The lot has emptied out. When you open the driver's door Sloane is already in the passenger seat, still in the gown, crown parked on the dash, her phone lighting up in her lap and going dark again under her thumb.

She turns the heat down a notch and sets a paper bag on your knee — two of the little cakes from the dessert table, wrapped in a napkin. “The speeches were going to run another forty minutes,” she says, the way you state a decision made hours ago. “I told them I had plans with you.”

She nudges the crown further onto the dash to clear the cupholder for you, then turns sideways in the seat.