Chapter 20
Sam
Lola’s house hits me the second I walk in. Cinnamon candles, perfume and popcorn grease, the scent that clings to your clothes for days. It smells like chaos wrapped in glitter. So basically it smells like Lola.
Liz’s laugh echoes through the hallway before I even see her. There she is—sprawled across the couch in fuzzy socks, legs tucked under her. Her nails are painted gold and glittery enough to blind someone if she waves too hard. Which she does.
“Finally,” she says, grinning. “Took you long enough.”
I force a smile. Not because I’m not happy to see her—I am. I’m still carrying too much memory of Reece after what he did to me to function like a normal human being right now.
I take off my shoes and set my bag by the door.
“I was helping Mom with dinner,” I lie smoothly, as if I haven’t been eaten alive in a school bathroom by the most dangerous boy I’ve ever met only three hours ago.
Liz clocks me halfway across the room and chucks a throw pillow at Lola, who’s halfway through arguing with her.
The smoke alarm blares overhead.
“Oh my god Lola,” Liz says, covering her ears.
Lola bolts for the oven in full chaos mode, yanks the door open, and pulls out a tray of cookies with a smoke-trailed behind.
“They’re not burned,” she yells over the alarm, waving a bright pink oven mitt in the air like its Exhibit A in a high-stakes court case. “The smoke alarm is being overdramatic. Look at them.”
She marches into the living room, holding the tray out as if she’s presenting fine art, completely unfazed by the piercing alarm still wailing in the background. The cookies are suspiciously browned and still sizzling.
“Look,” she says, eyes wide. “Crispy on the edges. That’s flavor.”
Right then, the front door swings open and Aubrey steps in, a paper bag of snacks cradled in one arm with her brows furrowed.
“What the hell is happening here?” she asks, eyeing the smoke.
Lola lifts the tray higher. “Cookies.”
“You’re just in time,” Liz adds, as she props her feet on the coffee table, with a fuzzy sock now dangling from her toes.
“For what?” Aubrey shouts as Lola, still in the middle of kitchen mayhem, grabs a broom and climbs up onto a stool. A second later, the smoke alarm shrieks even louder.
“Lola said blindfolded karaoke is happening,” Liz yells.
We all turn instinctively toward the kitchen.
Lola stands barefoot on a stool, holding a broom as if fencing with the ceiling. The tray of burnt cookies now lies abandoned on the bench. She pokes at the fire alarm, muttering something about “drama queen electronics.”
One last jab, and the alarm finally falls silent.
Lola lowers the broom, steps off the stool with a victorious shrug, and walks back into the room as if nothing happened.
“You’re welcome.”
“Wait,” Aubrey says, pointing between Liz and Lola as if they’ve both gone crazy. “Back it up. Blindfolded karaoke… how is that even possible?”
Lola shrugs, totally unfazed. “You wear this blindfold. Someone else holds the mic. And if you want to make it funnier, you spin the person around until they don’t know which way is up. Duh.”
I laugh as Aubrey walks over and plops down on the couch next to me.
“This is gonna be one of those nights,” she mutters, pulling a throw pillow into her lap. “I can feel it already.”
“Lola doesn’t do chill,” I say, nudging her with my elbow. “You knew what this was the second you walked in and smelled fire and sugar.”
Aubrey exhales a slow breath and moves closer to me, speaking softly. “Yeah, but you know what? Some part of me… the really na?ve, stupid part of me thought maybe tonight we’d do normal people things. A board game. A face mask. Perhaps we’d talk about our feelings—”
Lola gasps suddenly, as if a lightning bolt of chaos just struck her brain, and darts back into the kitchen, nearly wiping out on a rogue sock skidding across the hardwood.
“Oh no,” Aubrey laughs, watching her disappear with wide eyes. “She’s sprinting. That’s never good. Not in socks and not with that glint in her eye.”
“Heaven help us,” I mumble.
Liz sniffles beside me, dabbing at her eye with the sleeve of her oversized hoodie. “I’m going to miss this,” she says, voice thick with tears she’s trying to blink away.
Aubrey shifts closer and wraps an arm around her, pulling her in gently.
“Yeah,” she says, her smile softening. “Lola’s crazy.
But she’s sweet, funny, and somehow always gets away with everything.
I swear, I’ve never been able to stay mad at her for more than two seconds.
” She glances back toward the kitchen and raises a playful eyebrow.
“What part are you going to miss the most, Liz? The spontaneous combustion cookies or the risk of being knocked unconscious by karaoke?”
“All of it,” Liz says, letting out a laugh. “The dumb stuff. The not-actually-singing competitions. The almost-burning-the-house-down bonding rituals.”
