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I glance down at my jeans and T-shirt. “Umm…”
“Oh, honey, no. You’re wearing one of your T-shirts?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, that’s the whole reason I’m here,” I point out.
High Tee is a luxury T-shirt company. I know, you’re thinking, Is there such a thing as a luxury T-shirt?
Yes, there is. Don’t tell me you’ve never longed to rock chic jeans and a basic white tee, with the ensemble coming across as classic and not frumpy. It’s a timeless look that’s harder to achieve than people realize. The cut of most women’s T-shirts is either too tight or way too baggy.
Marjorie and I found that the closest we used to be able to get to the “effortless cool” look was actually a men’s T-shirt, which tends to be longer and less fussy. But for women above an A-cup, men’s shirts run into a whole other problem, you get me?
Enter High Tee—the perfect white tee.
The company’s doing well—really well. But I want to do better than well. I want us to go from SoCal boutique to household name.
The thing is, you can’t describe the perfect tee. You have to see it. And the reality-TV-obsessed Marjorie had the half-brilliant, half-crazy insight that there’s no better way to get our T-shirts in front of the almost entirely female demographic of the reality TV show Jilted than by having one of the contestants wear them. Factor in that I live in San Diego, which is just a couple of hours’ drive from the Los Angeles auditions for the show…and somehow I got talked into auditioning, since Marjorie herself is a happily married mother.
Even more incredibly, I was selected.
Marjorie thinks it was my “laid-back SoCal cool” that did it.
I think it was the fact that I was one of the few noncrazies in the early stages. One woman carried her pet turtle strapped to her chest. Another woman was stressing about whether the producers would want to count her dual personalities as one contestant or two. Yet another woman rode a Segway everywhere because she had a fear of her feet touching the ground that “science had yet to cure.”
Let’s just say my boring ponytail and T-shirt probably didn’t look irresistible so much as sane.
But anyway, here I am. Currently in a side room of a Beverly Hills lobby, sweating through my T-shirt, trying not to puke, and talking to my mother, who, while lovable, is perhaps the least qualified person to offer advice on anything other than shades of coral nail polish.
“What about shoes?” Mom asks. “Did you see that picture of the one with the plaid bows I sent you from Pinterest?”
Case in point. The woman’s known me my ent
ire twenty-nine years, and she still thinks I like plaid. Or bows.
Or that my shoes are anything other than flip-flops.
“My shoes match my outfit perfectly,” I evade.
She reads between the lines and sighs in disappointment—maybe she knows me better than I think.
I hear the rustle of papers. “Well, none of that matters,” she says, obviously reciting from her notes, “because you have a…” Rustle rustle rustle. “Beguiling smile.”
Clearly she has a new thesaurus app on the phone I got her for Christmas.
“Okay, thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom.” I hear a knock at the door—doom is officially around the corner. “I gotta run. Time to go beguile a man.”
“Not just a man,” my mom says reverently. “Gage Barrett.”
“Yes, my dream man. Unpredictable paychecks, more girlfriends in a week than I’ve had boyfriends in my life, two of which he’s left at the altar.”
“I’m sure he had his reasons.”
Oh, I’m sure he did too.
Reason number one: he’s an asshole.
Reason number two: he’s a playboy.
Reason number three—
