Maya sat cross-legged on her bed, laptop open in front of her, half-watching a lecture recording she wasn’t actually absorbing.
The front door banged downstairs, followed by the thud of a bag hitting the floor and the unmistakable sound of Olivia kicking off her shoes without bothering to undo the laces.
“Maya! You home?”
“Where else would I be?” Maya called back, not looking up from her screen.
Olivia appeared in the doorway a second later, already peeling her jacket off one shoulder, and dropped herself onto the end of Maya’s bed like she owned it.
“So,” Olivia said.
“So?”
“Aren’t you getting ready?”
Maya finally glanced up, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes. But not for another three hours.”
“Girl.” Olivia sat up straighter, pulling her legs underneath her, fully invested now.
“You’re basically going on a date with your crush and you’re sitting here in sweatpants watching a recorded lecture like it’s a normal Tuesday.”
“It’s not a date.” Maya closed the laptop, if only to stop Olivia from staring at the frozen professor mid-sentence on the screen.
“We’re just sitting down to plan the fundraiser for the hospital. That’s it. We’re meeting at the cafe next to campus, in public, with a shared Google Doc between us. It is extremely not a date.”
“Sure.” Olivia didn’t even try to hide the way she was fighting a smile.
“But that doesn’t mean you can’t look extra pretty while you’re not-dating him.”
Maya felt her own mouth twitch despite herself.
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious! Go shower. I’ll find you something to wear, and I’ll do your makeup.”
“You know I hate makeup.”
“Yeah, yeah. Go.”
Maya rolled her eyes, but she was already sliding off the bed, grabbing a towel off the hook behind her door.
She could hear Olivia rustling through her closet before she’d even made it to the bathroom, hangers scraping against the rod, drawers sliding open and shut in quick succession like Olivia was on some kind of timer.
By the time the water hit her shoulders, Maya had almost convinced herself Olivia was overreacting.
It was a planning meeting.
A fundraiser.
A spreadsheet and a shared folder of venue quotes.
There was absolutely no reason for her stomach to be doing the slow, nervous flip it had been doing on and off since Ryan had texted her the meeting time that morning.
She stayed under the water a little longer than she needed to, letting the heat work into her shoulders, and told herself, very firmly, that the flip in her stomach was about the fundraiser.
Just the fundraiser.
Nothing else.
When she came out of the bathroom in her towel, hair dripping down her back, she found Olivia sitting on the floor of the closet, visibly defeated, surrounded by half of Maya’s wardrobe in loose, rejected piles. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
“There is nothing,” Olivia announced, “in this entire closet, that says casual but I clearly put in effort. It’s all cardigans and one blazer you wore to that one internship interview.”
“That’s called having a normal wardrobe.”
“That’s called a crime scene.” Olivia was already back on her feet, brushing past Maya out into the hallway.
“Stay there. I’m getting something from my room.”
“Olivia—”
“Stay!”
Maya sighed and sat down at her vanity instead, towel-drying the ends of her hair, listening to Olivia thunder around in the room next door like she was assembling a tactical unit.
A few minutes later Olivia reappeared, triumphant, holding up something that made Maya’s eyebrows shoot straight up her forehead.
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s cute!”
“It’s — Olivia, that’s not cute, that’s illegal in several states.”
“It’s a top, Maya, it has sleeves.” Olivia held it against her own chest to demonstrate, entirely unbothered.
“Pair it with your dark jeans, it’ll look effortless. Trust me.”
Maya eyed the top like it might bite her.
It was Olivia’s — clearly, since nothing that low-cut had ever lived in Maya’s closet — soft fabric in a deep green that Maya had to admit, privately, would probably look decent against her skin.
That wasn’t the point.
The point was that this was a fundraiser planning session, not a red carpet.
“I am not wearing that to meet Ryan at a cafe to talk about silent auction items.”
