Not an answer, but all I could conjure amid all the Alert, Alert, Alerts clanging in my brain. I pinched the buttonhole of his polo shirt to distract myself, my thumb grazing warm skin as his arm looped around me, pulling me closer.

“Thank you for this morning,” he whispered. “And tonight. And everything.”

Before I could say “You’re welcome,” he kissed me again, and I forgot what day it was, let alone what happened this morning.

16.

“you’ll think about it.” Jules paused from painting her toenails silver to gawk at me. “You seriously said that? It’s not like he was asking you to bear his children. Although that’s obviously next.”

I pulled another pillow behind me at the top of her bed, craning my neck to avoid her nail polish fumes. “‘I’ll think about it.’ Yes. As in . . . what you say when you don’t want to do something.”

“I don’t get it,” Jules said. “You don’t want to go to a party at Wing Club.”

“No.”

“With cocktails and champagne . . .”

“I’m seventeen. They won’t let me—”

“And tiny adorable food circulating and music playing . . .” She turned her attention back to her toenails. “Yeah, I don’t get it.”

Then her head darted up.

“This is a wardrobe issue! You have nothing to wear!”

“What? No.” I sat straighter. “I’ve been going to Lincoln Center events my entire life.” If you don’t count the past two years. “Half my wardrobe is black-tie.” Well. Black. “And I bought a couple new things . . .” Workout clothes.

“What would you wear, then? Hypothetically.”

I pictured my bleak closet and made something up. “I have a silver dress, thank you very much, with a Peter Pan collar.”

“Cap sleeves?” Jules sat up, smirking. “Hem to here?” She pointed to the bottom of her kneecap.

I squinted. How dare she mock my imaginary dress. “And?”

“And that’s what a twelve-year-old would wear, tagging along with her parents to a grown-up party. You said it yourself. You’re seventeen—”

“I said it in the context of not being allowed to drink.”

“I’m taking you shopping for something age appropriate. And you are going to this goddamned black-tie cocktail reception if it kills both of us.”

“It’s not as simple as . . .” I clamped my lips shut.

Jules hit me with a hard stare. “As?”

How could I explain this to her? That if music was my recently broken-up-with ex, this was the equivalent of being a guest at its wedding? That people there would either know and pity me or, worse, not know and ask me when they could expect my big triumphant debut? That Oscar and I would be subjected to the glare of the classical music scene before there was even an us to glare at?

That this whole thing felt weirdly like a trap?