Page 39 of Scorpio Season

Looking at herself in the mirror, Toni’s lips twitch.

“You should buy it,” Miray says.

Toni makes a face. “It’s forty euros.”

“Still. You know what Flo always says.” Miray clears her throat. In a prim Oxford accent, she declares, “Appearances are everything. Imagine yourself in a paparazzi shot wearing this coat.”

“I don’t want to imagine myself in a paparazzi shot,” Toni argues, but her eyes keep lingering on her reflection. “There’s a tear in the sleeve.”

“Izzy can mend it for you. You know she’s good at that stuff.”

“Hm.” Toni takes another glance at the price tag. “If I can’t afford food by the end of the tour, I’m stealing yours.”

“Deal.” The grin Miray throws Luca is pleased and openly mischievous. It’s enough to make Luca feel strangely giddy—like she’s in on a joke, even when all she did was stand there.

“What about you?” Shrugging out of the coat, Toni turns to Luca. “Find anything?”

“Just this.” Luca holds up the shirt she picked up a few aisles ago. It’s white, with ruffles along the front and around the sleeves. “I’m not sure though. It feels a bit . . . dramatic.”

“Our band is dramatic,” Miray says. “Try it on!”

Hit with the full force of Miray’s dimples, Luca has no choice but to shuffle after her to the changing room. She can hear Miray and Toni chattering away outside the heavy velvet curtain while she fumbles with the buttons on the shirt. After a few moments, she steps outside, arms held awkwardly at her sides as she studies herself in the mirror. “I don’t know.”

“Wait,” Miray says, stepping closer. “I think it needs to be . . . Here, can I?” Her piano-playing fingers are much more nimble than Luca’s own as she undoes the top three buttons and tucks the front of the shirt into Luca’s trousers.

The effect is immediate. Instead of looking like an unhappy child in some Edwardian painting, Luca now has to think of the covers of the romance novels Miray reads in bed every night. With her freckled collarbones on display, she looks . . . rakish. Handsome. Like a very lesbian pirate captain.

“Nice,” Toni says, approving.

“Yeah?” Luca asks.

“Hold on.” Toni’s phone camera clicks as Luca runs a hand through her hair. Her own phone vibrates against her thigh a second later. Barely a heartbeat later, another message lands in their group chat.

Izzy:

florence just gasped out loud lol

Izzy:

buy it

Luca can feel her ears turning pink in real time. Toni looks quietly satisfied. “Buy it,” she says.

Before Luca can protest, she’s already being nudged back into the changing room. While she struggles to free her arms from the ruffly sleeves, she asks, “What are Izzy and Florence up to?”

“I think they’re still at the café,” Miray answers. It’s where they left them two hours ago, when Florence said she wanted to catch up on emails and Izzy announced she didn’t need to spend any more time inside a thrift shop than she already does back home.

“Is it smart to leave them alone for so long?” Luca questions.

Miray laughs. “They haven’t clawed each other’s eyes out yet.”

Once she’s pulled her own shirt back over her head, Luca pushes aside the curtain and follows Miray and Toni to the front of the shop to pay. Toni is buying the coat, and Miray has picked out a black dress with poofy sleeves that would look ridiculous on anyone but her.

They’re stepping back into the street when Toni’s phone rings. “Sorry,” she says, looking down at it with a frown. “I have to take this.”

Miray threads an arm through Luca’s and tugs her along, Toni trailing a step behind them.

“Hey,” she says. “Is everything all right?” A pause. “How is—No. No, our next show is in two days. We have some time off in Amsterdam. I was going to call you later.”