AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sure,” I said. “Shaking things up by hiring a different stylist. I get it.”
“Honey, you’re taking it personally,” Jared said. “Don’t do that. This is business.”
“Who did they hire? The stylist with the bad colonic. Who was it?”
Another brief pause, but Jared gave in. “Marissa Monday.”
I felt the back of my neck go hot. Marissa Monday—I had no idea if that was her real name—was one of the hottest up-and-coming stylists in the business. She was good. She was also all of twenty-one, while I was wasting away at thirty, ready for the fashion nursing home. “So they hired Marissa Monday instead of me,” I said, “and when she got a bad colonic, they want me to fill in.”
“Again with the personal,” Jared said. “At least they want you now. Go in tomorrow and really wow them, Ava. It’ll be great.”
The heat was gone and I was numb now, my fingers numb on my phone. I made myself say the words. “I can’t. I’m in Chicago. On a job.”
“For who?” Jared asked in surprise. “There’s no scene in Chicago.”
“It’s more of, um, a private assignment,” I said, thinking of Dane dropping his jeans, the sight of his deathbed-worthy bare ass. “Someone who needs some one-on-one wardrobe work.”
“I see.” Oh, yes. This was what I’d dreaded: not the disapproval in Jared’s voice, but the pity. Instead of shooting for Bergdorf, I was taking jobs for people who didn’t know how to dress. It was like I’d just shouted I’m a failure! into the phone. In case I was lying, he asked, “You’re sure you’re in Chicago?”
“Yes, I’m sure I’m in Chicago.” And I was sure I was someone that Bergdorf didn’t call anymore. I’d suspected it for a while, but now it was official. I had been demoted to a fill-in, and after this I wouldn’t be called at all. “I’m sorry I can’t help you out. You’ll have to find someone else.”
After we hung up, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat there, my mind blank. Bergdorf was shooting without me. They’d hired Marissa Monday instead, because she was younger and hotter than me. My phone hadn’t been ringing very often lately. How many other jobs had I been passed over for that I didn’t even know about?
I still had my blog. I’d started writing it ten years ago, when it was still possible for blogs to be a big thing. I interviewed designers and models and talked about the latest looks. I worked hard on it, and for a long time the blog had been pretty popular, making me some semi-regular money. There was a matching Instagram account, too, with a lot of followers. But of late that had started to fall off, mostly because I wasn’t hot anymore. I’d even been told to delete the blog a few times, because blogs were old-school and made me look out of date.
I stood up and walked to the full-length mirror on the bedroom wall. I stood in front of it, looking at myself for a long minute. Then I untied the robe and let it drop to the floor.
I was wearing panties and nothing else. I had a gym membership, but I didn’t work out as much as I should have; I tried my be
st to eat healthy, but in reality my staples were toast, ramen, and margaritas. Even if I quit drinking and ate nothing but steamed broccoli, I’d still have boobs and hips. I looked at myself and realized I didn’t know how I felt about my body—whether I loved it, hated it, or felt somewhere in between.
I focused on my hair instead. I was fickle about my hair, changing the color when I felt like it. It had been black, bright red, and a few times it had been streaked with purple or blue. I touched the bright blonde strands, running them through my fingers. Why had I bleached it? It had been an impulse. It had cost a lot of money, and now that it was done it would cost a lot more money for upkeep. Money I didn’t have.
Fashion seemed shallow to most people, but the truth was, it was all about expressing how you felt. If you felt sexy, or smart, or serious, or casual, or even if you felt depressed and ready to tell everyone in the world to fuck off and leave you alone—you expressed yourself. You used your creativity, just like a painter or a musician would. You were a blank canvas, and you got to create yourself every day.
The fact was, with that phone call—truthfully, since Dane had touched me in the restaurant—I didn’t feel like the sassy blonde stylist and blogger anymore. I looked at my body in the mirror, my blank canvas, and wondered what I did feel like. I’d buried the naïve nineteen-year-old brunette with the crush on her brother’s nerdy friend. I’d buried her deep, and I’d refused to think about her for eleven years. But in the mirror I could see that she was still there. She’d learned a lot of lessons, and she’d kissed a lot of frogs, but she was still there.
I wasn’t ready for her to come out. That girl was still too raw—she hurt from too many things at once. The woman I’d replaced her with was tough and street-smart, ready for anything. She could make wry jokes about her terrible childhood and fool around with the man who’d gotten her pregnant once, and she could do it without getting her heart broken. I needed that woman now. I also needed a margarita to get me through the night. I hadn’t had nearly enough sake at the restaurant.
I slid on the bathrobe again, though I didn’t tie it closed. What was I closing it for, anyway? No one was going to see me.
Then I walked to the minibar and picked out a bottle of white wine. Because screw it—my brother was paying.
Fourteen
Dane
* * *
There was something wrong. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. On the surface, Ava seemed her normal self. She was sitting on my chair, wearing slim black Capri pants and a sleeveless top of baby blue. When she came through my door she was wearing black heels that had no back to them, so she could slip them on and off. She’d kicked the shoes off as soon as she walked in, and now she had her bare feet, with their pearly-pink toes, up on my ottoman. As she talked, I pulled out my phone and did some quiet Googling and discovered the kind of heels she’d been wearing were called mules. That was the term for them.
I was never going to tell Ava I’d Googled that.
“Kaito Okada,” Ava was saying. “He’s thirty-one, married. His wife was one of his marketing executives before they got married. They have no biological children, but they have adopted two children. The kids are aged eight and six.” She looked up at me. “Do you want their names?”
I closed the browser on my phone with the photo of mules on it. “I’ll never remember their names. Besides, the kids won’t be there.”
“Dane. Asking people about their children, especially by name, is one of the surest ways to get them to like you. It’s called a social skill. That’s what I’m trying to teach you here.”
