“Shut up!” Riley says. “Will you run lines with me for the audition?”
“You bet. I can probably even find my old script somewhere. I think it’s in my parents’ basement.”
“It’s definitely in your parents’ basement,” I say dryly. “You haven’t thrown away one single thing in your entire life.”
“What can I say?” Sophie says breezily. “I am who I am.”
“A mess?” Caitlin says at the same time Emmy says, “A packrat?”
Sophie waves them away. “I prefer to call it holding onto my memories. And the times I performed are some of my favorite memories.” She turns to Riley. “Trust me and keep everything. One day you’ll look back on the years you spent performing, and you’ll be so glad you have it. It’s like a little time capsule.”
Riley nods. “I know. I have every script I’ve ever used, all the way back to the first play I was in when I was in third grade.”
“See?” Sophie says, holding up a hand for Riley to slap. “She gets it. It’s a theater kid thing. You guys wouldn’t understand.”
I laugh, feeling a rush of fondness for my bright and sunshiny friend. For the way all my friends dropped everything to come here today and are treating Riley like their own, knowing she needs a little extra support today. The company of women.
“I hope Zoe and I are like you guys one day,” Riley says, out of nowhere. “Like, the way you all are together. It’s nice. Special, kind of. Like, it’s easy to tell you all love each other a lot.”
I put an arm around her shoulders and squeeze. “We do. We’ve been friends and family our whole lives. What you and Zoe have is also special, and you’ll make other friends as you get older who will be important to you too. There isn’t anything more important than having girlfriends.”
Riley gives me a side-eye. “Even my dad?”
Maya snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, Mads, even her dad?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s a different kind of important, Ry.”
She laughs. “I know. I was just kidding. My life would suck without Zoe, so I totally get it.”
“You have us now, too,” Sarah says with a grin. “If you need to vent or complain about whatever or you need to talk to someone who isn’t your dad, or you just want to eat a ridiculous amount of junk food, you can always come to us. We’re, like, your older and wiser besties.”
Emmy nods. “Once a smart bitch, always a smart bitch. We’ll tell Zoe the same thing when she gets here.”
“They’re right,” I tell Riley. “We’ve got your back.”
Riley sighs happily, leaning her head on my shoulder. “Thanks, Maddy. I’m really glad I got my period today so I could skip school and hang out here with you guys. This is a really good day.”
I lean my head on hers, swallowing hard at the ball of emotion that’s suddenly lodged in my throat. Glancing around, I see on all my friends’ faces that they get it. That my heart is entirely lost to this girl. To her brother. To her dad. And sitting in this circle of women, I make a silent vow that I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep them all. From here on out, they all belong to me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
MADDY
“How could you possibly have burned M&M’s cookies? That’s, like, our most used recipe of all time.” Oliver leans against the counter in my kitchen, wearing the glasses no one except our immediate family knows he needs and already wearing the Christmas Eve pajamas Rachel bought for everyone in our extended family and ordered us to wear to her house tonight. Not to be confused with the Christmas Day pajamas, which are entirely different but also required.
This family holidays extremely seriously.
I drop the baking sheet full of burned, inedible cookies on top of the stove and glance at my brother, giving him a shrug. “The first pancake phenomenon.”
He snickers. “I don’t think you can apply the first pancake phenomenon to a recipe that’s written down with an oven calibrated to the appropriate temperature. There aren’t enough variables, Mads. Is it possible you got distracted by videos of hockey players and their kids again and forgot to set a timer?”
I take a fortifying sip of the coffee Cam had delivered to methis morning with cereal, milk, and a note that saidYou look really pretty in the morning. Then I flip the burned disks into the garbage, grab more parchment paper, and start scooping new batter onto the baking sheet.
“I fucking love those videos. They’re so wholesome. Like, yes, of course I would love to watch two minutes and forty seconds of a hulking hockey player in all his gear gliding around the ice while cradling his teeny baby daughter or teaching his two-year-old to skate. Give me one million of them please. Anyway, me burning the first batch of dessert is tradition, Ollie. Keep up.”
I toss a handful of Christmas M&M’s into my mouth and smile, thinking of when I said those same exact words to Cam while we were texting on Thanksgiving and I burned the caramel.
Fuck, I miss him.