“You’re wearing it,” Olivia said, already unzipping her makeup bag on the vanity, laying brushes out in a neat little row like a surgeon prepping for something far more serious than eyeshadow.
“Sit. Face me. This is happening whether you fight me or not, so we might as well save time.”
Maya opened her mouth to argue again, took one look at the set of Olivia’s jaw, and sat.
It took the better part of forty minutes — Olivia humming under her breath the entire time, tilting Maya’s chin this way and that, muttering things like no, too much, wipe it, start over at herself more than at Maya — before she finally stepped back, capped her last brush, and looked genuinely pleased with her own work.
“Okay. Look.”
Maya turned toward the mirror and blinked.
It wasn’t dramatic — Olivia had kept most of it soft, warm tones along her eyes, something that made them look brighter without looking like she was trying too hard, a faint gloss on her lips instead of anything bold.
It looked like her, just a slightly more polished version.
“Olivia.”
“I know.”
“This is actually really good.”
“I know.” Olivia grinned, clearly delighted with herself, and reached for the green top still draped over the back of the chair, holding it out expectantly. This chapter was taken from novelping dot com without permission.
Maya took it, if only because arguing with Olivia at this point felt like more effort than it was worth, and disappeared behind her closet door to change.
When she stepped out a minute later, tugging the hem down self-consciously, Olivia let out a low whistle that made Maya’s face go instantly hot.
“No,” Maya said immediately.
“Stop. Don’t do that.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“You whistled.”
“That was an appreciation whistle, not a weird whistle. There’s a difference.” Olivia crossed her arms, looking her up and down one more time with the satisfied air of someone admiring a finished project.
“Ryan isn’t going to know what hit him.”
“It’s not for Ryan,” Maya said, too quickly, and immediately regretted how it sounded.
“I mean — it’s not a whole thing. It’s a work meeting. I told you.”
“Sure it is.” Olivia was already gathering up her brushes, unbothered, humming again like she hadn’t just spent forty minutes proving otherwise.
“Whatever you say. It’s your night, not mine — I’m just the hired help.”
Maya rolled her eyes, but there was no real heat in it.
She glanced at the mirror one more time on her way past, and something in her chest — nerves, or maybe something else entirely — gave a small, involuntary flip.
There was still over an hour before she needed to leave, which left her sitting on the edge of her bed in her new top and old jeans, phone in her hand, thumb hovering over Carter’s contact for longer than felt strictly necessary.
She wasn’t sure why she wanted to hear his voice before she left — maybe it was just habit at this point, the two of them checking in with each other before anything that mattered — but she pressed call anyway, and he picked up on the second ring, sounding a little out of breath, like she’d caught him mid-motion.
The call ran long.
Longer than she meant it to.
By the time they hung up, a full hour had slipped by without her noticing, the light outside her window shifting gold and low, and Maya had to scramble for her bag and her shoes, glancing at the clock with a small jolt of panic.
Olivia poked her head in one last time as Maya grabbed her keys off the dresser.
“Go have your not-date.”
“It’s not—”
“Go!”
Maya laughed despite herself, grabbed her jacket off the hook, and headed out the door.
The walk to the cafe took fifteen minutes, and Maya spent most of it trying to talk herself out of the low hum of nerves sitting under her ribs, rehearsing casual opening lines in her head that all sounded stupid the second she thought them all the way through.
By the time the cafe came into view — warm light spilling out onto the sidewalk, the chalkboard sign out front advertising some seasonal drink she’d never tried — her palms had gone the tiniest bit clammy, which was a ridiculous thing to happen over a spreadsheet meeting, and she knew it.
She pushed the door open, the little bell above it chiming, and stepped inside — only to find the cafe wasn’t nearly as empty as she’d expected.
A cluster of familiar faces were scattered across two pushed-together tables near the window, and for one disorienting second, Maya just stood there in the doorway, scanning the room, trying to figure out exactly how a meeting for two had somehow turned into an audience.