Page 52

Nine

Taylor

You free tonight? I have an idea

Avery shook her head. Leave it to Taylor to send a text like this on a Friday morning. Slightly stressful, but also kind of exciting, yep, that was Taylor.

Avery glanced at her calendar. She was busy for most of the weekend, but not tonight.

Avery

I’m free after 7. should I be scared? i’m scared.

Taylor

Only a little. pick you up at 8

Avery shook her head. Taylor’s taciturn texting style would be the death of her, and they weren’t even dating! There must be hundreds of group texts out there trying to decipher what her uncapitalized sentence fragment textsreallymeant.

An hour later, Taylor sent a follow-up:

Taylor

Oh right—wear something casual but a little slutty

Avery

I don’t own anything a little slutty!

Taylor

I figured you’d say that. do it anyway

Avery stared at her closet. She’d clearly underestimated Taylor when she shopped for new clothes. And it was too late to buy anything else. Wait, she had an idea. An outfit started from the inside out, didn’t it? She put on a lacy red bra that pushed her boobs sky-high, and matching underwear. She’d bought them toward the end of her relationship with Derek, but she’d broken up with him before even wearing them. Might as well use that energy for something fun.

Over that she pulled on a snug black sundress. She loved this dress, but because her bra straps always showed in it, she always wore it either with a black bra underneath or with something over it, usually both. But Taylor had called for a little slutty, so tonight, she was going to let her red bra straps show.

She put on bright red lipstick, then pulled the pins out of the low bun that her hair had been in all day and tossed her head back and forth. She looked at herself in the mirror and shrugged. Hopefully this was messy in a sexy way.

Taylor

Here

There was Taylor, exactly on time. Well, five minutes late, but that was exactly on time for Taylor, Avery knew that now.

Avery

Coming!

As she walked out to Taylor’s car, she regretted, once again, what she’d said to Taylor after trivia. She should have just brushed off Taylor’s question about why she’d given her that look when Callie had asked her to come back. But she’d been so used to being honest with Taylor about dating and flirting and everything else that it hadn’t even occurred to her to hedge. Granted, everything that Taylor had said had reassured her, but she still felt silly for being quite so…naked in her insecurity. She didn’t usually do things like that.

Just try to act normal, she said to herself as she got into Taylor’s car.

“Hey,” Taylor said. Her grin widened as she glanced at Avery’s outfit. “Red bra, wow.”

Avery grinned back at her.

“This was a big step for me, I hope you realize. I’m not really a visible-bra-strap kind of girl.”