Finally, she was ready, thirty minutes before Max was due to pick her up. She took a picture of herself and her outfit in her full-length mirror (long, flowy blue sundress, jean jacket, gold wedge sandals) and a close-up selfie to get her jewelry and makeup (dangly gold earrings, tortoiseshell sunglasses, pink lip gloss, and just a hint of highlighter) and texted both pictures to Alexa and Ellie.

Okay, we’re really doing this. How do I look? I’m going for woke up like this

Ellie immediately responded.

You look fantastic!

That was all well and good, but this was a time she actually wanted some constructive criticism on her outfit. She would have trusted Ellie better if she’d told her to change her lipstick or to wear the yellow dress or the gold hoops instead. It was like how she always trusted a proofreader better as soon as they found a typo.

I’m with Maddie and she says you look excellent but that you need a bracelet—don’t you have a gold one? Oh, and roll up the sleeves

Thank God for little sisters and their best friends for giving her the notes she’d been looking for. She grabbed her gold bangles out of her top drawer and slid them on her left wrist, and rolled up the sleeves of the jean jacket. She snapped a new picture and sent it to Alexa.

How’s this?

The text came back in seconds.

PERFECT

“You ready to go?” Max appeared in the doorway of her bedroom. “Oh wow, you look amazing.”

She tucked her phone into her pocket and picked up her bag. Shit, she hadn’t consulted with her fashion advisers about the bag, but she thought it worked—a big caramel leather tote she’d bought a few weeks ago. Well, if it didn’t work, it was too late now.

“Thanks.” She smiled at him. He looked great, too, in jeans, sneakers, and a blue-striped button-down. But tonight, he had no fake glasses, no wig, and no baseball cap. And instead of the tousled hair he usually had when he was off duty, his Ken doll hair was in all of its shellacked glory. That told her more than anything that tonight was going to be different.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he asked.

She definitely was not.

“Thank you for giving me room to back out, but let’s do this.”

He smiled and kissed her lightly on the lips.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

He touched her knee on the car drive over.

“Nervous?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“It’s just a concert, right? I’m fine.”

That wasn’t exactly true, but maybe if she said it enough, she’d feel fine.

“You talked to your staff about me, right? Did you tell them— ”

Max slid his hand in hers.