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Oh yes, I muse. Ha. A crying shame.
I’m so, so fucked here.
With no more outs in sight, I do the only thing I can—dive headfirst into the fire.
“So, I guess I’ll just go throw on a different set of clothes, and then we can go?” Why I’m asking him for permission is beyond me. Deep down, I think I’m hoping he’ll still change his mind and decide to go to dinner by himself and leave my crazy ass here.
“Sounds like a plan.”
But of course, he doesn’t say no. If anything, his responding smile looks far too happy to accommodate.
Duh-duh. Someone call Law & Order. There’s about to be a new special victim for their unit, and she’s coming in hot.
Brooke
I bang around in my room like a maniac, looking for the kinds of makeup products that can turn a train wreck of a woman into one from the magazines. Incidentally, I don’t own any of those products, nor do I possess the sort of expertise required to use them, but a woman as desperate as I am doesn’t need to be bothered with those details.
From my vanity mirror, I see Benji stare at me from his spot on my bed. His eyes say everything that needs to be said, Agreeing to dinner with a man who makes you pass out is the second-worst idea you’ve ever had.
He doesn’t even have to tell me my first-worst idea. I’m currently in the middle of living the consequences of it. This dinner is in the name of celebrating it, in fact.
“Don’t look at me like that, Benj,” I whisper toward him. “And trust me, I know. I freaking know.”
A doggie scoff escapes his snout, and I smack my eye shadow palette from three years ago onto the surface of my vanity and speed-click through a YouTube tutorial video. My phone rests against the mirror so I can multitask.
She’s a lovely woman, KatVonMakeup or whatever, but she’s spent five minutes on contouring so far, and I really need her to get to the meat and potatoes of this showdown. Shaping my face into another—or shape-shifting, as some idiot men like to call it—is a little too far above my skill level on this kind of time scale.
Chase is in my living room waiting—and that means he has access to snoop through anything and everything in my apartment. I don’t have any CIA files or drugs or even any nude photos of myself, but for some reason, I’m convinced he’s going to stumble upon all three and turn me in to America’s Most Wanted.
Click, click, click, I tap my finger on the screen, fast-forwarding through the next two minutes of video, fifteen seconds at a time, until I finally reach the beginning of her tutorial on the eyes. I watch carefully as she smooths on a primer I don’t have, and then I huff one more click forward.
Finally, she sweeps at her eyelid with a special brush after pointing at the color in her palette that’s the most neutral. She covers the entire eyelid, so I do the same. It’s instantly clear that my skill is lacking, but I push forward anyway, gripping the tiny foam applicator that was included with my drugstore shadow.
She points to another color in the palette—evidently meant for the crease of the eyelid—and I lean in to try to get a closer look at how she’s doing it. The color choice is far more obvious now, so I have a feeling if I really flub it, everyone in the city is going to notice.
“You okay in there?” Chase calls down the hallway when I drop the applicator on the floor and bang the top of my head on my vanity on the way back from picking it up.
I rub at the sensitive bump I’ve caused and yell back with as much normalcy as possible, “Oh yeah! All good! Nothing to worry about in here!”
I roll my eyes at myself, bite my lip, and then push on. “I should be ready soon!” Dear God, I hope I’m ready soon.
“Take your time!” he booms back, making my spine tingle. He’s hot and he’s considerate and he’s patient. And he’s waiting to take me to dinner.
It’s a business dinner, of course, but I don’t know that my loins have been trained to distinguish the difference. They’re fired up and roasting—practically begging to warm the surface of Chase Dawson’s face.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Brooke, calm down, would you?!
I chuckle a little as I consider myself in the mirror, mumbling, “Definitely won’t be needing blush tonight…”
Quickly as I can manage, I follow along with the rest of the tutorial, skipping the liner and fake lashes and settling for a couple of coats of year-old mascara. I study myself in the mirror for a long moment—pink cheeks, mostly smooth skin, and mildly stylish eyes—and it’ll have to do.
