The picture changed to the premiere and, indeed, there I was on the arm of Jack Harrington. “Oh my gosh,” I breathed. “That’s me!” The girls giggled. It was like an out-of-body experience, getting to watch myself. I looked surprisingly calm. I could see other people in the background, and remembered my view of the scene when I’d been there. It was slightly disorienting.

“You look like you’ve done this a million times, Grace,” Joy marveled.

“I should get an Oscar.” They laughed. “Seriously! I can’t even tell you how nervous I was. It was terrible. I could hardly enjoy it, I was so afraid someone was going to talk to me.”

“Did anyone interview you?”

“This Melissa chick started to, but Jack rescued me, thank heavens.”

Missy smirked. “Dang, girl, you two look good together.” I stared at us and realized she was right.

“Did he say anything about your dress or how you looked?”

I grinned and crushed a pillow to my chest. “Yeah. He said, ‘Wow,’ and that I looked amazing.” They squealed with delight.

“Did he ask you out again?”

“He asked if he could call me.” More squealing. I smacked them all playfully. “Knock it off,” I laughed. “Y’all sound like three-year-olds.”

We watched the tape a second time, then went back to the kitchen to finish breakfast. I told them about the agonizing ride up, and the party, and how everyone thought we were a couple.

“But the ride home was the worst,” I groaned. “Oh, you guys, it was so awful. I totally went off for no good reason about money.”

They looked baffled. “What about money?” Taylor asked. “Like, how ugly the new money is?”

They laughed. I smirked and shook my head. “I went off about how celebrities have all this money and how they misspend it and how spoiled they are. You guys should have seen Alexis’s house! She had a real Picasso! And fed filet mignon to, like, a hundred people! And the house was massive, with real marble floors and real crystal chandeliers … it was all such overkill!” I sighed and drizzled syrup on the pancakes Missy set in front of me. “I don’t know why I did it, but I did. He was cool about it, and he’d begged me to tell him what I was thinking in the first place, and I warned him I might offend him, so in a way it’s his own fault. But still.” I shoved a forkful of pancake in my mouth.

“But he still wants to see you,” Joy pointed out, “so obviously there was no permanent damage.”

I shrugged. “I think he was just trying to be polite. I mean, it would have been a little weird if he hadn’t said something like that, you know?”