“And the glitter,” Aubrey adds with a mock shudder. “You know there’ll be glitter.”
Liz laughs harder this time, wiping at her cheeks. “There’s always glitter.”
“I swear to God, if she comes back in here with a pinata, I’m leaving,” Aubrey says.
A loud crash echoes from the kitchen.
“Lola!” we all shout in unison, already bracing for whatever new disaster she’s brewed up.
She reappears in the doorway, smiling brightly. One hand holds a ridiculously fluffy pink blindfold, while the other carries a bag of rainbow glitter.
“You guys,” she says breathlessly, “I totally forgot I bought sparkles for this. Blindfolded karaoke just got a glow-up.”
There’s a moment of silence before we lose it.
Aubrey’s head drops into her hands as she bursts out laughing, snorting. “This is how we die,” she wheezes. “Smothered in sugar and suffocated by glitter.”
Liz doubles over, gasping for air. “I can’t… oh my God, I can’t… ” Her laugh turns into hiccupy little sobs, tears spilling freely down her cheeks.
I slide off the couch in a completely undignified heap, clutching my ribs. “I’m gonna pee,” I manage through the wheezing. “I swear to God, I’m gonna pee.”
Lola grins, completely unbothered, and holds up the pink blindfold again. “So… are we doing glitter karaoke or what? I also have glow sticks.”
That sets us off all over again.
Liz slides down until she’s lying on the carpet. Aubrey crawls off the couch to join me on the floor, still snorting uncontrollably.
Through it all, there’s this warmth—a reminder of why nights like this matter, because no one else understands us the way we understand each other.
Hours later, the chaos has finally eased into something quieter, softer around the edges.
The room has shifted in the quiet way that time does when you’re not paying attention.
When laughter fades and bodies settle into corners of the couch with fleece blankets draped over their legs, remnants of snacks are scattered across the coffee table.
There’s glitter on the rug. The karaoke mic lies abandoned upside down in the beanbag, and someone’s stuck googly eyes on the popcorn bowl.
It’s well past midnight, but no one is ready to call it. The energy has softened into something calmer now. Dim lights. Bare feet. The occasional yawn, muffled by a hoodie sleeve. One of Liz’s socks is hanging off the back of the couch, and no one knows how it got there.
Lola sprawls across the floor, braiding Liz’s hair without asking as Liz scrolls through her phone.
Aubrey is curled sideways in the armchair, nursing a cold drink she should have finished hours ago.
The steady hum of a mellow playlist plays in the background—quiet enough that no one really hears the words, just the mood it creates.
There’s comfort in the silence now— that gentle hush where nobody feels the need to fill the space. The kind of quiet that is earned, full of contentment and unspoken things that don’t need fixing.
It is the hum of friendship, that rare, sacred thing where you can let your guard down and just be. No performances. Simply girls on a couch, wrapped in a night that could go on forever.
And that’s when the conversation starts.
Aubrey shifts in her chair, placing her cold mug on the coffee table, and glances at Lola, who’s still lying on the floor, half-focused on the braid she’s been working into Liz’s hair.
“So,” Aubrey starts casually, “are we ever going to talk about what’s going on with you and Jace?”
Lola freezes mid-braid.
Liz snorts from the floor. “Oh my god. Finally.”
“Nothing’s going on,” Lola says, too quickly.
Liz immediately snorts. “Oh, it’s not nothing.”
“Do you mind not outing me in my own house?” Lola says.
Liz raises her eyebrows, grinning. “Babe, it’s not exactly subtle. You practically purr when he walks into a room.”
“I do not—”
“You do,” I cut in, smirking. “And don’t get me started on the food thing. No one else gets to steal bites off your plate without losing a hand.”
Lola groans and flops dramatically onto her back. “You’re all seeing things.”
“Please,” Liz mutters. “You bring him snacks. And not the cheap ones either. The good stuff. You literally shared your last dumpling with him.”
“I felt sorry for him,” Lola says quickly, staring at the ceiling. “You know the kind of life he’s had. It’s not like he’s got a stocked fridge waiting for him at home.”
Aubrey’s voice softens. “Is that why you’re so good to him?”
“I just…” Lola shrugs. “I don’t know. He lets me be myself. He doesn’t get offended when I say dumb shit. He never shuts me down. It’s not like that with most guys.”
That part’s true. Jace is the only one who lets her get away with the relentless teasing, the sass, the weird food combinations she forces on people. And he always takes it. Laughs. Sometimes even shoots it right back.
I glance at Lola, tempted to speak. I could tell them what Reece said. That Jace likes her. That it isn’t banter for him. It’s something more. But I promised Reece I wouldn’t say anything, and for some reason, I want to keep that.