This earns me the tiniest little uptick of her lip. I get the impression she rarely gets sassed, but I figure after yesterday, it’s not like I can embarrass myself any more thoroughly.
“A wise decision on both of your parts.”
“Probably,” I agree, even though it was less of a decision and more of something that just kind of happened on its own.
We walk in mutually non-awkward silence for the next block or so. I figure we must cut a somewhat intimidating picture from our bright outfits and the way we’re carrying ourselves, from the eyes we’re attracting from people passing by. One woman even does a double take. I sneak a glance at Georgie in her purple blazer and her loose, wild hair, and even though she has the same unaffected expression she wears 90 percent of the time, I can tell she feels the stares, too.
Just before we reach the office, I pull out the notebook. “Also, uh … I got my own to write in.”
“Well.” She eyes the glitter on it, so bright that it’s casting a translucent shadow on the ground. “You’ll never misplace it.”
“Not a fan of glitter?” I ask, pushing the door open for her.
“I’m in show business, Millicent.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and flashes one of her oversize earrings at me so casually that it might have seemed like an accident if she hadn’t added, “Glitter’s in my blood.”
I don’t even bother correcting her on the “Millicent” bit, grinning at her back as she walks toward the elevator. After she taps the button she turns to me.
“I trust the issue yesterday was … resolved?” she asks, so discreetly that she might have been asking if I’d successfully committed a murder.
I brace myself for the wave of embarrassment, but oddly, it doesn’t come. She told me not to be embarrassed, and I’m not. Maybe Georgie really is that powerful.
“It’s ongoing,” I tell her candidly. “But you were right. Writing it down helped.”
She nods, then her phone trills in her hand and she slides it open to her email. When the elevator lets us out and we walk into the office waiting room together, I stop short of Steph’s desk. It’s empty again.
“Don’t worry. Steph will be back tomorrow, and the two of you won’t have to deal with me.”
“I don’t mind dealing with you.” I let my lips curl into a smile. She raises the eyebrow again but lingers just enough that I know this is the precise amount of cheekiness I can get away with. It’s not necessarily a whole new Georgie Check, but it is a far more interesting one. It makes me wonder what’s in store for whichever one of us makes it to the “second part of the summer.”
“I don’t suppose you want this, then,” I say, referencing Steph’s coffee.
Georgie eyes it. I can tell she doesn’t want to take it, but only on principle, not because she doesn’t want it.
So I just hand it to her. “Maybe there’s glitter in your blood, but there’s also a ton of caffeine.”
She lets out an appreciative noise that might have been a laugh, taking a sip. “Not bad,” she says. Then she walks into her office and shuts the door.
Oliver sweeps in from the second elevator a beat later and immediately narrows his eyes at me.
“How do you keep beating me here?”
“Because I drink coffee like a real New Yorker and you drink tea like the American Revolution never happened.” This would usually be the moment Oliver makes a crack about me paying attention in a subject other than theater, but instead he’s patting down three of his pockets before finally finding his phone in the fourth. “You seem stressed.”
“Uh, yeah.” Oliver checks his screen and sees we still have a few more minutes before Georgie reemerges and gives us our Check Lists. “There was a cancellation at the Milkshake Club. They’re letting my brothers open for another band, tonight.”
Even I’m surprised to hear that. Normally if an opener cancels, Carly just lets it go. “Well, fancy that,” I say. “Are you assembling the troops?”
“I’m waking up the troops. None of them are ever conscious before noon.” He taps something into his phone. “I’m going to have to call my mom to wake them up. They’re gonna think she’s pranking them. I can’t believe this.”
Oliver’s in prime Stage Manager mode now, when he’s all hyperfocused and worked up and clearly loving every second of it. I lean back on Steph’s desk.
“You’re staring at me,” he grumbles.
“Just trying to decide what I’m going to yell into the phone when your mom picks up.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I’m debating between pretending to be a pot dealer and yelling ‘Has anyone seen my underwear.’”
“Millie, I swear to— Hi, Mom.”
Oliver’s tone is Well-Behaved Son but his eyes are blazing a warning. I bite my lip, biding my time as he rattles off instructions to her, taking a step closer. Then another one, then another, until I’m right next to his face, and I can see him torn between trying to scowl at me and trying not to laugh.
“Yeah. Thanks, Mom. Love you too—”
I reach forward and tweak him in the side so he yelps out a laugh just as he’s hanging up. I throw my head back to cackle, so I entirely miss him taking a quick step forward and reaching out his hand to do the same thing to me. I let out a full-on squawk and Oliver tries to shush me, but by then we’re both laughing so hard that we nearly bump heads.
“You’re a menace,” he says, but he’s grinning through it.
I pick up the long skirt of my dress and flick it at him like I’m in West Side Story. “And you need to relax. Your brothers are gonna be fine.”
Oliver looks down at the fabric. “And how would you know?”
“Because I stalked the hell out of them online, obviously,” I say, crossing my arms.
“What?” Oliver’s head snaps back up so fast I swear I heard his neck crack. “When?”
“Like, the minute after you were out of my sight line on Friday,” I say, with a “duh” eye roll.
“Oh,” says Oliver.
“I’m a particular fan of ‘I Only Came to Meet Your Dog.’ Party banger.”
“Yeah?”
Then he goes very still in that way he does when he’s about to overthink something. Usually that leads to him combing through all the lighting cues and driving the techies up the wall, or readjusting the placement of so many props that he ends up tangled in stray feather boas. I shudder to think what he’ll do if I let it happen now.
“Take a breath, Oliver. You’ve already put in the work. Now it’s up to them.”
He scowls like he’s not going to listen to me, but he takes the breath anyway, so I consider it a win. Then he stares down at the skirt I flicked at him, then back up at me, and says, “Huh.”
“Excuse you?”
He blinks, shaking his head. “Just trying to figure out what the next Millie phase is.”
“Oh.” I glance down at myself. “I’m not sure.”
“Well.” Oliver raises his hand in this sweeping, endearingly awkward gesture and says, “It looks nice.”