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Apparently that subject is closed. Maybe not locked, but closed for now.

Hazel taps the tape against my hip. “This needs to be taken in slightly here…and here. The bodice too, just a little. But the shoulders are nearly right. The length is good with heels. You do have heels?”

“Uh…no.”

“No worries.” She scurries to her closet and returns with a pair of sparkling silver strappy sandals. “These look like they’ll fit you.”

“Where did you—” I stop. Not my business. I’m not sure I want to know why Hazel has shoes that might pay for a month’s rent in her closet.

“I’m going to make a fool of myself tonight,” I blurt out.

Hazel smiles. “Most likely.”

I drop my jaw. “You’re supposed to say I won’t.”

“Why would I lie?”

“Because it’s comforting?”

She groans. “Comfort is overrated.”

I fold my arms over my chest. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.” She gestures for me to sit. “You probably will make a fool of yourself tonight. You’ll say the wrong thing. Use the wrong fork. Laugh when no one else does. Someone will look down their nose at you, and someone else will wonder who invited you.”

I laugh nervously.

“There,” Hazel says. “Keep that.”

“My panic?”

“Your laugh.”

“I don’t think my laugh is going to save me.”

Her eyes sparkle. “No, but it will keep you human.” Hazel turns to the dress, pinning and marking with swift movements. “Life is not made in the moments where we look smart, Ella.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. Anyone can stand still and look polished. That’s not living. Life is made in the moments where we let go.”

I wait for her to laugh.

She doesn’t.

“Where we reach for something we have no business touching,” she continues. “Where we say the thing that exposes us. Where we walk into a room knowing we don’t belong there and go anyway. Where we love someone who might ruin us.”

My throat tightens as Nathaniel’s face forces itself into my mind. His voice. His emerald eyes. His lips on my hand. How he told me I didn’t have to do anything that made me uncomfortable.

Something is happening inside me. Something warm and reckless and stupid.

He’s a Vexley. And I’m going to a gala tonight as another man’s date.

I press my palms against my thighs. “What if letting go gets you hurt?”

“Then you get up,” Hazel says.

“What if you can’t?”