Page 79 of Cruel Lies

I would've called her at four this afternoon, half-panicked, and she'd have come over with her own makeup bag and a bottle of something bubbly to calm my nerves. She'd have zipped me up and stood behind me with her chin on my shoulder and told me I looked amazing. She'd have talked me down. She'd have said all the things you're supposed to say to your best friend before she walks into a room full of strangers on the arm of a man who scares her a little.

You look incredible. He's lucky. Stop touching your hair. You've got this.

That's what a best friend does.

Except the person who was supposed to do that turned out to be the same person who was sleeping in my bed and drinking out of my mug and stealing my life one piece at a time. So I don't have a best friend. I have only the memory of someone who pretended to be one.

I plop down on the edge of the bed in my half-zipped dress. I'm not going to cry. I've done a lot of not-crying lately and I'm good at it now.

But God, I miss having someone. Not Todd. Not even a man. I miss having aperson.Somebody who'd pick up the phone and be on my side without me having to explain first why I need them to be.

I look at my phone.

For one stupid second, my thumb hovers over the screen like it might find a name there that isn't Ronan's and isn't my mom's.But there's no one. Fifteen years of friendship and it turns out the whole thing was a lie.

I put the phone down.

"Okay," I say out loud. "Buckle up, Cali girl. You've done harder things than a zipper."

I get up. I walk into the bathroom, back to the mirror that isn't there, and I turn around so my back is to the empty wall. I reach behind me with both hands and I work the zipper by feel, one tooth at a time, even when my shoulder screams in protest.

It catches. It sticks. And then, with one careful pull, it goes.

The dress closes.

I stand there breathing for a second, arms aching from the angle, and I feel a small, dumb flush of pride that has no business being this big. I zipped a dress. Congratulations, me.

But itissomething. It's me doing the thing myself, alone, with no one behind me and no reflection to check it in, and getting it right anyway.

The rest is easier once the dress is on.

I do the jewelry, which is just my mother's earrings, though they're timeless and perfect. I find the one pair of heels I own that don't have gum stuck to the bottoms. I take the note that came with the dress and read it one more time for courage.

And then, because I can't help it, I take out my phone and I hold it at arm's length and I take a picture of myself. The whole of me, or as much as the front camera can grab.

I don't know what I look like. I mean that literally. Since the brazen mirror theft, I've spent so many mornings squintinginto a four-inch screen that I've almost forgotten what my own face looks like from more than a foot away. In the photo, I'm a woman in a dark green dress with her hair done and her mother's earrings on, standing in a bedroom, holding a phone.

She looks nervous.

She also—and I have a hard time even letting the thought finish—looks kind of beautiful.

I turn the phone off before I can talk myself out of it.

The anxiety doesn't go away, though. If anything, now that the dress is on and the makeup's done and there's nothing left to fuss with, it has more room to spread out.

Because this is different from the other dates.

The aquarium was empty. The restaurant was tucked away with no sign out front. The bar was two blocks from my house. Every single time I've been with Ronan, it's been just us, in a room he made sure was ours alone. Private. Contained. Safe, in his weird, off-kilter way of making things safe.

Tonight, there's going to bepeople.

Hundreds of them. In a ballroom. With cameras, probably. People who know each other, people who know him, people who'll look at the two of us walking in together and start asking questions in their heads.Who's that with Ronan Akov? Isn't that the Bradshaw woman? Didn't her husband just?—

I press a hand to my stomach.

I'm going to be seen. Not by an octopus, but by the actual world. On the arm of a man I've been on three dates with, in a city where my husband just ruined his own career in a conferenceroom full of witnesses. People talk. People at these things do nothingbuttalk.

And I don't know how to be Ronan Akov's date. I barely know how to look the man in the eye and not let him bulldoze me with charm, patience, and persistence. I don't know how to stand next to him under chandeliers and belooked at.