“Well,” says Lee, “every girl needs her beauty closet.”

Dale scoffs. “Closet? More like gallery.”

Lee smiles at him dotingly. “Well, it started out as a closet, and then you transformed it.” Lee looks to Hannah. “Now, catch me up on all the happenings. How are my girls doing? Willowdean came around here a while back with that boyfriend of hers.”

Hannah grimaces. “Yeah, they, uh, hit a rough patch.”

“He proposed,” I blurt. “I mean promposed. In front of a whole restaurant of people. It was . . . adorable until it was awful. She sort of walked out without giving an answer. It was a car wreck, but I couldn’t look away.”

Lee’s eyes widen. “Oh my.”

Hannah shakes her head. “I think they’re . . . school’s ending soon. We’re all going our separate ways—”

“That kind of stuff will make you silly,” Dale says.

Lee nods. “Ground shifts around you and you figure out the fastest way to fall is to stand still. But sometimes when we know we need to take a leap, we’re jumping off the wrong cliffs.”

Dale takes Lee’s hand. “They’re good kids, though. Either it works out or it doesn’t. No matter what, none of it is time wasted.”

Lee sizes up me and then Clem. “Twins, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, but then take in the lack of wig and the sweatpants and T-shirt. “Or sir.”

“Either’ll do,” she says. “Y’all look like a couple tornadoes about to take on the world. Where are y’all off to after graduation?”

Clem takes Hannah’s hand. “I’m heading to the University of Georgia and Hannah is headed to Savannah and Waylon—”

“Has no clue what he’s going to do. I’ve dabbled in drag,” I admit, my voice lowering and my cheeks burning with immediate embarrassment. I can’t believe I just said that out loud to a real-life drag queen. “But . . . my plans for the future recently shifted.” I decide not to throw Clem under the bus. “And now I’m trying to reconfigure, I guess. Not a lot of options currently.”

Lee swats a hand at the air. “At your age, the world is nothing but a buffet of options, baby.”

Dale affirms her with a nod. “Well, we better let y’all get home before you go turning into pumpkins on us.”

We stand and say goodbyes, and both Lee and Dale embrace me in a hug. “The House of Way is always taking applications,” Lee whispers.

“Hannah, you text us when y’all get home safely.”

Hannah nods and doubles back for one last hug from Dale.