she was swaying to the music, wine glass in hand, a baby-rose ball gown zipped up over her t-shirt and jeans.

“Yes!” I called out, lifting the enormous blue tulle skirt that she’d buttoned over my romper and descending the steps one by one.

“Yay!” she squealed. “I told you, he’s crazy about you. They never come over.” Then Max brushed out my curls. “This color still looks so fresh,” she said approvingly. “You’ve mastered the formula. It’s like…the inner peel of a peach.”

“I halved the quantities,” I told her. “The shades are the same—royal blond, rose gold, nectarine.”

She turned up the music as I poured more wine and we jumped around.

“‘Motownphilly’ is the greatest pop song of all time,” she announced.

“It’s so good. But it can’t be the queen. You can’t choose the queen and not make a list.”

“Hit me then.”

“‘Faith,’ George Michael.”

“Ooh, that’s maybe a burn. But it’s so dramatic.”

“‘You Make My Dreams Come True,’ Hall and Oates.”

“Too yachty.”

“‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody,’ Whitney Houston.”

“I’ll give you that. That’s a jam,” she agreed. “But is it the one true jam.”

“Prince, ‘Kiss.’ Beyoncé, ‘Single Ladies.’ Jackson Five, ‘Want You Back.’”