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Eighteen
“Arlington Banks.”
Kassidy’s voice sounded disembodied. Surreal. Muffled by several layers of Arlie’s blanket cocoon, which also kept the terrible daylight out. The world beneath these supremely comforting fuzzy layers was quiet and manageable. Soft. Dim.
“Arlington Quartermaine Banks,” Kassidy repeated.
“Yes?” Arlie said, not moving.
“We are not having this conversation through a Pottery Barn throw blanket.”
The voice was closer now.
Arlie was getting good at identifying the direction and distance of the various sounds in her new kingdom without the benefit of sight.
Garbage trucks.
Ambulances.
The TV.
The refrigerator’s compressor.
Begrudgingly, she lifted the edge of her blanket just enough to squint one eye at her best friend, who knelt next to the couch that had become Arlie’s home, restaurant and entertainment center over the last week.
“I love you,” Kassidy said, reaching a hand beneath the blanket to find Arlie’s. “But this has got to stop.”
“What’s that?” Wrapping an arm around her knees, Arlie drew them tighter into her chest. This had become her default setting. Comfort achieved only when she condensed the swirling chaos of her life into the smallest possible configuration.
“It’s been a week, and you haven’t moved from that position.”
“What’s the point?” Indeed, this had been the mantra that seemed to swim through her head any time she contemplated an action that would draw her out of her misery.
“The point is, a couple more days and your ass is going to fuse with my couch. This was not at all the roommate scenario I had in mind when I invited you to stay with me.”
“Sorry to disappoint—”
Cruelly and without warning, her blanket was whipped away, leaving her exposed and blinking like a vampire in the sun. “Hey!” she protested.
“That’s it.” Kassidy balled up the blanket and shot it across the room. “You will peel yourself out of those crusty pajamas. You will marinate in a hot shower. You will put actual adult clothing on your body and you will come with me to the Blue Note, where I will procure a stud to make out with you.”
Arlie picked at a crusty spot on the knee of her pajama bottoms that might have been ice cream or gravy. She wasn’t sure which. “I’m really not in a making-out mood.”
The truth was, Arlie now lived in mortal terror that no kiss would ever live up to Samuel Kane’s. In college, all kisses had been measured against their furtive exchange in the closet. Now she had much much more to reference. The chances that any random bar hookup would bring her anything but disappointment were very slim.
“Well, I am,” Kassidy said. “And seeing as you’re not required to pay rent, this is the price of your room and board. That we go out and find men.”
Rolling her tired, stinging eyes up to her best friend, Arlie calculated the odds that she could wiggle her way out of this.
The odds weren’t good.
Drawing in a deep breath, she sat up and obeyed Kassidy’s command.
Showered, shaved and squeaky clean, Arlie emerged to find her best friend on the other side of the door with a silky bathrobe and her makeup bag. “Surprise!”
“And what, I ask you, is the meaning of this?”
“Indulge your exceedingly patient best friend in a night of nostalgia.” Kassidy pushed a damp lock of hair away from Arlie’s forehead. “You always let me do your makeup when we went out together.”
“When I was fifteen and my mother wouldn’t let me wear lipstick.”
“Please.”Kassidy’s eyes were wide in supplication, her palms pressed together in front of her chic Prada top.
“Okay.” Shrugging into the bathrobe and dropping her towel, Arlie allowed herself to be led to Kassidy’s room, where, a mere thirty minutes later, she blinked at her completely transformed reflection in the vanity mirror.
“I don’t want to brag or anything,” Kassidy said, stepping back to admire her handiwork, “but holy shit.”
Arlie was inclined to agree.
She’d avoided meeting her own eye in the months since she’d been fired from Gastronomie, aside from quick checks to confirm she didn’t have lipstick on her teeth or mascara on her cheek.
Now, she looked at herself.
Reallylooked.
She was still there.
Still her.
Kassidy’s doorbell rang, echoing through the condo.
“I think it’s for you.” An alarmingly knowing look brightened her friend’s eyes.
Arlie laughed, leaning into the mirror to thumb one of her dramatically sweeping lashes. “No one knows I’m here.”
When Kassidy didn’t respond, Arlie’s heart began to gallop. “Do they?” she asked, fully aware of the edge of desperation in her voice.
“I guess you’ll have to see.” An enigmatic smile shaped Kassidy’s lips.
“Why do you do these things to me?” Arlie asked, pushing past her into the hallway.
