By the time the makeover is done, I’m stunned into silence.
The girl staring back at me in the mirror has glossy, curled hair that frames her face like something out of a shampoo commercial, glowing skin that could pass for eight hours of sleep and a stress-free existence, and lips tinted just enough to hint that she’s kissed trouble and liked it.
I blink.
“Holy crap,” I whisper. “Is that me?”
Dee beams. “Told you. Goddess.”
“I look like I have my life together.”
She laughs. “You look like youownyour life. Even if, you know, your life is held together with duct tape and caffeine.”
I give her a shaky smile and swallow the lump in my throat. It feels good to look nice. To feel like myself. Or at least some version of myself that isn’t panicked or queasy or hiding a massive secret. But the illusion is paper thin, and I can already feel it fluttering in the breeze of reality.
Before I can spiral any further, there’s a knock at the front door.
Maya and Gracie breeze in excited for what the night brings. Gracie’s balancing a tray of homemade brownies and a container of buffalo chicken dip, while Maya carries a tote bag bursting with board games and half a six-pack of hard cider.
“Well, damn,” Maya says, eyeing me from head to toe. “Look who came dressed to slay.”
“I didn’t mean to slay,” I mutter. “I was ambushed.”
“Ambushed with beauty,” Dee says proudly.
Gracie nods, grinning. “If you don’t get at least one date offer tonight, I’ll eat this entire tray myself out of spite.”
“Not if I get to it first,” Maya says, already heading for the kitchen. “But first, let’s go and see if Momma Dawson needs any help.”
Mom gets us to work right away, always wanting her monthly game nights to be perfect. Actually, I forgot how much fun this could be. The Timberline Inn really is the center of this town in a really cool way.
Dee handles drinks, mixing mocktails and adult punches in glass dispensers. Gracie sets out the snacks with a precision that would make a Pinterest mom weep. Maya organizes the games by category, strategy, chaos, trivia, and pure friendship ruiners. I help Mom set out the tables.
We joke and bicker and tease each other like always.
“Okay, but hear me out,” Maya says, holding up Uno. “Thisis how friendships die.”
“No,” Dee says, deadpan. “Monopoly is how friendships die. Uno is how you die when you stack four Draw Fours like a psycho.”
“I don’t make the rules,” Maya shrugs. “I just enforce them with spite.”
Gracie snorts. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
I can’t help but laugh, despite everything.
No one knows my secret yet. Well, aside from Maya.
No one knows I’m standing in the middle of my childhood home, made up like a girl who has it all together, with a baby growing in my belly, all because of my boss.
But for this moment, under the string lights and the sound of old board games being cracked open, I let myself have it.
The normalcy. The noise. The illusion.
Even if it’s only for tonight.
It isn’t long before the rest of the town starts trickling in, turning what was once our family game night into somethingbigger, louder, warmer, and so quintessentially Silver Peak it practically smells like nostalgia and cinnamon.
Bea rolls in like she owns the place, sweet-hearted as ever. And completely incapable of showing up anywhere empty-handed. She plops her famous strawberry chess pie on the counter with the kind of ceremony usually reserved for royal coronations.
