“Hah, that makes one of us,” Bee replied without looking up from the message she was typing.

“I knew she wouldn’t miss it.” Sophie cut in, casting a knowing look at Bee.

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?” Alex asked, dragging a nail along the edge of her lip gloss in the mirror.

“She and Danny are obsessed with each other.”

Alex had often heard the expression about blood running cold, but had never in her life experienced it until this moment. Every extremity was suddenly drained of color and strength, and her whole body felt weightless, floating above the scene with a terrifying clarity. Her breath failed her, collecting in her chest like a poisonous gas.

“They are so insufferable,” Bee continued, as if nothing of consequence had happened.

“They—” Alex gently placed her hands on the counter, using every ounce of her strength to sound normal. “Daphne is dating Danial?”

“I don’t know about dating,” Sophie replied with a smirk. “But they’re definitely doing something.”

“When did that happen?” Alex asked, her eyes fixated on a single spot of water on the bathroom mirror.

“In March,” Bee set her phone down, picking up an eyebrow pencil for a minor touch-up. “At that STEM conference in Philly—which was a total waste of time, I heard.”

“Unless you were there to find a boyfriend.” Sophie laughed, sipping her rosé.

“I didn’t know,” Alex replied, still staring at the water spot on the mirror, vision rapidly going fuzzy. Her mind raced with logistics: Was he home yet? Was Daphne meeting him there? Was there time for her to get into his apartment and take the letter back before it blew up her life? “That’s cool,” she added, her voice feeling a million miles from her body.

“Is it?” Bee sighed, pulling at her eyelid to draw a tighter line, “I mean, they’re fine, but he’s not exactly the kind of guy I pictured her with.”

“Oh?” Alex asked distractedly, feeling a toxic sludge of negative emotion churn within her. She looked at the time on Bee’s phone: 6:47, undoubtedly too late to undo what she’d done. She visualized the letter sitting on his desk, a spring-loaded trap waiting to destroy everything.

Bee and Sophie looked at each other subtly before Sophie spoke again, changing the subject back to something mundane. “Do you have any hairspray?”

“No.”

Alex quietly excused herself from the bathroom and walked into the living room, where she’d carelessly tossed her bag on an armchair. It seemed to taunt her, the Rebecca Minkoff Mini MAC her mother had found at TJ Maxx the Christmas before, the one she’d been so excited to wear. When I set that bag down, she thought, I still had time to fix this.