A half-asleep Brett seems to remember we are here and stands up slowly, then walks toward the speakers in the corner of the room. He fumbles with his phone for a few seconds, and then the first few bars of a sugary pop song by The Chainsmokers floats through the room. He clicks mute on the TV, and then cranks the dial.

“I love this song!” Sara says, her eyes like shining silver dollars. She stands up and bounces on the couch, holding her sensible shoes in her hand and singing, or more accurately, yelling, along to every word. She makes her way along the couch to me. She points to me as she sings along. I smile and laugh.

She gestures for me to stand up and join her, but I shake my head. I appreciate the pure joy she’s exuding, but with only half a beer in my system, I’m not exactly on that level. She realizes I’m not going to budge, and her shoulders fall, just a centimeter. She does one of those jump-to-sitting moves we all used to try when someone in the neighborhood would get a bounce castle for a birthday or First Communion. But because it is a just a couch, she does not bounce right back up, but sinks in the cushion. Right next to me.

“Can you imagine,” she says, “if someone wrote a song like that about you?” She grips my shoulders, her eyes bright and urgent. She is millimeters from my face, but her gaze stays on me. She blinks but doesn’t look away. “That would be an amazing feeling, don’t you think?”

“I—I don’t...” I lean away from her, not sure why, but just sort of, overwhelmed with the raw emotionality of the moment.

She looks down for a second, her eyelashes fluttering. But then in half a beat, she is back again, standing up and skipping to the center of the room, where she announces with her chin high in the air that she is going in the pool now.

Chapter Eighteen

Sara

Yaz’s phone dings for at least the tenth time in the last minute, interrupting the rose ceremony. I reach for the remote so that I can go back and hear which name he said, although the contestants’ reactions did kind of give it away. Dani “with an i” is jumping up and down and smiling while Danny “with a y” has started to cry mascara-darkened tears.

“Will you stop texting?” I say. “It’s supposed to be girls’ night.”

Yaz sticks her tongue out at me before tapping her screen a few more times. “For your information—” she sets her phone on the coffee table “—I was not texting, I happen to be using your app, missy.”

“Really?” I set down the remote and scoot forward to look over her shoulder.