“I’m not sure. I tried to get a head count, but nobody freaking RSVP’s anymore. Especially Sean’s friends. They’ll probably all stop by at some point, though. I don’t even know what I’m doing.” She threw her hands up in the air.

“Let’s start with the frozen things,” I said as she glanced around the kitchen helplessly. “Where are your baking dishes?”

We baked the frozen snacks while I cut vegetables and Hailey cleaned up the mess she’d made. She explained that she hadn’t gone to the store until that morning, because Sean had wanted to hang out at home the night before. She wiggled her eyebrows as she said it.

“Where is Sean?” I asked, carefully putting some sliced carrots onto a large plate.

“He’s at the gym,” she replied easily. “Then he was going to go grab the kegs for tonight. He said he’d be home in time to shower before everyone got here.”

It seemed kind of shitty to me that the guy hadn’t helped get the house ready for their big party, but I kept my mouth shut. People didn’t want to hear your opinion on their significant other. If she complained to me about him, I could agree and commiserate, but otherwise it wasn’t any of my business.

I didn’t know much about Hailey’s boyfriend beyond the one time I’d met him and the few things she’d said in passing. Sean was nice enough, I guess, but there was just something about him that didn’t seem right. I couldn’t pinpoint why he made me uneasy, but he did.

We worked in tandem for over an hour, getting all the food set out and the furniture reorganized to accommodate all the people who might attend. She’d told everyone that the party started at five o’clock, but when I glanced at my phone, I noticed it was five twenty and no one had shown up. Sean wasn’t even back with the keg.

“It’s five twenty,” I told her, dropping onto her couch. “When’s Sean supposed to be here?”

“Shit, already?” she asked, reaching up to smooth her hair.

“You look fine,” I told her. “Stop messing with it.”

She nodded and looked around the room. “It looks good in here,” she said. “Hopefully no one goes in our bedroom, though. I haven’t unpacked all of the boxes yet.”

I’d seen the boxes when she’d put my coat on her bed, but I hadn’t realized they were still full. The house looked finished already. It was so small, I wasn’t sure where she would have room to put anything else.

“No one cares about boxes,” I assured her. “You guys just moved in a week ago.”

“Crazy, right?” She laughed. “It happened so fast!”