Gabby smiles at me. “Even though you never celebrated an anniversary together.”
The cork pops on the champagne bottle as Ivory says, “The pining!”
“Wait. Hotty McHotterson is the one who sent all these roses?” Allie asks, pulling glasses out of the cabinet.
“Hotty McHotterson? That’s what you’re going with now?”
She shrugs. “If the nickname fits.”
“The girl has a point,” Ivory says.
“I wonder if he’s going to get you one this year.” Gabby muses helping Allie line up the flutes on the countertop.
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t. Why break the streak? I need a perfect dozen.”
Ivory starts pouring the champagne and Allie goes behind her, adding orange juice to the glasses. “Listen, give a girl a break. I’ve been working with you for years, Taylor, and I didn’t know thattheGrant Davenport was your husband. You could have told me any of the literal hundreds of times I said something about how hot he was.”
“I don’t know. It was kind of a fun secret to have from you. You frothing at the mouth over him but only me knowing exactly what’s under all those clothes and the dirty filthy nasty things he says to me during spicy times.” I pick up a filled glass and hold it into the air to salute myself.
“Tell me please,” Allie begs. “Let me live vicariously through you.”
Ivory looks at her like she’s crazy. “Allie, you live in Manhattan. You should be getting some, or at the very least going on dates.”
“The men here suck and honestly who has the time?” Allie holds her glass into the air, signaling it’s time for a toast. “To Taylor, for getting the love of her life back.”
“To the next chapter,” I say, tapping my glass to hers and then to Ivory and Gabby’s as well.
We all take a sip while Allie downs hers in one big gulp before clapping her hands together. “Alright, so here’s the plan. We have boxes.” She points to all the boxes that have been puttogether and pushed off to the side in the main area. “So, I think we tackle the bedroom first because your clothes are the most important part, obviously, and then we’ll just go room by room and hopefully finish by dinner.”
“Let’s do it,” I agree. The game is tomorrow night and if the Troubadours lose then there will be another game in New York the following night before we head back to Nashville. If they win, which we all believe they will, then the series is over, so we need to tackle this project swiftly.
“I also thought of a fun game to do while we’re going through your closet à laSex in the City.We’ll divide everything up in piles.” Allie holds up different colored flags. “We have the green for ‘pack and take to Nashville’, red for ‘donate because girl you have some clothes’, and I am accepting donations, specifically that little coral number. Coral is my color after all.”
I laugh at her and sit cross-legged on my bed. “You can have whatever you want out of my closet.”
“I know, that’s why I already put it in my suitcase.”
“You brought a suitcase to pack up my house?”
She waves her arms emphatically. “Of course I brought a suitcase to pack up your house. How am I going to scavenge your closet without a suitcase? Anyway, the yellow will be the storage pile that we’re taking to Grant's house.”
“Sounds great.” Gabby sits beside me on the bed. “If we’re doing theSex in the Citything, doesn’t that mean Taylor has to try it all on?” She bounces excitedly.
“Why don’t we go through and pick the most obvious options first, and then if we need help narrowing things down, she can be a runway model,” Ivory suggests.
“Yes, I like that idea, because there are way too many clothes for me to try on everything.”
“Okay fine, I’ll make a fourth option for further review and then we can get started.” Allie quickly rearranges things to make room for a fourth pile and a fourth sign for all of us. It appears she’s going to be the one holding up the items while we sit anddirect where it goes. Stepping into the closet, Allie grabs an armful of clothes and walks out again, laying them over a chair in the corner.
For the next hour, we make it through all of my clothes and some of my shoes, deciding what needs further review and what can be packed up. By the time our lunch arrives, we’re slightly tipsy and surrounded by piles of boxes in their designated spots with color-coded sticky notes per Allie’s instructions.
Taking a break for lunch. We catch up on the latest for Ivory’s Christmas movie and the dating competition for Landon.
“I don’t know, I think we need a new venue. The one place we had originally planned to use just doesn’t feel like it’s going to work now,” Ivory says.
“We definitely need something festive to lean into the holidays, and we need something local,” I tell her. Now that I’m Landon’s agent and on the Serentia team, I’m even more invested in making sure the competition goes off without a hitch.
“I can do some research,” Allie offers.
