Page 83 of Ruthless Edge

The room is nice. The Hawthorne does everything nicely. The bed has more pillows than I'll use and the curtains are heavy and the window looks out over the garden, which reminds me of the garden path back on campus where I stood last night in the cold and came apart in front of Knox Carter, which I have not stopped thinking about since.

I stop at the mirror.

The dress is black. Low in the front, a slit on the left side, the kind of dress I only dreamed about being able to pull off once upon a time. Paige found it on the rack at the mall and held it up and said try this one, and she stood in the doorway of the fitting room with her hand over her mouth and said we're getting that one. I almost put it back. It was too much, too daring, but Paige looked at me until I carried it to the register.

She was right.

My hair is down again, the same loose waves as last night, because apparently this is who I am now. I took more care with it this time. I don't know why that distinction matters to me, but it does. I look in the mirror and I feel something I am not sure I've felt before.

Beautiful. Not better than before. Not improved. Beautiful, full stop, the way Paige said it in the fitting room.

I look like someone who belongs in a ballroom.

The ballroom is three floors below me.

I look at the door.

I'm not sure I'm going down there.

This is the thing I've been walking the length of the room about. If I go down there, I'm making a choice. I'm choosing to put myself in front of whatever is waiting, and what's waiting is either the truth Knox told me in the garden or a new version of something I've already been through. Another gala. Another version of Emma standing somewhere in a nice dress waiting for something that doesn't come.

Three years. I spent three years building a wall out of one night, and last night Knox stood in the garden and told me the wall was made of something that wasn't real, and I don't know what to do with the space where the wall was.

There’s a knock at the door.

I go still.

I've been actively not thinking about Knox being somewhere in this hotel, on some other floor, getting ready for the same evening, but it hasn’t been working. I cross to the door and my hand is on the handle and I take a breath.

"Emma, it's me, open up, I can't find the zipper on this thing."

Paige.

I open the door.

She's in pink. Soft and full-skirted, the kind of pink that most people can't carry and Paige makes look like it was invented for her. Her hair is up with a few pieces pulled loose around her face, and she has her arm twisted behind her back reaching for a zipper pull.

"Here," I say, and she turns, and I find the zipper and close it the last two inches.

She turns back around and looks at me.

"You look incredible."

"I know," I say, which is something I could not have said six months ago, and saying it out loud now feels both right and terrifying.

Paige looks me over like she’s in love with my dress, and then she does a slow turn so I can see the full effect of her pink dress.

"You look beautiful," I tell her.

"I know," she says, grinning.

She comes inside and I close the door. She immediately sits on the end of the bed, which is what Paige does when she's settling in, not visiting. I sit beside her, and the skirt of my dress pools around my legs, and neither of us says anything for a second.

"Do you know what you're going to do?" she asks.

"No."

She nods. Like that's the answer she expected but not quite the one she wanted.