Page 78 of Cruel Lies

"Are you going somewhere?"

"Just out."

"Out where?"

"Out out."

She squints at me. "Calista."

"Bye, Mom. Love you. Hayden, don't you dare try to sweet-talk Grandma into giving you soda before bed."

I herd them out the door before she can start in on me for real.

Then it's just me and the house and the dress.

I start getting ready at five. That gives me two hours, which should be plenty, except I quickly find out that getting ready for a black-tie gala when you don't have a single mirror in your home is not something a person can just do so easily.

I shower, scrubbing every inch of myself twice over. Then I towel off and tackle my hair, which I have to do by feel and by phone camera, holding the round brush in one hand and the phone in the other, propping it up on the sink again. It keeps trying to focus on the tile behind me.

The eyeliner is the worst part. It always is.

I do my whole face this way, inches from the little screen, one eye and then the other, wiping and starting over more times than I want to count. By the time I think I've got it right, I have no real way to know if that's actually true, because a four-inch phone screen only shows you one small piece of yourself at a time. You never get to see the whole picture. You just have to trust the pieces add up.

"This is deranged," I inform the phone.

Shockingly, I get no response.

After that comes the lingerie.

I hold the top piece up again and look at it. Then I take a breath and put it on.

The fabric is buttery soft against my skin. As I clip the bra behind my back, there's a moment where the old voice tries to speak up. I wait for it to get loud.

But somehow, it doesn't. It's a quiet little tingle in the back of my head, kind of like tinnitus, but I find more and more that I'm able to ignore it.

I wonder who I have to thank for that.

Then I put on the bottoms and the garter. And for a second, I picture Ronan on his knees in front of me, taking the strap between his teeth and dragging it down my thigh, slow, his blue-gray eyes on mine the whole time?—

"Nope," I say out loud, and shake my head hard enough to mess up my hair.

I fix the hair and I do not let myself think about his teeth again. Much.

The truth is, I feel good in this. Really good. I run my hands down the front of the lingerie and I don't flinch, and that alone feels like it deserves a prize.

I step into the dress last. It fits like it was made for me, which it probably was, though I have no idea how, because I've never given Ronan my measurements. I decide not to think too hard about that. There's a zipper up the back that I can just barely reach, and I get it about three-quarters of the way before it stops going.

I twist. I reach. I whine.

I fail.

I cannot zip my own dress.

And that's the moment it hits me, standing in my bedroom in a five-figure gown I can't get into, that I have nobody to call.

Not for this. Not for the zipper, and not for the rest of it, either.

There was a time I would have had someone. There was a whole decade where the person I'd have called was Paula.