Carly handed over a latte. “Let’s just say I upgraded.” She popped her oversized black sunglasses onto her face, then hit the road with the wind in their hair.

“Of course you did.”

“Hey, I can’t have people taking photographs of me in a Buick.”

“The world would end.”

“Or my career would.” Carly glanced over at her. “You look so pretty today. I’ve thought that eight times since you got in the car, but I feel like I should say it.”

“Thank you. You’re okay, too, I guess.”

Carly gasped as she studied the road. “You’re hard to impress. I’ll have to do more with myself in the future.”

“I know. I mean, look at you.” She laughed and shook her head because Carly was beyond beautiful, and the entire world knew it. In fact, today she seemed like a new kind of attractive, the California girl kind. Something about the sun and the open air. The only thing missing was warmth as evidenced by her already frozen ears. Didn’t matter. Lauren got an uptick in energy just being near her.

“Did you sleep well?” Carly asked.

Just the mention had Lauren remembering the desperate state she woke in, and the very detailed dream of Carly doing decadent things to her in the rehearsal hall. “I did okay,” she said conservatively. “Wild dreams.”

“About me?” Carly joked.

Lauren’s mouth went dry. “Oh. Um, rehearsal.”

“Gotcha. One of those dreams where something goes wrong, or you don’t know your lines. The worst. I had them when we first started rehearsal, nearly every night.”

“No, it was…” She didn’t know why she’d even started the sentence, and now she didn’t know how to end it. “Different than that. I love this song.” She tried to move them off the topic by feigning intense interest in the radio. In fact, she turned up the volume and jammed out to it like an idiot.

Carly looked over at her curiously as she applied her turn signal. “Why are you being weird? Are you Mick Jagger all of a sudden? What kind of moves are those?”

“This is how I dance in the car.” Well, hell, she had to commit now. She tossed her arms around, threw them over her head, and pushed her lips out, trying to stay on beat, which, hello, was not easy for her.

“You’ve got duckface down. Wow. That’s impressive. Do it some more. Yes! Just like that, you sexy party animal.” Carly brought the car to a stop at a traffic light and relaxed. She turned to Lauren calmly. “So do you want to talk about this sex dream, or pretend you always flail around in the middle of the morning to music you don’t actually love?”