“I made one last night,” she said, and I picked up her phone, pointed it at her face to unlock it—Stevie smiled wide for me—and scrolled to her streaming app. The top mix didn’t even have a title, just the emoji with hearts around it, and I selected it. I scrolled down, looking for what I knew would be there—Billy Joel songs. All of Stevie’s mixes had at least two; this one had four. Her dad loved Billy Joel, and when he still lived here and would drive us around, he’d only ever have the Billy Joel station playing. His songs had filtered into Stevie’s playlists too, and now, without hesitation, I picked “Only the Good Die Young.” Stevie smiled without looking away from the road, turned up the volume, and as soon as the second verse kicked in, like we’d planned it, we both started singing along.

CHAPTER 3

What about this one?” I walked out of my closet with a short black strapless dress and held it out to Stevie, who was sprawled on my bed, a bag of candy on my comforter next to her—on the drive home, we’d stopped by Ada’s, the candy store/mini-mart that was a Stanwich institution.

“That looks supercute on you,” Stevie said, sitting back against my pillows and picking out a sour belt. “But you know I can’t do strapless.”

“What, because you have boobs and I don’t?” I called as I put the dress back on the rack and contemplated other options.

“Well… yeah,” Stevie said, and I laughed. “You’ve got that ballerina body. And ballerinas can’t have boobs, or they’d get unbalanced and fall over during pirouettes.”

I grabbed a velvet blazer and headed back out. “Oh, is that how it works?”

Stevie laughed. “Don’t get mad at me. It’s just physics. Ooh, that’s cute.”

“Right?” I tossed it to her on the bed. “Like over a tank, with skinny pants?”

“Totally.” She shucked off her cardigan and tried it on over her T-shirt.

I hopped up onto the bed and grabbed a peanut butter cup. “What train are you taking in?”

Stevie picked up her phone and pulled up the Metro-North app. “Probably the six-ten. I’m meeting my dad at his office, and we’ll go down to the Village together. The reservation’s not until nine thirty, so we’ll have time to hang out.”