“But you were so good at it!” she protested.

“It’s not really a skill.”

She tried again. “You just promised you would!”

“I can’t be held to any promise where you tricked me into agreeing first.”

“Juliet, I need you.”

I closed my eyes. She knew I couldn’t resist when she said that. “But I have plans.”

“Sitting on our couch eating ice cream is not a plan.”

How did she know I was eating ice cream? “But I already threw away the lid. I feel committed to finishing.”

I could almost hear her rolling her eyes over the phone. “Not an excuse.”

“Okay. I don’t have anything to wear.” That ought to work.

“I rented your dress yesterday.”

“What?” I stood up. “You knew this yesterday but you waited until right now to ask me?”

“Because I know you left things weird with Noah and I didn’t want you to talk yourself out of it. Harmony called me yesterday and said she’d been so pleased with how well we did a couple of weeks ago that she wanted us to work as seat fillers again.”

“As I’ve already mentioned, you do not have to do anything to try and please this unpleasable woman.” Shelby’s mother had died about a year before Shelby got cancer, and her dad had never been in the picture. Sometimes it felt like Shelby was hoping Harmony would become a replacement parent, and I wished she could see that it wouldn’t happen.

Shelby sighed. “I get that, but I feel like she’s making an effort in asking us to come back. If she’s extending an olive branch, I have to take it. Please?”

It sounded less like an olive branch and more like a way to find a regular source of unpaid labor, but I wasn’t going to rain on Shelby’s parade like that. I put the ice cream in the freezer, although it was basically toast without a lid. It would get those gross ice crystals all over it. The things I did for my best friend. “Okay. Where’s the dress?”

“Yay! It’s in your closet. I put it in there last night while you were sleeping.”

I went into my room and found the dress hanging there, just like she’d said. “You snuck this in here like some kind of awards season Santa?” I pulled it out, and it was another plain black formal gown in my size, and it was actually long enough. That was always pleasantly surprising whenever it happened. It was a simple one-arm dress that fell into a straight sheath. I wouldn’t be able to climb over anybody’s legs in this dress. I grabbed my Converse shoes. When it came to the rest of me, fortunately I had a best friend who loved dressing up, so I’d been taught how to manage hair and makeup well enough on my own.