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“Hello? Earth to Frankie?” Lauren snaps in my face, bringing me back to the present.
“Sorry.” I glance at her work in the mirror, impressed. Eggplant-colored smokey eyeshadow really makes the green of my eyes pop. I’d re-dyed my hair last Thursday, before everything went to shit, so the color was still fresh. I’d curled it but left it long and loose.
You can still see the faint shadows under my eyes, but I look far more awake than I have for the last week. “You’re a miracle worker, Lauren.”
“Hmph. I know.” She’d greeted me at the door in one of those sheer robes you see in old movies, her hair and makeup already done. Her winged eyeliner was perfectly precise, and the smudged burnt orange above it gave off major “don’t fuck with me” vibes. “We should get dressed—our Uber will be here soon.”
Her cat Max is sleeping on her bed when I follow her into the bedroom. His lone ear twitches when Lauren pulls the garment bags out of her closet. “One for you, one for me.” She pauses and gives me a quick hug. “I’m so glad we adopted you. It would have been shitty getting ready for this by myself. Sophie and I always used to do it together.”
I squeeze her back. “Where is Sophie?”
“Theo arranged a spa day for her. They’re doing her hair and makeup and everything.” Lauren pulls my dress out of its bag and hands it to me.
“You didn’t want to do a fancy spa day with her?”
Lauren laughs, pulling her dress out of its bag. “Trust me, if you’d have third wheeled with them enough times, you’d know not to ask that question. I love seeing her and Theo together, but I can only watch him make goo-goo eyes at her for so long.”
She drops the dress on the bed and unties her robe, the furred hems pooling on the floor dramatically. It occurs to me that neither of us is wearing a bra, and I avert my gaze from her chest. For a second, I don’t know where to look until I realize I’m being stupid. They’re just boobs, for Pete’s sake. I unzip my hoodie and step out of my sweatpants before reaching for my dress.
Stepping into it, I pull the sequined fabric over my hips, then slide my arms through the thin straps. The front dips low between my breasts, a thin string of jewels the only thing keeping the two sides from gaping. The one benefit of being almost flat-chested is not having to worry about my boobs escaping or needing any kind of support. I own bralettes and sports bras for warmth more than anything else.
The titanium dress skims my stomach and hips, looser than the bodycon dress Lauren wanted me to buy, but a far cry from the voluminous fifties-style dress Sophie picked out for herself. “Can you help me?” I ask Lauren once I pull the thin straps over my shoulders. Inside the dress, the back barely covers the top of my ass, but a cowl of fabric keeps it from being inappropriate.
She reaches down and pulls the fabric free, smacking my ass when she’s done. “That’s how Papa likes it.” She laughs. “Julian is going to lose his mind when he sees you. Can you zip me, please?”
I zip the back of her dress, the red velvet lush under my fingers. She turns around, smoothing it down over her thighs. When we were shopping, she’d pulled it off the rack and I’d recoiled at the puffy long sleeves, but Lauren looks like a bombshell in it. The plunging neckline, even lower than mine, and short hem help.
“Shoes?”
I pull black thigh-high boots out of my bag. “Check.” When she and Sophie asked if I had boots, I’d assured them I did. No need to tell them they were from a long ago attempt at cosplay at PDX, one I’d chickened out of at the last minute. “Where are yours?”
Lauren pulls a pair of black velvet and rhinestone shoes from her closet. “Got ‘em. Phone, lipstick, cash, ID?”
“In the clutch you loaned me.” I point to the black leather bag on the bed. “You?”
She pulls a fabric bag out of her closet. “Come to Mama,” she croons to the bag. Undoing the drawstring, she pulls out a perfectly round, black leather bag. It’s about five inches across, with a silver chain strap and a metal logo I can’t read on one side. “This is my baby. Vintage Prada. I bought it for myself for my thirtieth birthday.” She strokes the front reverently before unzipping it and carefully putting her things inside. But no matter how we try, we can’t make her phone fit—it’s just too big. In the end, we put it in my purse, and I slide my phone inside my boot instead.
“They need to make boots with hidden pockets for phones,” Lauren muses as she locks the front door behind us. “Goodnight, Mr. Dick…erson!”
A man calls back through the opposite door. “Fucking harpy!”
Lauren laughs and leads me down the stairs where a car is waiting for us. “His last name is really Richardson, but he’s a dick. And as my lady Jane said, he ‘has never done anything to entitle himself to more than that abbreviation of his name.’”
She’s still laughing at her joke when we climb into the back seat of the car, although it went right over my head. Our Uber driver chimes in when she explains that it’s a line from a Jane Austen book and they hit it off at my expense. By the time we pull up in front of the hotel, she and the driver are chatting like old friends and arranging for her to be the one to pick us up at the end of the night. “Bye, Lexi!” Lauren calls as we climb out. “Oh, I like her.”
An umbrella appears over my head, and I whirl, expecting to find one of the valets. Julian gives me a small smile. “Hey. You look amazing.”
“I told you he would appreciate the dress.” Lauren nudges me, squishing under the enormous umbrella with us. “Hey, handsome, you clean up good.”
Julian laughs, leading us toward the hotel’s double doors. He hands the umbrella back to the valets with a rumbled thanks before pulling the door open for us, and I finally get a good look at him. Lauren’s correct, Julian in his uniform sets off butterflies in my stomach. Julian in workout clothes was enough to drop my panties, literally. But Julian in a tux?
All those years of Sunday School are no match for the way the clean lines of his tux barely contain his masculinity. Who wants to be a “nice girl” when just the sight of him could make me come right here and now? Especially when I know what an expert he is with his hands. And his tongue. Heat pools in my core until I make eye contact with him and it turns to a block of ice in my belly.
There’s no warmth in his icy-blue eyes when he looks at me. Appreciation? Yes. But he barely glances at me before he looks away again, eyes scanning the lobby. I follow Lauren through the door and he falls in behind me. A shiver runs up my spine, and I wrap my arms around my waist, holding myself together under the weight of his dismissal.
Lauren leads us through the hotel lobby, but her chatter washes over me. All I can think about is the man behind me. He’s unhappy. I can feel it in my bones.
It doesn’t matter that I’m ready to climb him like a tree—he wants nothing to do with me. I fucked up, big time. Stupid fucking anxiety.
