AMBER: A good day?
MAYA: The best kind of day. The kind where everything is happening at once and you're terrified and grateful simultaneously.
AMBER: I've heard those are the best ones.
MAYA: They are. Thank you.
AMBER: Are you with Anthony?
MAYA: I am.
AMBER: He's a keeper.
MAYA: I know.
They arrive at seven.
I don't know they're coming until Holly materializes at my elbow with the expression of someone who has been keeping a secret for twenty-four hours and has reached the limit of her capacity.
"There's something in the lobby," she says.
"Holly —"
"Come and see."
She takes my hand and tows me through the grand opening crowd toward the atrium, and I hear them before I see them, the specific sound of the Naughty Girls Book Club assembled in a space, which is loud and warm and overlapping and the best sound I know.
Chloe sees me first and squeals loudly. Lily is already moving. Madison gets there simultaneously and then it's all of them, Emily included, and we are five women hugging in the atrium of a Christmas resort while the string quartet plays something festive and politely ignores us.
"What are you — how are you here?" I get out when I can.
"Holly invited us," Chloe says. "A week ago. She said come for the opening and bring overnight bags."
"She knew a week ago?"
"She knew everything a week ago," Madison says. "She's been feeding us updates. We know about the elk and the coffee and the ornament and the ridge and the —"
"I shared some things," Holly says, not remotely sorry.
Of course she did. Of course my best friend invited my people to see the thing she knew was going to happen before I did.
I am not even a little bit mad.
"Where is he?" Emily asks.
"He's —" I turn, and he's there, across the atrium, watching this with the quiet, warm expression he gets when something is as it should be. I wave him over.
He comes.
"Anthony," I say, when he reaches us, "these are my favorite women of the Naughty Girls Book Club."
"Holly's described you," he says. Which is an extremely diplomatic way of indicating that he knows everything.
"She's described you too," Madison says, with her sweetest smile. "You're taller than I expected."
"Madison," I say.
"I'm just noting."
